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I warmly welcome you to my pedlet  I am perin patel and would like to share my views on oil crisis in Canada. From my point of view the biggest danger of this world is oil crisis.

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As per this website there are not enough pipe line to supply the oil which I think is a major investment of government of Alberta but It was not lead into good direction. There are many factor which are delaying the work of pipeline one of it is Indigenous and environmental groups which are not allowing the government to do their work which I think is making hard for government and oil prices are hiking.

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Alberta decided to extend its mandatory production cuts through the end of 2020 because of a lack of pipeline capacity.

The former New Democratic Premier Rachel Notley imposed the curtailments, but the current United Conservative Premier Jason Kenney is extending them. "We're doing this because we have to. In the short term, we don't have the capacity to move the production," Alberta Energy Minister Sonya Savage told reporters in Calgary.

The cuts were controversial, but succeeded in trimming the supply glut and sharply pushing up prices for Western Canada Select (WCS), which had plunged to less than $15 per barrel prior to the announcement.

Alberta has been steadily and gradually unwinding the mandatory limits this year, and by October, the limits will drop to roughly 100,000 bpd, down from 325,000 bpd initially.

But chronic pipeline delays prevent a full lifting of the cuts. The delay of the Line 3 replacement in particular has surprised provincial authorities. The replacement is slated to double the existing line's throughput, and was supposed to come online at the end of 2019, but it has been pushed off until late 2020 at the earliest. Indigenous and environmental groups continue to oppose the project, so more delays are possible.

The decision to extend the mandatory cuts presents "upside risk" to WCS price forecasts, according to a report from Goldman Sachs. There will also be a "ceiling" on the WCS discount relative to WTI, "as free markets will be less able to function and drive differentials toward the marginal cost of crude-by-rail transportation," Goldman analysts wrote. Related: Brazil Government Looks To Fully Privatize Petrobras By 2022

Goldman had originally forecasted a WCS price discount of $17.50-per-barrel relative to WTI in the third quarter, $20 in the fourth quarter, and $21 in 2020. It has not yet updated its forecast to incorporate the extension of the mandatory curbs by Alberta, but noted that the discounts will be narrower than originally anticipated. Shipping oil by rail implies a discount of around $15-$17 per barrel, Goldman said.

Forthcoming regulations on sulfur content in marine fuels by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) are also negative for Canada's heavy oil. Beginning in 2020, the market for high-sulfur fuels is set to shrink, and that could show up with a greater discount for WCS.

Production curbs from Alberta is a "net positive" to cash flow though, with higher WCS prices offsetting the pain of lower output, the investment bank said. Suncor is Goldman's "top pick" in terms of Canadian oil stocks. At the same time, the cuts are negative for refiners, who have less oil to work with and higher prices.

While Alberta has stabilized the market, the lack of pipelines continues to be a drag on Canada's oil industry. "Longer-term, we think this results in a deferral of growth capex in the industry, most notably Imperial's Aspen project, Canadian Natural's Horizon expansion and debottlenecking projects, and Suncor's in-situ replication projects and Fort Hills debottlenecking," Goldman Sachs said. "Given this, we expect 2020 capex budgets to fall relative to initial expectations, and increased deleveraging and capital returns to materialize."

"We expect limited project sanctions to take place until production curtailments are lifted and greater clarity is achieved around export pipelines," Goldman said. Related: Subsea Sector Could Lose Big If Oil Prices Plunge

In fact, since the 2014 oil market meltdown, Alberta has seen an exodus of investment and capital. Major international oil companies have mostly exited Alberta's oil industry altogether. The latest example is Kinder Morgan's decision to sell off its remaining holdings in Canada to Pembina Pipeline Co. for about $3.3 billion. Bloomberg estimates that Canada has seen roughly $30 billion in divestitures in the past three years. Total capital expenditures have declined for five straight years.

