(Montreal) The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) expects a 22% increase in oil and gas investment in 2022 compared to the previous year.
Posted at 6:06 p.m.
“We are seeing an increase of around 22% compared to 2021, which represents investments by the sector in the order of 32.8 billion Canadian dollars (23.2 billion euros),” said Thursday at the AFP Tim McMillan, President of CAPP, the voice of Canada’s energy industry.
Canada is the world’s fourth largest oil producer and the economy of some provinces, particularly Alberta, is largely based on fossil fuels.
According to the Association, the expected increase in investment is attributable to an increase in global demand for oil which, according to Tim McMillan, “is returning to record levels and is expected to grow quite dramatically in the coming years”.
Since 2014, Canada’s oil and gas sector has been sluggish due to falling prices that have hit Alberta, the western province that produces the vast majority of Canada’s oil, hard.
“We were at over $81 billion in capital investment (in 2014), and it went down almost every year after that until the 2021 rebound,” explained Tim McMillan.
The increase in investment expected in 2022 will be seen as much in the conventional oil sectors as in the oil sands, according to the CAPP.
Besides Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan should benefit from this increase in investment. Production off Newfoundland in the Atlantic is expected to stagnate.
Justin Trudeau, often criticized for his environmental record, last October appointed an environmental activist to the Ministry of the Environment.
According to experts, the current global warming is attributable to human activities and in particular to fossil fuels (gas, oil, coal). It has the consequence of amplifying extreme climatic phenomena.