Stop moving to shut down Saskatchewan coal – it could be the salvation of our oil industry
What if there was a way to keep coal mining jobs in Saskatchewan, continue to produce low-cost electrical power, and extend the production of a substantial portion of Saskatchewan’s oilfields not by decades, but by generations? And in doing so, we could still dramatically reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and maybe save some money by reducing our nuclear rollout?
All of this is now possible, and it has everything to do with keeping our coal miners digging and our coal-fired power plants going, maybe even renewing them.
There was a potentially major development for Saskatchewan’s energy sector buried in Whitecap Resources Inc.’s year-end financial report released on Feb. 21. Whitecap said about using CO2 for enhanced oil recovery, “We have also recently started CO2 injection at a pilot CO2 flood into the Frobisher formation underlying the Weyburn Midale unit. We drilled two (2.0 net) producer wells and three (3.0 net) injection wells in 2023 and initiated CO2 injection in late 2023. Early results are encouraging with a notable production response coming through approximately one month after injection, increasing oil rates on the two producer wells from approximately 40 bpd to over 200 bpd, per well. Further technical analysis to determine commerciality and large-scale development is ongoing, and we will provide updates as next steps are determined.”
While the Bakken formation got all the headlines starting around 2007, the reality is in southeast Saskatchewan, very few Bakken wells are drilled these days. Most of the activity has been Frobisher wells, especially around Steelman, where it has been targeted for decades. So if the Frobisher responds well to tertiary recovery through carbon dioxide floods, it opens up a lot of possibilities for extending the life of some of Saskatchewan’s most prolific oilfields, taking recovery rates from the mid-20 per cent range to over 50 per cent.
Whitecap’s initial results were not a five per cent improvement, or 50 per cent, but five times higher. That’s something everyone, including the provincial government, should take notice of. Imagine if you could increase crop production from 60 bushels to the acre to 300 bushels? Or quintuple potash or uranium production from certain mines? You’d be an idiot to not at least take a hard look at it.
I’m not suggesting it will remain anywhere close to that level, but the fact the CO2 flood in the Weyburn Unit, in the Vuggy and Marly units of the Midale formation, has already dramatically increased recovery rates and lengthened the lifespan of a field that otherwise would have long gone dry is significant. If the same process can be expanded to the much more prolific Frobisher formation, that’s a very big deal.
Even if it was a 25 per cent improvement – that’s well worth investigating.
Frobisher is a big deal
How prolific is the Frobisher?
Most of the drilling activity in southeast Saskatchewan follows a certain pattern. The majority is along the Frobisher subcrop – the edge of the formation where it pinches out, forming a structural trap. Of the 16 rigs working in Saskatchewan on March 3, it’s a good bet 10, and possibly more, were drilling Frobisher wells. The daily well report for March 3 published by the Ministry of Energy and Resources shows out of 19 wells listed that day in Estevan area of responsibility, all 19, across five oil producers, were either targeting the Frobisher. It may be a fluke all that day showed the Frobisher, but it definitely shows its significance.
So if Whitecap, which has been growing to be one of Saskatchewan’s largest oil producers, has found a way to substantially increase production from this formation, shouldn’t we take a hard look at how we can take advantage of it?
Stop the process of winding down coal
There’s one thing we should do right now – stop this idea of shutting down our coal-fired power plants near Estevan. You hardly hear SaskPower mention coal-fired power anymore. I keep hearing how those plants are getting enough maintenance to just get them to the planned phase out of 2030, but not likely a day beyond that. The way things are going, they’ll likely limp to the finish line, but not an inch past that. Similar things are said to me about the mines and their iron.
I’m suggesting we should strongly reconsider that. Pour some money into keeping both the power plants and the mines viable should we choose to extend their lives beyond 2030.
The Government of Saskatchewan and SaskPower should have some real serious discussions with Whitecap, and possibly other oil companies like CNRL, about the possibility of dramatically increasing carbon capture and producing as much CO2 as we can. That means putting carbon capture on Shand Power Station. But it could also mean either refurbishing Boundary Dam Unit 6 or, shockingly, building Shand Unit 2, and maybe even Unit 3, with High Efficiency Low Emissions (HELE) technology, designed from the ground up with carbon capture running from Day 1.
One might say that’s going to cost billions, and you’d be right. But I dare say doing so will cost less than just one 300 megawatt small modular reactor, whose price is not yet known, but previous SaskPower Minister Don Morgan said could run between $3 and $5 billion.
