Letter from Canada: Alberta waits for a boom that may not come
The Edmonton administration assumes that there will be another oil bull cycle. It may be wrong
The Alberta government has been running large budget deficits since the middle of the last decade, with both the leftist New Democratic Party and now the rightist United Conservative Party waiting for the next oil price boom to bail out the province. Instead, Alberta got another—albeit brief—oil price war earlier this year that was followed by the coronavirus-induced global economic depression. These events have caused Alberta’s projected deficit for the fiscal year 2020-21 to skyrocket, leaving Premier Jason Kenney with a simple choice: get the province’s fiscal house in order through a combination of spending cuts and tax hikes once the worst of Covid’s economic destruction has passed, or
Also in this section
24 April 2024
But even planned exploration activity is unlikely to reverse declining output from mature fields
23 April 2024
Cheaper Russian barrels and lower overall crude prices have helped cut key oil consumer’s import bills in election year
22 April 2024
Pursuing three different goals as part of the same package may mean achieving none of them
22 April 2024
Beijing’s renewed targeting of NOC management could threaten investment