The controversy of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion projects has so far focused more on the implications of the project’s delay for Albertan crude oil producers. Yet, the developments around the pipeline also have reverberations for the U.S. refining industry and more specifically that part of it, which operates in the Pacific Northwest, a region without the luxury of many and different sources of crude to turn into fuel and other products for the local industries and households. Canadian crude and crude from Alaska have been the traditional feedstock for Pacific Northwest refineries. Now that production is growing and so are refining rates, local operators are buying oil from Russia, which, in the political context between the U.S. and Canada, and Russia, makes for an interesting ironic twist. Yet these are the realities of life, as Stewart Muir, executive director of Canadian think tank Resource Works, writes in a […]