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Energy

Is Canada the next nuclear superpower?

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7 minute read

From Resource Works 

The rise of AI and other technologies have pushed energy demand through the roof, and Canada can help power that with nuclear. 

Good to see Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pushing nuclear power as a key contributor to meeting the world’s soaring demand for electricity.

“The energy consumption necessary around AI (artificial intelligence) nobody has properly understood yet,” he said. “We have stepped up big time on nuclear.”

He cited Canada’s uranium reserves and progress in building both full-scale CANDU reactors and small modular reactors (SMRs). He said other countries need to “skate where the puck is going” on cleaner energy sources.

“We know that if we are going to meet our net-zero targets around the world, and certainly in this region, nuclear is going to be really part of the mix.”

He stopped short of saying Canada would build more major nuclear reactors for domestic use but spoke about the development of SMRs. Ottawa has previously stated it wants to become “a global leader in SMR deployment.”

Meanwhile, International Trade Minister Mary Ng said Canada is launching a gateway for nuclear development in the Asia-Pacific region. She said growing Pacific Rim economies will face increasing demand for electricity, not just to curb emissions.

“All this followed CANDU licence-holder AtkinsRéalis announcing a “multi-billion-dollar” sale of two CANDU reactors to Romania, the first to be built since 2007. The federal government contributed $3 billion, the company said.

And in one of our Resource Works Power Struggle podcasts, energy journalist Robert Bryce said: “We’re seeing the revitalization of the nuclear sector… There are a lot of promising signs.”

Also from Bryce: “Forty-seven per cent of the people on the planet today live in electricity poverty. There are over three billion people who live in the unplugged world; 3.7 billion who live in places where electricity consumption is less than what’s consumed by an average kitchen refrigerator.”

Policy Options magazine notes how Canada and 21 other countries signed a 2023 pledge to triple nuclear energy capacity by 2050, and says: “The reality would appear to be clear: there is no feasible net-zero future without the deployment of new nuclear power.”

For Canada, it adds: “We have an opportunity to expand our global status, but this requires overcoming years of policy inaction while other nations have modernized their nuclear strategies. To triple our nuclear capacity by 2050, we need clear priorities and unwavering political commitment.”

Earlier this year, François-Philippe Champagne, federal minister of innovation, science and industry, said nuclear power needs to grow for the world’s renewable-energy economy.

“Nuclear, definitely. For me, we have to look at hydro, we have to look at nuclear, we have to look at small modular reactors, we have to look at wind, we have to look at solar.”

Jonathan Wilkinson, energy and natural resources minister, promised to expedite the approval process for new Canadian nuclear projects.

Canada now gets about 15% of its electricity from nuclear generation, mostly from reactors in Ontario.

But the last nuclear reactor to come into service in Canada was at the Darlington station, east of Toronto, back in 1993. No new nuclear project has been approved since then, but multi-million-dollar upgrades are underway at existing Ontario plants.

Heather Exner-Pirot of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and Jesse McCormick of the First Nations Major Projects Coalition see SMRs and micro-reactors as a plus for rural and remote areas of Canada that now rely on diesel to generate power. Some First Nations are also interested.

However, the two commentators point out that nuclear developers will need Indigenous support and will have to “provide meaningful economic benefits and consider Indigenous perspectives in project design.”

Now, the Wabigoon Lake nation in Ontario has stepped up as a potential host to a deep underground facility for storing nuclear waste.

As Canada looks to SMRs to meet electricity demand, our country also hopes to sell more uranium to other nations—perhaps with a little help from Russia.

In October, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed restrictions on Russian uranium exports in retaliation for Western sanctions on Russian oil, gas, and LNG.

That boosted hopes for increased exports of Canadian uranium.

Canada, once the world’s largest uranium producer, is now the world’s second-largest, behind Kazakhstan, and accounts for roughly 13% of global output.

Putin’s threat gave more momentum to the plans underway by NexGen Energy for its $4-billion Rook 1 uranium mine in Saskatchewan.

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has completed its final technical review of the project. Next comes a commission hearing, followed by a final decision on approval.

NexGen is working on detailed engineering plans in preparation for full construction, pending federal approval.

