The outgoing chief executive of Canada’s Suncor Energy on Thursday urged the new Alberta government to find a way out of mandatory oil production curtailments that were imposed this year to help boost crude prices.
The CEO, Steve Williams, also put Canada’s failure to build new export pipelines that would ship more crude out of landlocked Alberta squarely at the feet of federal and provincial governments and regulators, according to Reuters.
Williams will retire next week after 17 years with Canada’s largest energy company by market capitalization, having spent seven of those years at the helm.
His departure coincides with Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party’s taking power in Alberta, with a promise to aggressively champion the province’s beleaguered energy industry.
Canada is home to the world’s third-largest crude reserves, the bulk of which are in Alberta’s oil sands, but has struggled for years to get new export pipelines built because of regulatory delays and fierce environmental opposition.
Last year Canadian oil prices hit a record discount as pipeline congestion led to a glut of crude building up in Alberta storage tanks, prompting the previous provincial government to impose temporary production cuts effective Jan. 1.
(Reuters)