The negatives for Canadian oil are multiple: Pipeline bottlenecks, heavier and lower quality oil, mandatory production cuts, high sulfur content, and high-cost and carbon-intensive oil that is increasingly a target in the global efforts to address climate change.

Trans Mountain Corp. has restarted construction on the Trans Mountain Expansion, more than a year after it ran into a brick wall of delays. The federal government essentially nationalized the project in 2018 after Kinder Morgan wanted to exit, and court orders suspended construction. The project still has permits outstanding, but the government-owned corporation hopes to obtain those in the coming months. If all goes according to plan, the pipeline could be operational by mid-2022.

"If they thought things were getting better in Canada, they might hold on, but they don't see things getting better," Laura Lau, of Brompton Corp. in Toronto, told Bloomberg in an interview. "The pipeline situation is getting worse; everything is getting worse."

By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com
More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:

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Canada's Oil Crisis Is Far From Over | OilPrice.com

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Alberta decided to extend its mandatory production cuts through the end of 2020 because of a lack of pipeline capacity. The former New Democratic Premier Rachel Notley imposed the curtailments, but the current United Conservative Premier Jason Kenney is extending them. "We're doing this because we have to.

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As we are going through COVID-19 which is getting worst and due to which Alberta & all provinces experience the lowest  price in last 4 year as this virus is affecting all the business and more over people are home bound and not getting out until or unless it is necessary the gas stations economy have drastically decrease and to over come it the oil price is reducing day by day.

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Good morning! It's James Keller in Calgary.

When Albertans woke up on Monday morning, they were confronted with shocking news about the province's energy industry and its economy.

Oil prices had collapsed to their lowest level in four years - with the largest single-day drop in decades - in the face of an escalating price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia. Alberta's provincial budget, released less than two weeks ago, was in tatters. And the future of Alberta's economy, which is still hurting from a downturn that began in 2014, was now in serious jeopardy.

The price crash came as the province was already staring down problems related to the novel coronavirus outbreak, which had weakened demand for oil and pushed prices down.

And now this.

Oil producers saw billions in stock value evaporate in a matter of hours. Ovintiv Inc., the successor to Encana that is now based in the United States, lost more than 70 per cent of its share price by the end of the day. Calgary-based Cenovus Energy Inc. lost half. And other energy companies saw their stock prices fall 30 per cent or more. The TSX Composite Index plunged 10 per cent.

Cenovus later announced significant cuts to its capital spending plan and it suspended its oil-by-rail program. MEG Energy also cut its capital spending.

The federal government has offered a measured tone, promising help to people who are hurt by the economic fallout but insisting that Canada's fiscal position remains strong. The crisis adds to pressure to include relief for the energy sector and Alberta in the coming federal budget.

Premier Jason Kenney attempted to reassure Albertans, telling them that the province was ready to weather the storm while calling on the federal government for urgent action. Mr. Kenney acknowledged that his provincial budget, which projected a deficit of $6.8-billion in the coming year on the assumption that oil prices would be double what they are now, will need to be adjusted as the year progresses.

He says he'll be pressing for a federal response during a trip to Ottawa this week for the first ministers conference. In particular, he is looking for payroll tax relief and an acceleration of infrastructure spending to inject life into the economy. Mr. Kenney also said the province is looking at what it could do, but he acknowledged: "This is uncharted territory."

Early Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a $1-billion funding package to help provincial healthcare systems cope with the increasing number of coronavirus cases and to help Canadian workers who are forced to isolate themselves.

The money will help buy masks and other supplies for healthcare workers, as well as fund research for a coronavirus vaccine.

The announcement also included loosening restrictions on employment insurance payments for people who are off work due to illness by waiving the waiting period for benefits. The hope is that this will allow people to stay home and avoid infecting others, by quickly getting them money so there isn't a disruption in income.

There was no money earmarked for the economic impact the coronavirus has had on Alberta's oil industry.

