Letter from Canada: The oil sands revolution has begun

Oil Sands Pathway offers sector renewed long-term hope

Plenty has changed since May’s Letter from Canada, with the announcement of the Oil Sands Pathways to Net Zero initiative potentially heralding a change of fortune for the embattled bitumen industry. The title of last month’s letter, ‘Net zero poses existential threat to oil sands’, was in response to the IEA’s controversial net-zero emissions report, which conveyed a clear message that Canada’s oil sands industry would be uneconomic before mid-century, based on projected crude oil and carbon prices. The article suggested that, if Canadian oil sands producers were to continue producing bitumen two or three decades down the road, they would have to radically alter their capital investment str