A November announcement is still a speech. It is not a new royalty rate
Premier Danielle Smith said Wednesday at the Oil Sands Expo in Fort McMurray that Alberta will announce a revised oil royalty regime in November. Bloomberg and the Financial Post published the remarks September 17. Smith said the framework will be structured to encourage oilsands companies to invest in new production and help fill a proposed million-barrel-a-day pipeline. She said it will look like the preferential royalty environment used in the past.
Alberta sets royalties because it owns most of the mineral rights. The Financial Post said the current rules were guaranteed not to change for a 10-year period starting in 2019. Smith said the last decade told the industry it was winding down, not ramping up, and that shifting shareholders has taken time.
She also said Alberta expects a formal endorsement from the federal Major Projects Office in October for a new oil pipeline that would largely follow the existing Trans Mountain route to a deepwater port south of Vancouver, with final regulatory approval by September of next year. Once the royalty paper is out, she said, interest in filling that pipe should rise. She added there is more work to do.
This is conference talk. It is not a Gazette regulation and it is not a posted rate card. Canadian Natural (TSX: CNQ), Cenovus (TSX: CVE), Imperial (TSX: IMO), and Suncor (TSX: SU) have not posted a royalty-driven capital add. It is not a Pathways FID. November 15 is still the Pathways binding-paper date from this week's file.