Here's what our columnists had to say on the recent collapse in oil prices:

Kelly Cryderman writes that Alberta has seen economic troubles before, though not like this: "But at this scale, all at once, and coming off a five-year period where the province was already crawling out of a hole? That hasn't happened before."

Jeffrey Jones says energy companies need to act quickly to respond to the crisis if they want to make it through to the other side: "Given the magnitude of the drop, and the likelihood that the path to recovery will be very bumpy, many companies already know the drill: cut first, and adjust later."

And Gary Mason is reviving a long-standing debate in Alberta about whether to have a provincial sales tax. He says the current crisis should make that idea more palatable: "Now is precisely the time to ask people in the province to make the kind of 'sacrifice' they should have been making for years. A modest 2 per cent sales tax would hardly impose an impossible burden on Albertans, while helping alleviate some of the damage that the price collapse is imposing on the province."
This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Around the West: Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief James Keller. If you're reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here. This is a new project and we'll be experimenting as we go, so let us know what you think. Opinion:
CRUISE SHIPS: Preparations are underway at Victoria's cruise ship terminal for the start of this year's cruising season on the West Coast, with extra hand-sanitizing stations being installed amid concerns about COVID-19. But Canadian port authorities, cruise lines and the hospitality sector are waiting to find out if the season will begin at all. Health officials including Theresa Tam, Canada's chief public health officer, are urging Canadians to avoid all cruise ship travel because of COVID-19, but Transport Canada has not yet decided if the tens of thousands of visitors due in the month of April alone will be welcomed.

COASTAL GASLINK: A Wet'suwet'en Nation matriarch who supports Coastal GasLink's B.C. pipeline project says the Indigenous group's hereditary governance system needs to incorporate the views of elected band councils. Theresa Tait-Day told a House of Commons committee in Ottawa on Tuesday that Canada and British Columbia legitimized "a group of bullies" when ministers for the federal and B.C. governments met with the hereditary chiefs but did not meet with elected representatives. "Hereditary chiefs are representative decision-makers. They are not autocrats," Tait-Day said. "The bands and the community have been left out."

ADDICTION TREATMENT: The Alberta government is giving people in the province's injectable opioid agonist treatment program a one-year extension to transition out of the effort. The program's participants are prescribed and inject hydromorphone, a pharmaceutical-grade drug, to manage opioid withdrawal symptoms. This change comes after the province released a report looking at supervised consumption sites, which many addiction experts have panned. One of the findings in the report suggests that a large number of methamphetamine users are frequenting supervised consumption sites that were designed to respond to opioid overdoses.

HOMELESSNESS: Reporter Wency Stueck tagged along with a city worker to participate in the Metro Vancouver's count of homeless population, which occurs every three years. The 2017 count found 3,605 people who were homeless in Metro Vancouver, up 30 per cent since 2014. Thirty-four per cent of respondents identified as Indigenous. Experts say the increase in homeless numbers reflects a host of factors, including expensive housing, untreated mental illness and young people "aging out" of government care and struggling to find a foothold as adults.

TEACHERS: The Saskatchewan Teachers' Federation says its members will not provide any voluntary or extracurricular services starting on Thursday. The government and the union met last week in an attempt to get back to the bargaining table.

CORONAVIRUS: B.C. associations involved in seniors' care have set up a working group in response to the new coronavirus, hoping to streamline communications between government officials and the operators of seniors' facilities. The communications push follows the death of a man at a long-term care home in North Vancouver, believed to be the first COVID-19 death in the country. Meanwhile, Alberta has announced it has 14 cases.

HERRING ROE FISHING: The annual Pacific herring roe fishery is winding down in the Strait of Georgia, amid protests from conservationists who say the harvest threatens a species that is critical to the recovery of dwindling chinook salmon, and to the survival of the endangered southern resident killer whales. The herring are a keystone species, an important source of food for seabirds, larger fish, sea lions and seals, and whales.