It’s going to take a long time to squeeze the first megawatt out of that first reactor. If everything goes to plan (and it never, ever goes to plan with nuclear), we might see the first SMR megawatt around 2034-35. Putting CCS on our existing coal fleet, and maybe, dare I say, expanding it, with HELE and CCS, could help bridge the gap in the interim until we get several SMRs up and running, and have become proficient in their operation. That’s baseload power that won’t go to zero like wind does every so often, and solar does every night.
Doing so would keep the Estevan economy rolling, not just from coal mining and power generation, but also oil production.
I’ve been writing about the Saskatchewan oil industry for almost 16 years now, and I am increasingly alarmed by the fact I haven’t seen the “next big thing,” in southern Saskatchewan. Drilling numbers keep on their slow decline. Companies like Crescent Point have largely lost interest and are pouring their capital expenditure money into exciting Alberta plays. That may be great for Alberta, but Saskatchewan needs to do something to keep things going here. That we’ve kept oil production relatively flat for the last 23 years is a small miracle. But if we don’t get a lot more new investment, it won’t stay that way.
The Sask Party provincial government a few years ago set a bold goal of increasing oil production from the current 454,000 barrels per day to 600,000 barrels by 2030. I asked Premier Moe about that in my year end interview with him last December. He said he thought it was a modest goal.
But as I pointed out to him, and Energy and Resources Minister Jim Reiter, I’m not seeing evidence of the province moving to make that happen.
This is something the Government of Saskatchewan, through its Crown corporation SaskPower, can do. If we tell the feds to stick it when it comes to shutting down coal by 2030, if we put carbon capture on existing units and even build new coal units with carbon capture, then supply that CO2 to companies like Whitecap, and maybe others like Canadian Natural Resources Limited, we could extend the life of our most prolific play in southeast Saskatchewan. We might even increase its production while we’re at it. All the while, we’d be ensuring baseload power production.
This plan’s impact would be measured in generations, not an election cycle, or a corporate quarter.
And it might also save us some money by reducing our nuclear expenditure.
But action has to be taken now. Because if we let those power plants and mines slide past the point of no return, an opportunity may be lost that we will be kicking ourselves for later.
We can’t let that happen.
Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of PipelineOnline.ca, and occasional contributor to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He can be reached at [email protected].
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Compared to last December, Canadians are paying far more attention.
Canada’s energy conversation has changed in a year, not by becoming gentler, but by becoming real. In late 2024, pipelines were still treated as symbols, and most people tuned out. By December 2025, Canadians are arguing about tolls, tariffs, tanker law, carbon pricing, and Indigenous equity in the same breath, because those details now ultimately decide what gets built and what stays in the binder. Prime Minister Mark Carney has gone from a green bureaucrat to an ostensible backer of another pipeline from Alberta to the West Coast.
From hypothetical to live instrument
The pivot began when the Trans Mountain expansion started operating in May 2024, tripling capacity from Alberta to the B.C. coast. The project’s C$34 billion price tag, and the question of who absorbs the overrun, forced a more adult debate than the old slogans ever allowed. With more barrels moving and new Asian cargoes becoming routine, the line stopped being hypothetical and became a live economic instrument, complete with uncomfortable arithmetic about costs, revenues, and taxpayer exposure.
The American election cycle then poured gasoline on the discussion. Talk in Washington about resurrecting Keystone XL, alongside President-elect Donald Trump’s threats of 25 percent tariffs, reminded Canadians how quickly market access can be turned into leverage.
In that context, Trans Mountain is being discussed not just as infrastructure, but as an emergency outlet if U.S. refiners start pricing in new levies.
The world keeps building
Against that backdrop, the world kept building. Global pipeline planning has not paused for Canadian anxieties, with more than 233,000 kilometres of large diameter oil and gas lines announced or advancing for 2024 to 2030. The claim that blocking Canadian projects keeps fossil fuels in the ground sounds thinner when other jurisdictions are plainly racing ahead.
The biggest shift, though, is domestic. Ottawa and Alberta signed a memorandum of understanding in late November 2025 that sketches conditions for a potential new oil pipeline to the West Coast, alongside a strengthened industrial carbon price and a Pathways Alliance carbon capture requirement. One Financial Post column argued the northwest coast fight may be a diversion, because cheaper capacity additions are on the table. Another argued the MOU is effectively a set of investment killers, because tanker ban changes, Indigenous co ownership, B.C. engagement, and CCUS preconditions create multiple points of failure.
This is where Margareta Dovgal deserves credit. Writing about the Commons vote where Conservatives tabled a motion echoing the Liberals’ own MOU language, she captured the new mood. Canadians are no longer impressed by politicians who talk like builders and vote like blockers. Symbolic yeses and procedural noes are now obvious, and voters are keeping score.
