{"id":34962,"date":"2026-05-06T23:21:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T23:21:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/34962\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T23:21:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T23:21:22","slug":"canadas-myopic-energy-approach-threatens-historic-opportunity-for-producers-cenovus-ceo-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/34962\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada\u2019s \u2018myopic\u2019 energy approach threatens historic opportunity for producers, Cenovus CEO says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Workers at the Cenovus Christina Lake oilsands facility southeast of Fort McMurray, Alta., April, 2024.AMBER BRACKEN\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s energy policies are too focused on climate and have made resource development and investment in the country uncompetitive with the rest of the world, says the head of Calgary-based oil sands giant Cenovus Energy Inc. CVE-T <\/a><\/p>\n

Jon McKenzie, the company\u2019s chief executive, took the unusual step of carving close to four minutes out of his prepared remarks to analysts during a Wednesday morning earnings call to bemoan the state of Canada\u2019s regulatory and investment environment. <\/p>\n

Asked about Mr. McKenzie\u2019s criticisms of federal policy at an unrelated press conference Wednesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney<\/a> said Canada\u2019s oil production is at a record high, driven largely by the oil sands. <\/p>\n

Mr. McKenzie made his comments as Ottawa and Alberta discuss options<\/a> for a pipeline to the West Coast, stemming from the energy agreement the two governments signed in November<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Part of the memorandum of understanding involves the province increasing its carbon price to $130 a tonne. But negotiations are being stymied<\/a> by disagreement over the speed at which Alberta must hike the price from its current $95 a tonne. <\/p>\n

Alberta pushing for longer roadmap on carbon pricing as part of pipeline deal<\/a><\/p>\n

Mr. McKenzie said while having an MOU is all good and well, the very notion of a carbon price drives investment away from the Canadian oil sands sector. <\/p>\n

Filling a potential new million-barrel-a-day pipeline to the West Coast will take significant production growth in the oil sands. But crucial investment to propel that growth has been hindered by federal policies and a \u201cmyopic dialogue\u201d that has been \u201cfocused on the climate agenda and climate policy,\u201d Mr. McKenzie said. <\/p>\n

As a result, no greenfield oil sands projects have been approved or built since 2013, he said. Instead, Canadian policies have \u201cceded high-paying jobs, taxes and royalties to countries like Russia, Iran, Iraq and the United States,\u201d he said, while failing to reduce the global demand for oil. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe need a set of policies that are consistent with investment. We need a set of policies that recognize that we as Canadians compete for capital, and we have to compete in a different way.\u201d <\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Mr. Carney said one of the selling points for Canadian oil is that it\u2019s from a low-risk jurisdiction and is relatively low cost, but the sector is also one of the most significant sources of national greenhouse-gas emissions. <\/p>\n

Reducing those emissions will make Canadian crude even more attractive, he said, particularly to the Asian markets that Alberta and oil companies are eyeing to increase exports. <\/p>\n

\u201cFrom direct conversations with a series of governments across Asia, that\u2019s what they\u2019re looking for in the medium term. That\u2019s why the Government of Canada is working with the Government of Alberta in order to produce a comprehensive approach through our MOU,\u201d Mr. Carney said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re making good progress on that. It\u2019s going to make the oil sands more competitive and it\u2019s going to make Canada more competitive as part of a much bigger energy transition that\u2019s happening.\u201d <\/p>\n

Suncor rides a wave of demand for made-in-Canada jet fuel<\/a><\/p>\n

Alberta views the $130-a-tonne carbon price as a massive concession it made to pave the way for a new pipeline to the West Coast. It believes that imposing it over a short time frame is unrealistic and would price Alberta oil out of the global market. <\/p>\n

The energy crisis stemming from the war in Iran has caused oil and gas prices to shoot far beyond January forecasts, boosting producers\u2019 books around the world. Cenovus reported $1.6-billion in earnings in the first three months of this year, up 68 per cent from the fourth quarter of 2025 and 82 per cent higher than the first three months of 2025. <\/p>\n

Mr. McKenzie said Cenovus views the current disruption to global energy trade as \u201cshort term in nature,\u201d and is unlikely to increase its capital spending as a result. Instead, it will focus on debt repayment. <\/p>\n

While Canada\u2019s fossil-fuel sector and the International Energy Agency have urged Mr. Carney to accelerate development<\/a> of energy infrastructure, environmental groups disagree. <\/p>\n

Companies that argue that the war presents an opportunity to expand Canada\u2019s oil and gas exports, including to new Asian markets, \u201care making a consequential miscalculation,\u201d six climate policy groups and think tanks wrote in a letter to the Prime Minister this week. <\/p>\n

The signatories \u2013 including the Pembina Institute, Clean Energy Canada and Environmental Defence \u2013 also said that implementing the $130 price in Alberta in short order is crucial to \u201cunlock a high-growth, low-carbon economy across Western Canada.\u201d <\/p>\n

A recent analysis from the Climate Institute found that industrial carbon pricing has remarkably low costs for industrial facilities and minimal impact on their competitiveness.<\/p>\n

The current carbon-price burden on a barrel of oil is \u201cpennies,\u201d said Dave Sawyer, the group\u2019s principal economist. Even when the price rises to $130 a tonne, as outlined in the the MOU, the math works out to oil companies paying around 50 cents a barrel \u2013 the equivalent of a Timbit. <\/p>\n

The notion that the oil sands would be uncompetitive in the face of a higher carbon price, then, is \u201cpatently false,\u201d he said in an interview. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not reflected in the compliance data of the Government of Alberta. It is not reflected in the government\u2019s revenue projections about [carbon price] payments. It doesn\u2019t hold up.\u201d <\/p>\n

With a report from Nicolas Van Praet<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Workers at the Cenovus Christina Lake oilsands facility southeast of Fort McMurray, Alta.,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34963,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[164,224,238,214,212,239,17,211,230,231,227,213,210,235,171,234,143,222,249,215,216,229,225,226,219,240,220,244,245,247,242,246,94,243,217,142,233,113,232,241,223,236,237,228,221,218,248],"class_list":{"0":"post-34962","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-alberta","9":"tag-arts-news","10":"tag-bc","11":"tag-breaking-news","12":"tag-breaking-news-video","13":"tag-british-columbia","14":"tag-canada","15":"tag-canada-news","16":"tag-canada-sports","17":"tag-canada-sports-news","18":"tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","19":"tag-canadian-breaking-news","20":"tag-canadian-news","21":"tag-economy","22":"tag-education","23":"tag-environment","24":"tag-federal-government","25":"tag-foreign-news","26":"tag-globe-and-mail","27":"tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","28":"tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","29":"tag-government","30":"tag-life-news","31":"tag-lifestyle","32":"tag-local-news","33":"tag-manitoba","34":"tag-national-news","35":"tag-new-brunswick","36":"tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","37":"tag-northwest-territories","38":"tag-nova-scotia","39":"tag-nunavut","40":"tag-ontario","41":"tag-pei","42":"tag-photos","43":"tag-political-news","44":"tag-political-opinion","45":"tag-politics","46":"tag-politics-news","47":"tag-quebec","48":"tag-sports-news","49":"tag-technology","50":"tag-travel","51":"tag-trudeau","52":"tag-us-news","53":"tag-world-news","54":"tag-yukon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}