ALCOHOL IN ALBERTA PARKS: Grant Hunter, a UCP MLA, said late last month the governing United Conservative Party would erase the dictate that says adults must have food with them if they are consuming alcohol in parks. However, this will not affect whether alcohol will be prohibited in municipal parks. That will still be up to local politicians.

André Picard on Dr. Bonnie Henry: "Canada is an oasis of calm amid the global coronavirus freak-out, in no small part thanks to Bonnie Henry, British Columbia's Provincial Health Officer. Her daily media briefings are a master class in crisis communication - clear, factual and surprisingly intimate."

Brian Pallister on the possibility of the federal government adopting UNDRIP legislation: "More confusion and uncertainty will reign. Investors and businesses will focus elsewhere. Opportunities will be lost. Acrimony will continue. And the twin goals of economic development and Indigenous reconciliation - and the essential pathway between them - will not be advanced."

Justine Hunter on the Wet'suwet'en solidarity protests in front of the B.C. Legislature: "British Columbia has never before had so many Indigenous voices in the legislature at one time. There has never been a better time for members of the house, who last fall unanimously passed legislation to commit to human rights for Indigenous people, to listen with empathy to the concerns of the youth outside. But the protesters demanded complete allegiance with their position, dismissing alternative perspectives within Indigenous communities on the Coastal GasLink pipeline. The Wet'suwet'en themselves are divided on the issue, and are in the midst of a sensitive consultation process on issues of rights and title."

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Western Canada: Oil price crash sends Alberta's economy back into crisis

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Good morning! It's James Keller in Calgary. When Albertans woke up on Monday morning, they were confronted with shocking news about the province's energy industry and its economy. Oil prices had collapsed to their lowest level in four years - with the largest single-day drop in decades - in the face of an escalating price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia.

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This website shows how oil was found in Alberta after many try and investing millions of dollar to find it but then when it got found. How people risk their life for coal and go to mines for as there was economy crisis. but everything changed after wold war 2 as the found that their soil have oil which boost their economy so high and now they are 97% oil producer of Canada.

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In 1947, on the 13th of February, Leduc blew in.

Let's situate that in the context of mid-century Alberta. Following a period of promising growth before 1914 and in the 1920s, the provincial economy was devastated by the Depression of the 1930s and the environmental catastrophe of the dust bowl. Alberta was a poor and scruffy place. Paved roads were a rare sight. The major cities were barely more than large towns. Winters were cold and long, and to heat their homes and businesses, Albertans depended on wood (of which there was little in the Prairie region of the province) and coal, much of it mined in the murderously dangerous mines of the Crowsnest Pass. The Second World War charged up the local economy a bit, encouraging grain and livestock farmers as well as meat-packers in Calgary, but the return to peace raised fears of a return to economic stagnation. The Great War was, after all, followed by an influenza pandemic, industrial unrest, political instability, and an economic crisis in 1921. Albertans in 1947 could be optimistic only if they made a point of ignoring the recent past.

Leduc changed everything. The first oil discovery in a field about 30 km south of Edmonton at long last vindicated a generation of geologists. According to one account, "Imperial Oil, which had drilled 133 dry holes and spent $20 million with little to show, finally had a major discovery." Thereafter it was madness: "The spectacular Atlantic No.3 well, which came in as a gusher in March 1948, blew wild for six months, spilling over a million barrels of oil over the surrounding fields." The discovery at Leduc followed previous discoveries of naphtha gasoline at Turner Valley near Calgary, and even older coal mining resources, so Alberta already had something of an energy industry in place. However, this discovery was the start of something vastly larger, something that would alter the face of both Alberta and Canada as a whole.

