Canada’s unconventional oil: a bounty needing new outlets

Hemmed in by insufficient export pipeline capacity, rising output from Alberta’s vast oil sands also faces a saturated US market

The coming year for Canada’s oil industry will seem a lot like recent years. That means production will keep growing and producers will keep facing problems in finding a market for their oil. North American crude-oil prices are poised to shift to a more permanent structural discount to the rest of the world owing to the tight oil boom in the US and limited export opportunities. So oil sands producers will also be increasingly wary about prices. The lengthy permitting delays to the Keystone XL pipeline that would run between Alberta and Texas have spurred investors and politicians to take a more active approach to infrastructure development and market access, but probably too late to avoid so