NexGen could push Canada to become the world’s largest uranium producer over the next decade. Other companies are rushing to Saskatchewan to start exploration projects in the Athabasca region, while existing players are reopening dormant mines.

All this follows the commitment by nearly two dozen countries in 2023 to triple their nuclear-energy output by 2050.

And so Britain’s BBC News topped a recent roundup on nuclear power with this headline: “Why Canada could become the next nuclear energy ‘superpower’.”

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Alberta

The beauty of economic corridors: Inside Alberta’s work to link products with new markets

Published on

From the Canadian Energy Centre

Q&A with Devin Dreeshen, Minister of Transport and Economic Corridors

Devin Dreeshen, Alberta’s Minister of Transportation
and Economic Corridors.

CEC: How have recent developments impacted Alberta’s ability to expand trade routes and access new markets for energy and natural resources?

Dreeshen: With the U.S. trade dispute going on right now, it’s great to see that other provinces and the federal government are taking an interest in our east, west and northern trade routes, something that we in Alberta have been advocating for a long time.

We signed agreements with Saskatchewan and Manitoba to have an economic corridor to stretch across the prairies, as well as a recent agreement with the Northwest Territories to go north. With the leadership of Premier Danielle Smith, she’s been working on a BC, prairie and three northern territories economic corridor agreement with pretty much the entire western and northern block of Canada.

There has been a tremendous amount of work trying to get Alberta products to market and to make sure we can build big projects in Canada again.

CEC: Which infrastructure projects, whether pipeline, rail or port expansions, do you see as the most viable for improving Alberta’s global market access?

Dreeshen: We look at everything. Obviously, pipelines are the safest way to transport oil and gas, but also rail is part of the mix of getting over four million barrels per day to markets around the world.

The beauty of economic corridors is that it’s a swath of land that can have any type of utility in it, whether it be a roadway, railway, pipeline or a utility line. When you have all the environmental permits that are approved in a timely manner, and you have that designated swath of land, it politically de-risks any type of project.

CEC: A key focus of your ministry has been expanding trade corridors, including an agreement with Saskatchewan and Manitoba to explore access to Hudson’s Bay. Is there any interest from industry in developing this corridor further?

Dreeshen: There’s been lots of talk [about] Hudson Bay, a trade corridor with rail and port access. We’ve seen some improvements to go to Churchill, but also an interest in the Nelson River.

We’re starting to see more confidence in the private sector and industry wanting to build these projects. It’s great that governments can get together and work on a common goal to build things here in Canada.

CEC: What is your vision for Alberta’s future as a leader in global trade, and how do economic corridors fit into that strategy?

Dreeshen: Premier Smith has talked about C-69 being repealed by the federal government [and] the reversal of the West Coast tanker ban, which targets Alberta energy going west out of the Pacific.

There’s a lot of work that needs to be done on the federal side. Alberta has been doing a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to economic corridors.

We’ve asked the federal government if they could develop an economic corridor agency. We want to make sure that the federal government can come to the table, work with provinces [and] work with First Nations across this country to make sure that we can see these projects being built again here in Canada.

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Energy

Why are Western Canadian oil prices so strong?

Published on

Macdonald-Laurier Institute By Rory Johnston for Inside Policy

While Canadian crude markets are as optimistic as they’ve been in months regarding US tariffs, the industry is still far from safe.

Western Canadian heavy crude oil prices are remarkably strong at the moment, providing a welcome uplift to the Canadian economy at a time of acute macroeconomic uncertainty. The price of Western Canadian Select (WCS) crude recently traded at less than $10/bbl (barrel) under US Benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI): a remarkably narrow differential (i.e., “discount”) for the Canadian barrel, which more commonly sits around $13/bbl but has at moments of crisis blown out to as much as $50/bbl.

Stronger prices mean greater profits for Canadian oil producers and, in turn, both higher royalty and income tax revenues for Canadian governments as well as more secure employment for the tens of thousands of Canadians employed across the industry. For example, a $1/bbl move in the WCS-WTI differential drives an estimated $740 million swing in Alberta government budget revenues.

