Andrew Stephenson

2017-10-11 09:06:53 -0400

There’s no export market anymore. That was predicated on the pre-2014 situation, before the Atlantic was full of floating tankers that can’t find anyone willing to buy their product. Even if you could sell it for $40 at Saint John (transport costs for an out of the way port, and the lower value of bitumen vs light crude), that’s still well below profitability for Albertan producers.



Glenn Craig, It’s a bit more complex than simple municipal boundaries. Halifax is indeed huge geographically, but the rural bits of the municipality far from the urban centre aren’t doing any better than the rest of the Maritimes even as Halifax itself has experienced a decent economy lately. You need to be within 100km or so of a “critical mass” type city to have cluster type development – and a reason for the clusters to spread beyond the central city, usually due to costs that don’t exist in Halifax.



You could maybe, with some effort (though past attempts have rarely worked), push Moncton up to that critical mass, but it won’t be oil that does it. The future of oil is too cloudy to be worth it – the Canadian barrel is among the most expensive in the world and will be the first to be unsellable in a flat or declining oil market – if it isn’t already.

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