The world wants our oil. Here’s a quick way to get it to them - National Post

NP Comment The world wants our oil. Here’s a quick way to get it to them Join the conversation Share Close Share this article

Copy URL Facebook Linked In X (Twitter) Loading account options Sign In Manage Account Close account menu Sign Out An oil pump jack pumps oil in a field near Calgary, Alberta. (Todd Korol / REUTERS) By Donna Kennedy-Glans November 1, 2026 at 9:37 a.m. With Alberta’s referendum behind us, attention has turned to the Pacific Link pipeline. Listed as a project of national interest on October 1, the line would run roughly 1,250 kilometres from Bruderheim, Alta., to a terminal at Roberts Bank near Delta, B.C., carrying one million barrels a day. Shovels could turn as early as September 2027 but first oil is not expected until the early-to-mid 2030s.

Global oil prices have pushed above US$100 a barrel, yet Western Canadian Select is trading at a discount of over US$30 a barrel to West Texas Intermediate as of late October. Pipelines running south and west are getting full. The gap is not only a producer problem; it is lost royalties and corporate taxes for Canadians.

To move more oil to Asia while new pipe is built, Alberta-based producer Strathcona Resources has floated the idea of shipping 250,000 barrels a day by rail to Prince Rupert. It is not a substitute for a pipeline — rail costs more — but it is complementary and faster.

Adam Waterous, Strathcona’s chair, is a big fan of trains; he’s the same guy pitching the idea of reviving passenger rail service between Calgary and Banff. Crude-by-rail is not novel; Canada Energy Regulator data show it peaked when pipeline capacity was tightest, around 2020.

What is new is the destination. Loading tankers at Prince Rupert for Asian markets would require lifting, or at least creating exemptions under, the 2019 Oil Tanker Moratorium Act. That law bars vessels carrying more than 12,500 metric tonnes of crude from loading or unloading in northern B.C. waters, including the approaches to Prince Rupert and Haida Gwaii.

The ban could have been addressed this summer when then-premier David Eby and Prime Minister Mark Carney signed the Canada-B.C. Cooperative Prosperity Agreement. British Columbia acknowledged federal jurisdiction over interprovincial pipelines and agreed not to obstruct Pacific Link, in exchange for an annual royalty from the operator and an environmental liability and emergency trust fund. Port and LNG investments were also part of the package. The northern tanker ban on crude remained untouched.

Federal Conservatives have long opposed the ban, noting that double-hulled tankers operate routinely and safely at other Canadian ports. Calgary MP David McKenzie’s private member’s bill to repeal it reached second reading this week. MPs voted along party lines; only Conservatives supported sending it to committee. The bill died.

Politics, not merely engineering, still sets the outer limits.

I spoke with Jean-Jacques (JJ) Ruest, chair of the Prince Rupert Port Authority board, about the logistics. Ruest, from Montreal, joined the board in December 2024 and became chair in July. He was CN Rail’s CEO from 2018 to 2022 — and comes to this role with unique expertise in freight rail, intermodal, ports and supply chains.

He places the port clearly: Vancouver is Canada’s largest, Montreal second, Prince Rupert third. It has deep water, the shortest shipping route to Asia, and handles tens of billions in annual trade. CN located its terminus there because the site offered the deepest water available on the West Coast and could be reached along relatively flat land along the Skeena River, avoiding the steep grades of the Rockies.

The port exports grain, thermal and metallurgical coal, wood pellets, butane and propane — high-volume commodities that generate substantial GDP. Infrastructure is less developed than in Vancouver or Montreal, Ruest notes, so the core mandate is to enable trade, focus on exports, and help more infrastructure get built so more Canadian commodities leave from Prince Rupert.

He is precise about governance. “It is a public federal mandate — from the federal government, which is our owner, my single shareholder — and the federal government is very much focused on export, much more so than import.”

The port is never the proponent, he adds. Companies that want to increase trade come to the authority; its job is to facilitate. “In the case of crude, there’s a tanker ban and the port authority is not the one deciding whether the tanker ban is on, is off, or can be modified. We take our guidance or orders from our owner, and our owner is the federal government.”

I ask, given his CN experience with crude-by-rail, whether the idea would be viable if the ban were lifted.

“You need a place to load your railcars,” he replies, “and you need a place to offload … and because of the historical amount of crude by rail that’s been done in the last 10 years, there’s quite a number of places where you could load a unit train in Alberta and Saskatchewan. There’s also a large existing fleet of tank cars in North America that could move crude by rail within the current regulations.”

CN has publicly said it has latent capacity on the corridor to Prince Rupert, as it does to Vancouver. Loading points, tank cars and railroad capacity therefore exist; what’s missing is a terminal to receive the unit trains and the jetties to load ocean tankers. Those could be built by a private proponent on a brownfield or greenfield site. Some experts I’ve spoken to suggest it would take 24–30 months from a change in the tanker rules to first shipments.

At this point, Ruest reminds me, the Strathcona proposal is not a project; it’s a concept. Any project would involve local First Nations — each nation, he explains, would decide what they want to do, whether they want to support or oppose, whether they want to be participating in a benefit from the construction, or they want to become an equity owner.

“We don’t have a crude mandate,” he repeats. “We have a trade mandate …. We’re expected to try to enable whatever Canadian exporters want to do. In the case of crude, yes, there is a restriction, and that restriction is in the hands of the federal government. It’s not for us to weigh in one way or another.” If the ban is removed, the port could enable the export of crude, as it does other commodities.

There is, perhaps, a potential wildcard. British Columbia’s premier-elect, Lorne Doerkson, has already signalled support for Pacific Link and said among his first calls would be to the prime minister and Alberta’s premier to advance it. A Conservative majority in Victoria may create political space for Ottawa to consider an exemption limited to Prince Rupert, or a broader reconsideration of the ban. That could tilt the debate.

There is, of course, much still to speculate about. Whether Doerkson’s majority changes the political math enough for Carney to reopen the ban, even for a limited Prince Rupert exemption, is one question. Whether the federal government treats a privately financed rail-to-tidewater concept as worth the political cost is another.

Ultimately, though, the decision rests with the federal Cabinet. Mark Carney — a middle power leader of an oil-producing nation — has presented himself as practical and focused on growth. Whether that extends to maximizing Canadian crude exports to markets that want them — while new pipelines are still a few years away — remains an open question.

Join the Conversation Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. You will receive an email if there is a reply to your comment, an update to a thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information.

You must be logged in to join the discussion.

The B.C. Conservatives must fix this province's culture