ON OILSANDS, ALBERTA IS STILL TRYING TO FIX YESTERDAY’S PROBLEMS

Payne Institute Senior Research Associate Sara Hastings-Simon opinion piece regarding the decision by French energy giant Total highlights need to focus on today’s real challenges, and their reasons for the recently announced writedown of Canadian oilsands assets and the decision to halt all future investments in new capacity.  While the decision was framed within Total’s broader carbon neutrality goal, the fundamental challenge cited was not the carbon footprint of production from the oilsands, but rather that in a world that is responding to the threat of climate change, oil production will decline, leaving the expansion of higher cost, larger, and longer lifetime Alberta resources uncompetitive. August 5, 2020.