Ford wants Irving refinery to stop importing foreign oil
· Toronto Sun
At a panel in Ottawa this week, Premier Doug Ford urged Irving Oil’s refinery in New Brunswick to stop importing foreign oil.
The oil is coming, “from some people that don’t like us,” the premier said, citing concerns about Canadian sovereignty.
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Ford said at a panel of premiers at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce future business summit that more co-operation is needed to build Canada-centric major infrastructure, particularly pipelines that go east and west.
“It’s absolutely critical we build that pipeline east-west corridor,” Ford said. “We have to be just dependent on Canada. We have to get out to Irving. They’re bringing in, you know, hundreds of millions of barrels of oil and from some people that don’t like us.”
More pipelines: Ford
The premier called pipelines a “no-brainer.”
“Why can’t we get the oil from Alberta and Saskatchewan?” he asked.
“It’s just a no-brainer to get that pipeline across the country and over to the Irving refinery, or down to Sarnia in Ontario, where Imperial Oil has more capacity. And then we don’t have to be threatened by the Americans about Line 5,” Ford added, mentioning Enbridge’s Line 5, a pipeline long targeted by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for shutdown, so far to no success. That pipeline can carry more than half a million barrels of oil and natural gas a day from the Canadian West to Ontario, though it does so by going through U.S. territory, mainly Michigan.
For years, the state has raised concerns over the safety of the line, but to date, no leak has ever been reported.
Ontario study
Last year, the province announced it was pushing ahead with a multi-province study into a new pipeline that would run from Alberta and Saskatchewan to James Bay, partly to avoid the threat of American regulation. Manitoba floated a similar idea, running a line to its Port of Churchill to get western oil to the east.
Foreign oil in Canada
Despite being the world’s fourth-largest oil producer and having the world’s fourth-largest oil reserves , Canada imports around half a million barrels a day of crude oil from other countries. More than half of that amount goes to the Irving refinery in Saint John. In 2024, Canada’s biggest sources of foreign oil were the United States, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia.
But recently Irving has turned to Newfoundland for crude as the war on Iran and the Strait of Hormuz blockade has cut off supplies.
Prime Minister Mark Carney has mentioned further development of Canadian oil resources for geopolitical and sovereignty reasons, saying there are “conventional energy” opportunities in Atlantic Canada and the Far North.
““There will be opportunities in some of these cases where it will be defence-related,” Carney said, then referencing the Port of Churchill and hydro power spending in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories.
With files from the Telegraph-Journal