As Canada continues to struggle with a dire deficit in pipeline capacity, the government is looking for new solutions. With oil prices deep in decline, the Alberta provincial government has already imposed production cuts, granted subsidies to the petrochemical sector, and even looked into overland transportation of crude with pipelines already running at maximum capacity. Now, Alberta is proposing another fix: a partial upgrading technology approach to thinning the oil sands’ heavy crude output in order to squeeze more of the substance through the nation’s congested pipelines. So far, the government’s production cuts have so far been very successful. Canadian crude prices have been able to recover much of their losses thanks to the new policy, from trading at a whopping $50 per barrel less than United States benchmark oil West Texas Intermediate (WTI) in October to a difference of just under $13 per barrel in January. That being […]