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Canadian Energy Centre

New national campaign aims to solve worker shortage in Canada’s energy sector

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Donovan Doll works on a pipe at the CMR Fabricators Ltd. in Penhold, Alberta. Canadian Energy Centre photo by Dave Chidley

From the Canadian Energy Centre

By Will Gibson

Enserva launches new portal to train workers and provide long-term employment opportunities

Canadian energy services association Enserva has launched its solution to solve a worker shortage of more than 3,000 jobs, including labourers, drivers and tradespeople.  

Having spent the better part of two decades working in the world of non-profit groups and think tanks, Enserva CEO Gurpreet Lail was taken aback after hearing about the sector’s labour struggles when she joined in 2021. 

“The perception outside the industry was much different,” says Lail. “This has been an ongoing challenge for a long time and our members decided to do something about it.” 

The result is a national campaign featuring the new Working Energy Portal, a sector-specific website with comprehensive job listings by the group’s 200-plus member companies and organizations. 

“This is an industry-wide challenge and we’ve found an industry solution,” Lail says.  

“We lost a lot of people during COVID and the downturn in energy prices and we’re now seeing employers fighting for labour regardless of the sector, be it energy or hospitality or technology,” she says.  

“In addition to these factors, our sector also has to address this ridiculous idea that Canadian energy is a dying industry. That’s simply not the case. The world is going to need our energy for a very long time, and we need talented people to help us innovate and produce it responsibly.” 

Enserva is hoping to connect those looking for jobs with companies that need positions filled and create a long-term solution to the shortage. 

But the portal is more than a job board. It will also serve as a training hub to provide Canadians with the right certifications, courses and a pathway to rewarding careers.    

“A lot of this is about educating people about what they might need so they can be successful in the industry, such as getting the right training and certificates,” says Lail.  

“Many prospective employers are willing to help prospective employees in order to address their needs for skilled workers. For example, if you have a clean Class 5 driver’s license, some employers who need Class 1 drivers will pay for that training.”

She says that as the energy industry continues to transform to include a mix of oil and gas and renewable sources, it needs to fill current and emerging positions in practices like artificial intelligence, robotics, geothermal energy and environmental sustainability.  

Enserva members helped create the portal in part because traditional job-search platforms didn’t always attract the right candidates or missed job seekers with real potential.  

Companies were using websites such as Indeed or LinkedIn but were finding it difficult to get the right candidates. Theyd often get more than 1,000 resumes and maybe five to 10 were suitable for interview. It takes a lot of time to sift through those,” Lail says.  

We are supporting our members to create or increase awareness of their companies, and the jobs available. This way promising candidates will not miss a great opportunity and will have opportunities to learn more about energy companies.” 

Enserva aims to push into new areas and communities to engage with prospective job seekers.  

“We are reaching out to non-traditional areas to showcase the reality that you can have a long-term and rewarding career in this sector if you are a woman, Indigenous or come from a newer community in Canada,” Lail says.  

“In addition to this outreach, we are continuing to recruit in traditional areas, such as young people entering the workforce and attracting former energy workers back into the sector.” 

Banks

The Great Exodus from the Net Zero Banking Alliance has arrived

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From the Canadian Energy Centre

By Gina Pappano

Next, we need a Great Exodus from net zero ideology

In 2021, all of Canada’s Big Five Banks – TD, CIBC, BMO, Scotiabank and RBC – signed onto the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) and the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA).

U.N.-sponsored and Mark Carney-led, GFANZ is a sector-wide umbrella coalition whose goal is to accelerate global decarbonization and the emergence of a worldwide net zero global economy.

But now, in the first month of 2025, four of Canada’s Big Five Banks – TD, CIBC, BMO and Scotiabank – have announced their decision to exit the NZBA.

This came on the heels of similar announcements by six of the biggest U.S. banks – Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo as well as the investment firm BlackRock leaving the Asset Management subgroup of the GFANZ.

That group, the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, has now suspended operations altogether, and the GFANZ and all of its subgroups are falling like a house of cards.

At InvestNow, the not-for-profit that I lead, we’re considering these developments a victory and a vindication of our work.

In November of 2024, we submitted shareholder proposals to Canada’s Big Five banks asking them to leave both the NZBA and the GFANZ. As of this writing, all but one of them have done just that.

But this is only a partial victory.

When they signed on to the NZBA, the banks pledged to align their lending, investment and banking activities with decarbonization goals, including achieving net zero emissions by 2050. They pledged to focus on higher emitting sectors first and foremost. In practice, this means they would be setting their sights on Canada’s natural resource sector.

That’s because the net zero ideology motivating these groups requires the drastic reduction of oil and gas production and use over a comparatively short period of time.

That is a serious threat to Canada since we’ve been blessed with an abundance of natural resources. Hydrocarbon energy has become the backbone of our economy, and the war being waged against it has already made our lives harder and more expensive. Left unchecked, these difficulties will compound, with ruinous results.

In joining the NZBA, the Big Five Banks agreed to divest from oil and gas, eliminating projects and companies from the investment pool simply because of the sector they work in, as part of a long-term goal of totally decarbonizing the economy.