Why are Canadian oil prices so strong today? It’s due to the perfect storm of three distinct yet beneficial conditions:

  • Newly sufficient pipeline capacity following last summer’s start-up of the Trans Mountain Expansion pipeline, which eliminated – albeit temporarily – the effect of egress constraint-driven discounting of Western Canadian crude;
  • Globally, the bolstered value of heavy crudes relative to lighter grades – driven by production cuts, shipping activity, sanctions, and other market forces – has benefited the fundamental backdrop against which Canadian heavy crude is priced; and
  • The near elimination of tariff-related discounting as threat of US tariffs has diminished, after weighing on the WCS differential to the tune of $4–$5/bbl between late-January through early March.

We break down each of these factors below.

A quick primer: differentials, decomposed

Before we dive in, let’s quickly review how Canadian crude pricing works. WCS crude is Canada’s primary export grade and is virtually always priced at a discount to WTI, the US benchmark for oil prices, for two structural reasons outlined below. More accurately referred to as the differential (in theory, the price difference could go both ways), this price difference is a fact of life for Canadian crude producers and sits between $11–$15/bbl in “normal” times. Over the past decade, WCS has only sported a sub-$10/bbl differential less than 10 per cent of the time and most such instances reflected unique market conditions, like the Alberta government’s late-2018 production curtailment and the depths of COVID in early 2020.

The structurally lower value of WCS relative to WTI is driven by two main structural factors: quality and geography.

First and very simply, WCS is extremely heavy oil – diluted bitumen, to be specific – in contrast to WTI, which is a light crude oil blend. Furthermore, WCS has a high sulphur content (“sour,” in industry parlance) compared to the virtually sulphur-free WTI (“sweet”). WCS crude requires specialized equipment to be effectively processed into larger shares of higher-value transportation fuels like diesel as well as the remove the sulphur, which is environmentally damaging (see: acid rain)l; so, WCS is “discounted” to reflect the cost of that additional refining effort. Quality-related discounting typically amounts to $5-$8/bbl and can be seen in its pure form in the price of a barrel of WCS is Houston, Texas, where it enjoys easy market access.

Second, Western Canadian oil reserves are landlocked and an immense distance from most major refining centers. Unlike most global oil producers that get their crude to market via tanker, virtually all Canadian crude gets to end markets via pipeline. So, this higher cost of transportation away from where the crude is produced (aka “egress”) represents the second “discount” borne by the relative price of Canadian crude, required to keep it competitive with alternative feedstocks. Transportation-related discounting typically amounts to $7-$10/bbl and can be seen in the difference between the price of a barrel of WCS in the main hub of Hardisty, Alberta and the same barrel in Houston, Texas.

Moreover, transportation-related discounting is worse when pipeline capacity is insufficient, which has so frequently been the case over the past decade and a half. When there isn’t enough pipeline space to go around, barrels are forced to use more expensive alternatives like rail and that adds at least another $5/bbl to the required industry-wide pricing discounting – because prices are always set at the margin, or in other words by the weakest barrel. In especially acute egress scarcity, the geographic-driven portion of the differential can blow out, as we saw in late-2018 when the differential rose to more than $50/bbl before the Alberta government forcibly curtailed provincial production to reduce that overhang.

Additionally, the election of US President Donald Trump – and, specifically, the threat of US tariffs on Canadian exports – has introduced a third factor in the differential calculation. Over the past few months, shifts in the WCS differential have also been reflecting the market’s combined handicapping of (i) the probability of tariffs hitting Canadian crude and (ii) the rough share of the tariff burden borne by Canadian exporters.

All three of these factors – global quality, egress availability, and market anticipation of tariff US risk – have shifted decisively and strongly in favour of WCS over the recent weeks and months.

More pipelines, fewer problems

The first reason that Canadian oil prices are remarkably strong at the moment is sufficient pipeline capacity. The perennial bugbear of Western Canadian oil producers, pipeline capacity is, quite unusually, sufficient thanks to last summer’s start-up of the Trans Mountain Expansion Project (TMX). TMX is the largest single addition to Western Canadian egress capacity in more than a decade and, since TMX entered service last summer, the transportation-related differential has remained low and stable, eliminating the largest and most common drag on Canadian crude pricing.

