The reality, he says, is that no amount of reinvestment or profligate taxpayer support
in Canada will offset “an unprecedented oil boom south of the border.
Fracked U.S. oil is attracting the capital. And that is because it is a
much better resource to exploit,” compared to a tar sands/oil sands
product that is “difficult to produce and process and yields a lot of
low-value product” that is more complicated to ship through a pipeline.”

Against the massive fracking boom in the U.S., “it isn’t lack of
pipelines holding back the oilsands; it’s the fact that it isn’t as
attractive to invest in oilsands.” Alberta may have enjoyed a
decade-long tar sands/oil sands boom, but “if industry had known how to
frack for oil back in the year 2000, that big surge in oilsands
investment never would have happened.”