The oil boom of the post-war years rekindled old resentments toward Central Canada. Ottawa had enjoyed extensive control over the national economy during wartime, and the "Minister for Everything," C.D. Howe, was still of a mind that he could accomplish whatever was in the interest of Canada as a whole, even in peacetime. That meant getting gas and oil from Alberta to factories in Ontario via a pipeline. For Albertans, this suggestion was worrying in the extreme. The carbon energy resources of the province were, they believed, the key to economic diversification. A province dependent on commodities like wheat and livestock would always be vulnerable to the booms and busts of the international market. Cheap fuel, however, could improve the quality of life and create new industries. In an age that lionized large-scale manufacturing, Alberta - and the West as a whole - still had precious little secondary production capacity. Albertans could look to Texas, another oil-rich jurisdiction, to see how its main cities had turned their wealth to good advantage. That vision would be realized in part, but not during the mid-century.

What quickly became most evident was that Alberta was in the process of a socio-economic revolution. In 1921 the United Farmers of Alberta - a political party based on cooperative values, social gospel instincts, and the primacy of the agricultural sector - formed the provincial government in Edmonton. They were succeeded in 1935 by the Social Credit Party, an antimodernist, monetary reform movement/party with strong fundamentalist Christian values. These were political traditions that clearly had a religious component as well as an economic aspect. In a province that was mostly made up of homesteads and small towns, this made sense in that the local congregations were an expression of community and much of that community was doing the same thing: producing food. But Alberta was urbanizing slowly ... and then oil sped up the process.

Alberta tipped the scales to just slightly more urban than rural in 1951, 30 years after Canada as a whole. Fifteen years later, more than 7 in 10 Albertans were city folks. What's more, the rural population was not just shrinking as a proportion: it was falling in real terms as well. In 1951 the high water mark for rural Albertans was reached at 488,733; it would bottom out at 458,870 (25%) in 1976. The rural share of population steadily fell from 61% in 1941 to 25% in 1976 and further to 17% in 2011.

This reallocation of population took place against a background of profound growth. Between 1951 and 1961, the overall population grew by 40%, much of that expansion coming from natural increase. In 1941 there were just under 800,000 Albertans, and by 1971, that number had doubled to 1.63 million. There was, too, a renewal in the arrival of immigrants, many of whom headed to the expanding cities. The population of Calgary and Edmonton, both of which had languished for nearly two decades at around 80,000 residents, doubled in the 1950s, and pushed past the half-million mark in the late 1970s. In 1941 their populations were at the bottom rungs of the top 10 largest Canadian cities, but in 1961, Edmonton was the fourth largest and the third largest in 1971, eking out Vancouver (not including its suburbs). During the same period, Calgary moved into fourth place and was 33% larger than Ottawa.

This explosive demographic growth was spurred by economic expansion, most of which occurred in the oil patch. Production more than tripled between 1960 and 1973. Ancillary industries associated with finance opened branch offices in Albertan cities. Calgary in particular emerged by the 1980s as a centre of the insurance industry. Economic diversification, however, remained elusive. The aging Social Credit regime faltered with the retirement of long-time Premier Ernest Manning (1908-1996) in 1968, and a new, more aggressively pro-development Conservative government came to power in 1971 under Peter Lougheed (1928-2012). Fifty years had passed since Albertans had elected one of the two mainstream parties to the legislature in Edmonton, and criticizing Ottawa for provincial woes had become an institutionalized pastime. The Lougheed administration continued that tradition while breaking sharply with the rural-oriented economic visions of the past, applying a stronger planning model, and building on the Social Credit government's investment in education and training. Their timing was perfect.

Global oil prices were remarkably flat from the 1920s to the 1970s. Whether measured in real dollars (based on 2008 values) or unadjusted prices, there had not been much fluctuation, notwithstanding a bit of a trough in the 1930s. This stability was achieved by the collaboration between the "Seven Sisters" - the largest international oil companies - and an economy-wide lack of price inflation. By 1970, however, American crude production was falling, and Washington's involvement in the 1973 Yom Kippur War in the Middle East spurred a dramatic and overnight response from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). In October 1973 OPEC raised the price of oil by 70%, imposed an embargo on sales to the United States, and cut output. What came to be called the "first OPEC oil shock" combined with instability in global finances (caused by the collapse of the post-WWII Bretton Woods system of currency alignments), which led to widespread price inflation, rising unemployment, industrial failures, and the beginning of an economic recession. In addition, some oil/petroleum rationing occurred in North America. These features of the oil crisis were felt across the Western world (targeted by the Arab-dominated OPEC nations) and were compounded by a sagging Canadian dollar, which impacted Canadian manufacturers' exports.