Without TMX, the Western Canadian oil industry would be suffering an all too familiar and increasingly acute egress crisis. Acute egress shortages would have dwarfed the threat of US tariffs and pushing differentials, in stark contrast to today, far wider – the spectre of provincial production curtailment would not have been out of the question. And it is also important to note that this pipeline sufficiency is inherently temporary. Current pipeline sufficiency will likely only last another year or two at most and then Western Canadian egress will require additional expansions to avoid the resurrecting of egress-scarcity-driven differential blowouts.

Heavy is the crude that wears the crown

The second reason that Canadian oil prices are remarkably strong now is the unusually strong global market for heavy crude. Heavy crude grades (e.g., Iraqi Basra Heavy and Mexican Maya), medium crude grades (e.g., Dubai and Mars), and high sulphur fuel oil (used in global shipping) have all seen their value rise relative to Brent and WTI benchmarks, which both reflect lighter, sweet grades of crude.

For WCS, the differential has narrowed from more than $10/bbl at the end of 2023 to around $2.8/bbl under WTI. The bolstered value of heavy crudes relative to lighter grades is being driven by a host of factors including ongoing OPEC+ production cuts (much of which came in the form of heavier crude grades), strong shipping activity, and tighter sanctions against traditional suppliers of heavy shipping fuel like Russia and more recently Venezuela.

What tariff threat?

Finally, the most acute and volatile reason that Canadian oil prices are remarkably strong at the moment is the near elimination of US tariff-related discounting. The US imports more than half of its total foreign oil purchases from Canada and Canadian crude has long enjoyed tariff-free access to the US market. Tariff-related pricing pressure began in earnest in late-2024 as Canadian crude markets tried to build in an ever-evolving handicapping of that tariff risk following Trump’s initial tariff threats. Tariff-related discounting grew stronger from mid-January through February with the excess geographic WCS differential rising to nearly $5/bbl (see chart above and read “Canadian Crude Drops Tariff Discount” for more on the logic of this measure).

After a months-long rollercoaster of “will he/won’t he” uncertainty around the imposition of US tariffs on Canadian crude imports, USMCA-compliant exemptions and broader US official chatter regarding potential outright Canadian crude exemptions have allowed markets to reduce the (roughly) implied probability to effectively zero. This factor alone narrowed the headline WCS differential in Hardisty, Aberta, by $3–$4/bbl over the past month.

Conclusion

Canadian oil prices are so strong today because just about everything that can be going right is going right. WCS differentials are benefitting from a perfect storm of (i) unusually sufficient pipeline capacity, (ii) exceptionally strong global heavy crude markets, and (iii) a near elimination of US tariff-related discounting. Together, these factors are lifting the relative value of Canadian crude oil exports, and this is a boon for Canadian oil industry profits, provincial royalty income, income tax receipts, and employment in the sector.

Looking ahead, WCS differentials may narrow by another dollar or two as this beneficial momentum persists. However, the balance of risk is now tilted towards a reversal (i.e., widening) of differentials over the coming year as OPEC+ begins to ease production cuts and Western Canadian production continues to grow without the hope of any new near-term pipeline additions. While Canadian crude markets are as optimistic as they’ve been in months regarding US tariffs, the industry is still far from safe – given the volatility of policy coming out of the White House, there is still a chance that this near-erasure of tariff risk from Canadian crude pricing may have come too far, too fast.

If and as tariff concerns fall away, egress sufficiency (i.e., pipeline capacity) will resume its place as king of the differential determinants. At the current rates of Western Canadian production growth, Canada is set to again overrun egress capacity – after the relief provided by the start-up of TMX – over the next year or two at most. While Canada may have dodged a near-term bullet to crude exports destined for the US, this situation serves to only emphasize the continued challenges associated with current pipeline infrastructure. It would be prudent for Canadian politicians to begin shifting their current concerns towards the structural, and entirely predictable, threat of renewed egress insufficiently coming down the pipe.


About the author

Rory Johnston is a leading voice on oil market analysis, advising institutional investors, global policy makers, and corporate decision makers. His views are regularly quoted in major international media. Prior to founding Commodity Context, Johnston led commodity economics research at Scotiabank where he set the bank’s energy and metals price forecasts, advised the bank’s executives and clients, and sat on the bank’s senior credit committee for commodity-exposed sectors.

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