Presumably, having left the Alliance, those banks could now change course, increasing investment in and lending to oil and gas firms with an eye toward increasing the return on investment for their shareholders.

Except the banks have stressed that they have no intention of doing so. In the press releases and articles about leaving the NZBA, each bank emphasized that this move should not be interpreted as them abandoning net zero itself. All of these banks remain committed to aligning their activities with decarbonization, no matter the cost to Canada, the Canadian economy or the good of its citizens.

This means we still have work to do. While we applaud the banks for exiting the NZBA, we will continue to work to get them to leave behind the net zero ideology as well. Then, and only then, will we claim a full victory.

Gina Pappano is the former head of market intelligence at the Toronto Stock Exchange and TSX Venture Exchange and executive director of InvestNow , a non-profit dedicated to demonstrating that investing in Canada’s resource sectors helps Canada and the world. Join the movement and pass the InvestNow resolution at investnow.org.

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Canadian Energy Centre

Why Canadian oil is so important to the United States

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From the Canadian Energy Centre

By Deborah Jaremko

Complementary production in Canada and the U.S. boosts energy security

The United States is now the world’s largest oil producer, but its reliance on oil imports from Canada has never been higher.

Through a vast handshake of pipelines and refineries, Canadian oil and U.S. oil complement each other, strengthening North American energy security.

Here’s why.

Decades in the making

Twenty years ago, the North American energy market looked a lot different than it does today.

In the early 2000s, U.S. oil production had been declining for more than 20 years. By 2005, it dropped to its lowest level since 1949, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

America’s imports of oil from foreign nations were on the rise.

But then, the first of two powerhouse North American oil plays started ramping up.

In Canada’s oil sands, a drilling technology called SAGD – steam-assisted gravity drainage – unlocked enormous resources that could not be economically produced by the established surface mining processes. And the first new mines in nearly 25 years started coming online.

In about 2010, the second massive play – U.S. light, tight oil – emerged on the scene, thanks to hydraulic fracturing technology.

Oil sands production jumped from about one million barrels per day in 2005 to 2.5 million barrels per day in 2015, reaching an average 3.5 million barrels per day last year, according to the Canada Energy Regulator.

Meanwhile, U.S. oil production skyrocketed from 5.5 million barrels per day in 2005 to 9.4 million barrels per day in 2015 and 13.3 million barrels per day in 2024, according to the EIA.

Together the United States and Canada now produce more oil than anywhere else on earth, according to S&P Global.

As a result, overall U.S. foreign oil imports declined by 35 per cent between 2005 and 2023. But imports from Canada have steadily gone up.

In 2005, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Nigeria together supplied 52 per cent of U.S. oil imports. Canada was at just 16 per cent.

In 2024, Canada supplied 62 per cent of American oil imports, with Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela together supplying just 14 per cent, according to the EIA.

“Light” and “heavy” oil

Canadian and U.S. oil production are complementary because they are different from each other in composition.

Canada’s oil exports to the U.S. are primarily “heavy” oil from the oil sands, while U.S. production is primarily “light” oil from the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico.

One way to think of it is that heavy oil is thick and does not flow easily, while light oil is thin and flows freely – like orange juice compared to fudge.

The components that make the oil like this require different refinery equipment to generate products including gasoline, jet fuel and base petrochemicals.

Of the oil the U.S. imported from Canada from January to October last year, 75 per cent was heavy, six per cent was light, and the remaining 19 per cent was “medium,” which basically has qualities in between the two.

Tailored for Canadian crude

Many refineries in the United States are specifically designed to process heavy oil, primarily in the U.S. Midwest and U.S. Gulf Coast.

Overall, there are about 130 operable oil refineries in the United States, according to the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers.

The Alberta Petroleum Marketing Commission (APMC) estimates that 25 consistently use oil from Alberta.

According to APMC, the top five U.S. refineries running the most Alberta crude are:

  • Marathon Petroleum, Robinson, Illinois (100% Alberta crude)
  • Exxon Mobil, Joliet, Illinois (96% Alberta crude)
  • CHS Inc., Laurel, Montana (95% Alberta crude)
  • Phillips 66, Billings, Montana (92% Alberta crude)
  • Citgo, Lemont, Illinois (78% Alberta crude)

Since 2010, virtually 100 per cent of oil imports to the U.S. Midwest have come from Canada, according to the EIA.

In recent years, new pipeline access and crude-by-rail have allowed more Canadian oil to reach refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast, rising from about 140,000 barrels per day in 2010 to about 450,000 barrels per day in 2024.

U.S. oil exports

The United States banned oil exports from 1975 to the end of 2015. Since, exports have surged, averaging 4.1 million barrels per day last year, according to the EIA.

That is nearly equivalent to the 4.6 million barrels per day of Canadian oil imported into the U.S. over the same time period, indicating that Canadian crude imports enable sales of U.S. oil to global markets.

Future outlook

Twenty-five years from now, the U.S. will need to import virtually exactly the same amount of oil as it does today (7.0 million barrels per day in 2050 compared to 6.98 million barrels per day in 2023), according to the EIA.

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