These events set the stage for rising economic and political tensions in Canada. Alberta, which to this point had profited modestly on oil sales, suddenly became enormously wealthy. Its political and economic elites - described at the time as "blue-eyed Arabs" - took the centre stage of national affairs and were increasingly confrontational when it came to Ottawa's involvement with the energy sector.

The constitutional context of the oil industry was important in these debates. Provinces control their natural resources but only until they reach a borderline. Movement of oil or natural gas through pipelines into another province - let alone exports into the United States - brought Ottawa into the equation. The Social Credit governments had done much to ensure provincial oversight when it came to internal pipelines so as to limit Ottawa's influence. Demand from Central Canada's growing metropolises and factories guaranteed sales whenever American markets cooled, but it also ensured the involvement of the Ontario and Quebec dominated administrations in Ottawa. In the late 1950s, both gas and oil/petroleum were being piped to Central and Eastern Canada, where they had to compete with the oil being imported from the Middle East and elsewhere. In 1961, the federal government drew the "Borden Line" along the Ottawa River to create two oil markets in Canada, and oil in the market west of the Borden Line was as much as a third more expensive.

This changed in 1973: first due to a new export tariff (introduced under Pierre Trudeau's administration) and second with the OPEC oil shock. By this stage, Saskatchewan had joined the ranks of natural gas and oil producing provinces, which already included British Columbia and Alberta. (Moreover, BC had had its own run-in with Ottawa over energy policies when its government negotiated the Columbia River Treaty over hydroelectricity exports with the United States in the early 1960s.) The possibility of a regional protest against federal energy interventions was greater in the 1970s than in any previous decade, and the stakes were vastly higher. Ottawa took the view that Alberta was enjoying "windfall" profits, which rightly belonged to all Canadians, although Albertans felt differently. They disagreed with the National Energy Board's assessment that oil supplies were limited in the extreme and should thus be preserved for domestic use and treated as a special commodity (with echoes of wartime control over key supplies). Albertans were determined to use oil as part of a strategy to diversify the provincial economy so that when the OPEC-produced windfall inevitably ended, Alberta would have a resilient economic order in place.

Ottawa developed several strategies. The first was to ensure energy security for Canada by slapping an export tax on shipments destined for south of the border. Even during the apparent oil shortage of the 1973 OPEC oil shock, this tax reduced Alberta's oil profits. Lougheed responded with an increase on royalty charges on publicly-owned (Crown) resources. Oil companies had grown accustomed to writing off royalties in their federal corporate taxes, and they hoped to weather this increase in provincial taxes by continuing to do so; however, Ottawa closed that tax loophole. It took the rest of the decade to disentangle the bad feelings and confusion over pricing and revenues.

If tariffs and royalties were inadequate to the task of establishing national oil security, there were other options to pursue. The foremost of these came into play in 1975 when the federal government launched a nationally-owned oil company called Petro-Canada (aka Petrocan). In part this was a result of the Liberals having lost their majority in the House and being dependent on an NDP balance of power (which was highly pro-Petrocan). Treated with suspicion by Alberta, the new corporation was challenged to acquire high quality properties, processing capacity, and oil reserves. Despite all of this, tempers cooled as the decade came to a close.

However, matters took a turn for the worse in 1979. The second OPEC oil shock (1979-1980) saw a return to sniping between Ottawa and Edmonton. The return of the Trudeau government (restored after a 9-month Conservative administration under Joe Clark) was quickly followed by the introduction of the National Energy Program (or NEP). By this time, the price of crude oil had leapt from the pre-1973 price of $3 to nearly $40 a barrel.

