Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says a deadline for reaching two agreements connected to her landmark energy deal with Ottawa will be missed.
The November memorandum of understanding outlined a number of commitments and steps both levels of government would take to eventually see a new bitumen pipeline built connecting Alberta to B.C. tidewater.
It set an April 1 deadline for four key arrangements that would be needed before a pipeline gets the greenlight, and Smith and Prime Minister Mark Carney have announced “agreements in principle” on two of the items — methane emissions and project assessment processes.
Smith told reporters Tuesday there’s still more work to do on an agreed-upon carbon pricing system as well as another memorandum of understanding with the Oil Sands Alliance, formerly known as the Pathways Alliance.
The energy deal stipulated that Alberta’s industrial carbon price would eventually reach $130 per tonne, and Smith said how quickly that price is reached is what is still being negotiated.
“I’ve got a different number than the prime minister at the moment, but we’re hoping to land on the same number,” she said.
Smith pointed to other jurisdictions, like the United States, that currently don’t have carbon pricing systems, and said they are more attractive investment environments.
That doesn’t mean she’s pushing for Alberta to not have a carbon price, but Smith said she didn’t want to see Alberta ramp up its price to $130 per tonne too quickly.
“We don’t want to raise it so quickly in this environment that it ends up having the exact opposite impact of driving away investment when we’re trying to drive all that investment here,” she said.
“I don’t want to lock in on a certain date just yet. I’d rather the prime minister and I both announce what that date is when we agree on it.”
She also said that “quite a bit of work” has been done on the separate memorandum of understanding with the Oil Sands Alliance, but that it can’t be finished without the carbon price deal in place.
The alliance is made up of five major oil and gas companies and for years has been planning a major carbon capture and storage project as well as a pipeline to transport CO2 away from the Alberta oil sands.
Carney has said the project is a “necessary condition” of any new bitumen pipeline.
Smith said Tuesday she was hoping to have the carbon pricing deal complete in the next few days, and that the agreement with the Alliance will in turn be finished before the end of April.
“I think we all have a sense of urgency to get this landed,” the premier said, adding that she and Carney discussed the issue Monday.
Carney told reporters in Quebec on Tuesday that he felt good about the progress being made.
“It’s a complex, very important set of negotiations,” he said.
“We want to get it right [and] we want to have a framework that works.”
The MOU set a July 1 deadline for Alberta to submit a new application for the bitumen pipeline project to Ottawa’s major projects office.