Skills for a new era
The same sharper attention is landing on carbon capture, once a technocratic sidebar. Under the MOU, a new bitumen corridor is tied to Pathways Alliance scale carbon management, and that linkage is already shaping labour planning. A Calgary based training initiative backed by federal funding aims to prepare more than 1,000 workers for carbon capture and storage roles, a sign that contested policy is producing concrete demand for skills.
British Columbia is no longer watching from the bleachers. It flared again at Carney’s December 18 virtual meeting, after Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault resigned from cabinet over it. Premier David Eby has attacked the Alberta Ottawa agreement as unacceptable, and Prime Minister Mark Carney has been forced into talks with premiers amid trade uncertainty. Polling suggests the public mood is shifting, too, with a slim majority of Canadians, and of British Columbians, saying they would support a new Alberta to West Coast pipeline even if the B.C. government opposed it, and similar support for lifting the tanker ban.
None of this guarantees a new line, or even an expanded one. But compared with last year’s tired trench warfare, the argument now has stakes, participants, and facts. Canadians have woken up to the reality that energy policy is not a culture war accessory. It is industrial policy, trade policy, and national unity policy, all at once.
A new Ontario-wide survey conducted by Nanos Research on behalf of Canada Action finds strong public consensus that Canadian oil and gas revenues are critical to jobs, economic growth, and trade – and that Canada should lean into its energy advantage at home and abroad.
“Our polling feedback shows that a majority of Ontarians recognize the vital, irreplaceable role oil and gas has to play in our national economy. Canadians are telling us they want to see more support for the oil and gas sector, which is foundational to our standard of living and economy at large,” said Canada Action spokesperson, Cody Battershill.
The online survey of 1,000 Ontarians shows that more than four in five (84 per cent) respondents believe oil and gas revenues are important for creating jobs for Canadians and building a stronger economy. Additionally, four-in-five (80 per cent) support Canada developing a strategy to become a preferred oil supplier to countries, while Ontarians are more than eight times as likely to support as to oppose Canada supplying oil and gas, provided it remains a major source of energy worldwide.
“Building new trade infrastructure, including pipelines to the coasts that would get our oil and gas resources to international markets, can help Canadians diversify our trading partners, maximize the value of our resources, and secure a strong and prosperous future for our families,” Battershill said.
Also, nearly four-in-five (79 per cent) of Ontarians say oil and gas revenues are important for keeping energy costs manageable for Canadians.
“Our poll is just one of many in Canada since the start of 2025 that show a majority of Canadians are supportive of oil and gas development. It’s time we get moving forward on these projects without delay and learn from the lessons of our past, where we saw multiple pipelines cancelled to the detriment of Canada’s long-term economic success.”
Additional findings include:
Four-in-five (80 per cent) of Ontarians support Canada supplying oil and gas, provided it remains a major source of energy worldwide.
Four-in five (80 per cent) of Ontarians believe oil and gas revenues are important when it comes to building stronger trading partnerships.
Nearly four-in-five (79 per cent) of Ontarians say oil and gas revenues are important for keeping energy costs manageable for Canadians.
Nearly four-in-five (78 per cent) of Ontarians support Canada stepping up to provide our key NATO allies with secure energy sources.
Nearly four-in-five (78 per cent) of Ontarians support Canada increasing oil and gas exports around the world, about six and a half times more likely than to oppose.
Nearly four-in-five (77 per cent) of Ontarians support Canada providing Asia and Europe with oil and gas so that they are less reliant on authoritarian suppliers.
Nearly three-in-four (74 per cent) of Ontarians support Canada increasing oil and gas exports around the world, five times more likely than to oppose.
Nearly three-in-four (74 per cent) of Ontarians say oil and gas revenues are important to reducing taxes for Canadians.
More than seven-in-ten (71 per cent) of Ontarians support building new energy infrastructure projects without reducing environmental protections and safety.
More than six-in-ten (63 per cent) of Canadians say they are important for paying for social programs, including health care, education, and other public services.
Respondents were nine times more likely to say the government approval process for energy infrastructure projects is too slow (46 per cent) rather than too fast (5 per cent).
About the survey
The survey was conducted by Nanos Research for Canada Action using a representative non-probability online panel of 1,000 Ontarians aged 18 and older between December 10 and 12, 2025.
While a margin of error cannot be calculated for non-probability samples, a probability sample of 1,000 respondents would have a margin of error of ±3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