The NEP addressed purported shortages by guaranteeing national energy self-sufficiency, taxing the fuel resource to benefit Canadians outside of Alberta, and extending still further Canadian ownership of the oil sector through the instrument of Petrocan. The whole package was based on predictions that oil prices would continue to rise over the next decade. In fact, they reversed, falling to $10 a barrel. Ottawa was left carrying the cost of subsidies to oil-consuming industries with none of the revenue-stream that had been anticipated. Federal deficits grew and the government's popularity shrank. Opposition in Alberta was ferocious: the mayor of Calgary, Ralph Klein, advocated turning off the pipelines and snarled, "Let the Eastern bastards freeze in the dark!" - a sentiment that afterwards appeared on bumper stickers across the West. The NEP stirred up a hornets' nest of constitutional disputes, did little to support energy self-sufficiency, plunged Ottawa into debt, and undermined the principle of equalization payments. It did, however, raise the question of whether there might be a Canadian "national interest" and determined the extent to which regional disparities in wealth and opportunities should be suffered or ameliorated.

The existence of oil-saturated sands along the banks of the Athabasca River had been known about for centuries. The tarry substance was used by First Nations to seal the hulls of their canoes long before the arrival of European traders. Commercial exploitation of the oil sands was, however, extremely limited until the 1970s. Its first commercial use was as a kind of asphalt road surface mined straight out of the ground. By the 1960s there were several methods available to extract the oil from the sand, but they were prohibitively expensive. The oil shocks of the 1970s changed that equation.

Following the first OPEC crisis, various companies were in a position to begin a commercial scale separation of oil and sand. At the forefront of these companies was Syncrude, which began production in 1978. The downturn in global oil prices after 1981 reduced interest in the oil sands, but improved processes, and the rising oil prices enabled Syncrude to increase production to 90 million barrels per year in 2001.

An insatiable demand for skilled and semi-skilled labour turned the neighbouring town of Fort McMurray into one of the country's fastest growing communities in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1961 there were fewer than 2,000 people in the village, and by 1971 6,800; this latter number more than doubled in the next 5 years, and then doubled again to 31,000 in 1981. It is currently reckoned to have a population of 77,000 - at least one-fifth of which is non-permanent. Criticism of the environmental implications of oil sands extraction, and the subsequent transportation of bitumen, may have taken some of the shine off of the oil sands industry, but it has significantly extended the prosperity of Alberta.

Historian Sean Kheraj (York University) investigates the history of pipeline failures and Canadians' connection with their energy sources.

The two oil crises of the 1970s had several important consequences. First, they pitched Alberta into the spotlight of national events and made a national figure of Peter Lougheed - an articulate and thoughtful politician. Second, they created significant tensions within Canadian federalism, increasing demands for decentralized authority or, what was called at the time, centrifugal federalism. These crises also undermined the federal formula for "have" and "have-not" provinces that was based on provincial per capita incomes and assumed that wealthy provinces would necessarily have large populations (not the case, relatively speaking, in Alberta). National equity programs were suddenly in jeopardy, which was felt sharply in the Maritimes.

For most Canadians, what mattered was how the oil crises changed their daily lives. Inflation - almost unheard of since the 1920s - was back with a vengeance. The cost of shipping food products grew dramatically, as did household food expenditures. For the first time since 1945, Canadians were experiencing, on a very broad scale, a fall in their average standard of living.

There were technological and environmental consequences as well. Gas-guzzling North American automobiles were being challenged by smaller, lighter Japanese imports. A whole new sector of the Canadian auto-industry would eventually emerge, along with the development of redesigned North American vehicle engines. Efforts to reduce gas consumption, and thus operating costs, was complemented by attempts to diversify energy sources. Experiments involving nuclear, solar, and wind energy accelerated in these years, although to little effect.

