this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2025
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[–] SGforce 24 points 6 days ago (6 children)

With Trump's new port fees on LNG,oil, coal and container ships, along with The Saudis and OPEC+ absolutely demolishing oil prices it would be extremely stupid to waste money on developing the oilsands right now. There's no money to be made.

[–] potate 8 points 6 days ago (4 children)

I think that the scale of investment involved in oil sands development necessitates MUCH longer range planning than relatively short political cycles.

There's may be something to be said maximizing CAPEX when the commodity pricing sucks. Spending pullback from the more boom/bust centric conventional/frac operators reduces competition for trades and key manufacturers.

I think the differentiator at the moment is the lack of predictability. Normally your financial models only have to factor in modest price uncertainty. Right now the tariffs change so quickly that who knows what things will cost. I don't have a clue how you price a project in this environment. I pitty project managers.

Steel plate and pipe is easy to source domestically - especially when the US buyers aren't tying up Evraz capacity. Big inch valves would start to get tricky I think - but it's been over a decade since I was working in that space. Coatings are Dupont and 3M for buried assets - so lots of risk exposure there.

Personally, if I operated any major facilities (fractionation/refineries) I'd be looking at what turnaround/maintenance work I could be pulling forward right now. When oil's booming, you don't want to shut down your money machine to do repairs.

[–] Tlaloc_Temporal 3 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Now might be the best time to build our own refineries.

[–] potate 10 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I kinda like pet-chem if we're going to do more upgrading - and sure enough we're seeing activity in the space.

Refineries produce gasoline (for old cars), diesel (for old trucks), and oils (there's alternatives). Refineries are for antiquated tech that were trying to phase out IMO.

Upgrading light ends (methane, ethane, propane, etc) are what I'd be investing in if I was looking at fossil fuels investment. We have LOTS of gas plants sweetening and fractionating that stuff so the product streams are there and the emissions intensity of that end is WAY better than liquids.

Dow is building a huge ethane cracker to produce polyethylene. IPL has the Heartland petrochemical complex that's going to be soaking up immense amounts of propane to produce polypropylene pellets. I haven't checked what Nova is up to lately, but I can promise you they're looking to grow in the space.

I don't love polymers, but we COULD recycle it if we were smart and unlike combustion where everything ends up in the atmosphere, a landfill full of plastic is actually carbon sequestration when you think about it.

Methane (natural gas) is worth approximately nothing at the moment, but coastal LNG exports will help China et al. ween off coal while they continue to build out renewables and Europe needs LNG for similar reasons and timescales.

Source - random internet person

[–] Tlaloc_Temporal 2 points 6 days ago

I fully agree that less oil in general is a good thing, and shifting from heavy oils to lighter oils is also a good thing. But if we're going to be extracting and using something anyway, I think processing it ourselves is an improvement as well, and it will somewhat help keep the money AB & SK spend on oil in Canada and reduce our dependence on long pipelines and foreign industry.

Reducing our dependence on oil in the first place would definitely be better, but if we only take the best steps we won't get anywhere.

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