One Alberta economist says most oil sands companies will look past the disappointing first quarter.
ATB’s Todd Hirsch says he expects to see companies go ahead with some of their planned projects.
He says pipelines will be key going forward.
“It’s not critical that every single one of them must proceed, and in fact, I don’t think they all will.”
Of all the ones that have been proposed, his favorite is going east to Saint John.
“That’s the path of least resistance, there is the least opposition that direction,” he says, ” the Irving refinery there is under utilized and right now it refines no Canadian oil, it’s importing all of its oil.”
He thinks it would be great if Canada’s oil were going to Canada’s refineries that are “under utilized.”
But he says the important part is getting enough capacity built to ship the bitumen.
“The market has a great way of finding a way to get the product to where the buyers are.”
Hirsch thinks the focus going forward will be on potential pipelines going west, south, and east, but also doesn’t rule out the idea of shipping by rail.
May 3rd, 2013
