By Kevin Orland
Energy Minister Sonya Savage is in “very serious discussions” with producers this week on the idea of exempting incremental rail shipments from curtailment, and the plan is tied to the province’s sale of crude-by-rail contracts that were signed by the previous government, Kenney said in an interview in Bloomberg’s office in New York. The province is making progress on the crude-by-rail sale, which has attracted 16 bids, he said.
“If we can find a way out on that, we think can very likely find a way forward to exempting incremental crude by rail from curtailment through special production allowances,” Kenney said Monday.
Under the right circumstances, Alberta oil producers could be shipping more than 300,000 barrels of crude by rail a day, up from the current roughly 150,000 barrels a day, he said. The province’s crude-by-rail shipping capacity is about 500,000 barrels a day, he said.
Alberta last year introduced a curtailment policy as a supply glut, created by transportation constraints, depressed Canadian oil prices. Suncor Energy Inc., Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., Imperial Oil Ltd. and Cenovus Energy Inc. are the province’s top oil producers by volume.
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