The global context of the oil crises would be felt by Canadians for years. OPEC was regarded by governments in Washington as mostly antithetical to America's "national strategic interests" (oil) in the Middle East. What began as a protest against American and European involvement in the Yom Kippur War - a chapter in the Cold War in which the USSR was supporting Egypt - catalyzed anti-Western feeling. The toppling of the Shah of Iran in 1979 (which precipitated the second oil shock) had consequences for regional affairs that would percolate into the 1990s and the 21st century, drawing Canada into wars and interventions in Kuwait, Iraq, and Libya (see Sections 9.12 and 12.2).

Finally, the rise of Alberta in the 1970s - complemented by a strong British Columbian economy and the growth of the natural gas, potash, and uranium sectors in Saskatchewan - tipped the balance of power in Ottawa. The election of Calgary Conservative, Joe Clark, as PM in 1979 was one indication, however brief, that the tide was turning. The much more successful government of Brian Mulroney, from 1984 to 1993, depended heavily on western alienation for its success. In addition, the appearance of Western separatist sentiment and the Reform Party led by Preston Manning (son of the former Albertan Premier) had deep roots in the events of the 1970s. Reform would go on to transform the "Progressive Conservative" party into the "Conservative Party" led by Stephen Harper, another Calgarian (see Section 12.3). Ironically, Alberta became much more Canadian through this process: the oil patch created jobs that attracted Canadians from every province. Indeed, Mr. Harper (born and raised in Toronto) moved as a young man to Edmonton to take up a low-level office job at Imperial Oil before moving on to the University of Calgary to study economics.

Key Points

The oil economy in Alberta took off in the 1940s and 1950s, and accelerated with the first OPEC oil shock in the early 1970s.

Some of the effects of the oil boom included a dramatic shift from rural to urban life, and a rapid increase in population in Calgary and Edmonton in particular.

Federal attempts to capture some of the windfall profits of the oil shocks in the 1970s provoked strident anti-Ottawa feeling in the West.

Rising oil prices brought within reach the development of the oil sands, extending for decades Alberta's oil-based prosperity.

The oil crises of the 1970s and 1980s had international repercussions, but most Canadians felt it in their wallets, since inflation reduced household incomes significantly and rapidly.

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In 1947, on the 13th of February, Leduc blew in. Let's situate that in the context of mid-century Alberta. Following a period of promising growth before 1914 and in the 1920s, the provincial economy was devastated by the Depression of the 1930s and the environmental catastrophe of the dust bowl.

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This video mentions about how government take steps against the oil crisis and want to up come the situation that have happen

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Trudeau says Canadian oil is in crisis | Power & Politics

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Video explains that how oil Price in Canada was low then it was in USA and as the transportation of oil to refinery was high and there was no pipeline which affected the economy and oil crisis started

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Will more rail cars solve Alberta's oil crisis? | Power & Politics

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In this video they talk about how they wil overcome the debt or crisis which have done as there is lots of storage but the expense is high to transport. So the bill was pass and it says that they will up come the crices from the tax payers money.

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Alberta's oil crisis: Can a new oil refinery fix the problem? | Power & Politics

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How they discoverd oil and after digging 133 holes and making millions of investment in that field

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This shows how oil supply to Canada increases from 2016-2019 which is benefiting the companys which give away the gas.

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What did you learn about your topic that surprised you the most?

As I keep on searching about oil crisis I found some interesting history about oil crisis which I think was informative for me and I loved to see the pictures that were in and how it got evolve.

If you could pass on your knowledge to a family member or friend, what do you think is the most important thing to pass on?

My Dad use car for small things even if he have to go short distance but after he show my pedlet and i gave him information how oil crisis happened So now he take a walk to short distance and make sure oil is not waste

Provide a real-life example of how this topic is relevant or interesting for you.

I was astonished by hearing the price hiked in transportation of oil to refineries in one of the video. As i my nationality is India and we don't have any of the crisis like this and transportation is more cheaper so i think that this was interesting and surprising from me to here.