Alberta expects to have booked a budget surplus of about US$4.2 billion (C$5.8 billion) for the fiscal year 2024-2025 that ended in March, as Nate Horner, the finance minister of Canada’s oil-producing province, prepares to deliver the year-end fiscal update later on Friday.
The unexpectedly large surplus for 2024-2025 was due to higher resource royalties, RBC said earlier this year.
However, Alberta expects a large deficit of about US$3.8 billion (C$5.2 billion) for the current fiscal year 2025-2026 which began in April.
The expected deficit, which would be the first after four consecutive years of surpluses, is attributed to the U.S. trade risks and weaker oil and gas revenues.
Alberta is actively working to boost oil production and export outlets, to diversify its oil exports from the United States.
Alberta could receive within weeks a proposal from a private company for a new pipeline from the oil-rich province to British Columbia’s northwest coast, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith told Bloomberg News in an interview earlier this week.
A new pipeline to Canada’s northwest Pacific coast “is the most credible and the most economic of all of the pipeline proposals the private sector would consider,” Smith told Bloomberg, declining to name any companies potentially involved in the project.
Earlier this month, Smith said that Alberta is working to engage private backers for a new pipeline to ship about 1 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude from Canada’s oil-producing province to British Columbia.
The expanded Trans Mountain route is currently the only pipeline shipping Alberta’s landlocked crude for exports on tankers from the West Coast.
Alberta has been a vocal supporter of increased pipeline takeaway capacity from the province and now looks to have more options to sell crude to non-U.S. customers.
Earlier this month, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney pledged that the federal government would work to fast-track major projects to make Canada an energy superpower.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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