New numbers from the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) show 2025 marked a new record for the province’s oil industry, thanks in large part to increasing capacity.
Production in the province last year averaged 4.1 million barrels per day, about 4.2 per cent higher than in 2024.
Alberta had a total output of more than 1.5 billion barrels.
“People have been waiting to have market access, and when TMX started with 600,000 barrels a day of additional capacity, that made it easier for companies to turn up the screws a little bit,” Richard Masson, the former CEO of the Alberta Petroleum Marketing Commission, said. “There are so many projects that are mature and paying out now.”
And the expansion isn’t done yet.
South Bow and Enbridge have both signalled they’d like to increase capacity, and Transmountain — helped along by the provincial governments in both Alberta and British Columbia — is all but certain to do the same in the years ahead.
ATB Financial’s chief economist expects real oil and gas exports to grow at around two per cent both this year and in 2027, thanks mainly to Asian demand.
“I think it’s really important to highlight the consistency in the production increases,” Mark Parsons said. “We had a dip in 2020 because of COVID-19, and then we had a setback with curtailment in 2018 and 2019, but other than that, it’s been an upward trajectory for the industry.”
Parsons does, however, have some reservations about the future.
“We will eventually run into a situation where we won’t have sufficient pipeline capacity,” he told CTV News. “We don’t know exactly when that’s going to be, but likely [in] the late 2020s or early 2030s.”
Parsons believes even after the planned expansions, capacity will act as a constraint on output growth without a new pipeline in place.
“People are paying attention now to the Canadian oil sector as a viable investment play,” he said. “So there needs to be some looking ahead 10, 20 years.”
Unsurprisingly, Alberta’s energy minister agrees.
“We need to increase capacity and build new pipelines to avoid bottlenecks in the system which will hurt the value of our oil and trading confidence in our ability to deliver,” a statement from Brian Jean reads.
“That’s why diversifying our trading partners has never been more important, and we are encouraged that the federal government understands this need and the importance of building a new oil pipeline to Canada’s west coast.”
