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Canada Federal, Provincial Governments to Overhaul Regulations to Boost Oil Sands Output

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Canada's ambitions for a bigger role in the global supply of energy have been boosted by the signing of a trilateral memorandum of understanding between the federal and provincial governments and member companies of the Oil Sands Alliance, the latter said on Monday.

The MoU is a step towards a number of regulatory reforms and fiscal changes to speed up production from oil sands areas and to deliver them to markets, including via the proposed West Coast Oil Pipeline.

The document also contains commitments by the governments at each level to ensure their policy and fiscal frameworks support more oil sands production and streamline regulatory frameworks

for efficiency, the alliance's statement said.

The MOU also contains a policy and fiscal framework that supports developing the 'Pathways Carbon Capture and Storage Project', it said.

The CCS project is subject to regulatory approvals and will have capacity to transport and store about 6 million tonnes per year of CO2 by the mid-2030s from multiple oil sands facilities to a hub in the Cold Lake area where it would be stored underground permanently.

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