Eby says Canada should build refineries, not pipelines, amid oilsands uncertainty

Hasn’t this been proven to be considerably less economical than building a pipeline?

This is the way to be honest, but no company is standing in line to invest in Canada to build a refinery. You not only need immense capital investment, you also need to comply with the regulations that keep changing, and even then, the pipeline itself is not guaranteed.

What company would invest in that uncertainty, when they can invest in refineries elsewhere?

Asian markets already have refining logistics and capacity set up, and it’s just economical to send crude to them and utilize their established efficiencies and scale to refine.

Don’t we still need pipelines in both scenarios?

Well for 1 we are a net exporter of refined product already

We need both, otherwise the oil is stuck here or stuck going through the states

Jesu Christ, BUILD BOTH!!!

I like Eby but this seems silly. If we must make money from oil then so be it, but don’t throw it away on a refinery that is only useful for domestic use.

Just get rid of the stuff as fast as we can so we can move on from it.

Investing in building refineries is a losing game for Canada. Refined petroleum products are not a competitive high volume export, almost every major market Canada want’s to sell to just wants crude (the raw stuff), since they refine it at home.

This means that the refineries would be built primarily just to service domestic demand, since they won’t be creating much export volume.

But, as a country **Canada ALREADY refines more oil than it consumes**, thus there’s basically no real market case for this plan Eby wants; unless Canada actually goes through with their century initiative plan and creates a giant domestic consumer economy of 100+ million people (so, the answer is no).

Refined product also has a limited shelf life, making it more of a logistical hurdle due to shipping constraints, unlike crude which lasts forever

Also, refineries are INSANELY expensive with massive upfront costs. The reality with oil is, in 2 decades, this shit might not even be a margin creating export anymore as green/solar/nuclear energy expansion starts growing exponentially in Asia. That means theres a legitimate case where the refineries we create, let alone not even being needed for domestic demand, might NEVER pay themselves off.

Canada is the biggest looser with what’s happening on Venezuela. The US refineries are designed built to refine sour oil. They were buying our oils to mix it with their domestic oil so they can refine it. Now they will get endless supply of Sour oil from Venezuela, and there isn’t much need to buy Canadian oil.

We HAVE to build refineries asap and start selling refined end product to the US because the economics will make little sense to the US refineries very soon and they WILL stop buying Canadian Crude

I agree I would like to see Canada be a be able to make more finished product vs relying on the USA. They are not to be trusted

If we partially refined first we could pump more and retain more value. If we refined and developed into actual products, even better.

…just not in BC. He’d like the $$$ in transfer payments, just not the actual refinery.

Eby and his ilk would do well to realize that the oil still flows through BC. It’s just by train and truck instead of pipeline.

Mid on this. Sounds good but refining only work for our domestic needs and only local domestic needs at that.

You need pipelines to sell internationally

And how does the product then move to market? Train cars full of gasoline moving through Vancouver on the way to port?