Canadian mining giant Teck Resources Ltd has pulled out of its proposed $20 billion Frontier oil sands project in Alberta, publicly citing Canada's uncertain climate change policies as the main reason.
This seems disingenuous to me, and a convenient way of laying the "blame" elsewhere. The government was due to make a final decision on the mega-project tomorrow, Tuesday. The fact that Teck announced their pull-out on Sunday evening, before even hearing the government's decision, suggests to me that they are actually abandoning the mine because they are just not confident that they can make any money out of it in the current climate of low oil prices. They have never been able to show that the project would be commercially viable, and the uncertainty around the price of oil is not going away any time soon. Had the government given the go-ahead on Tuesday, Teck would feel obliged to follow through with a project about which they clearly have cold feet.
Interestingly, Teck Resources has previously expressed its support for carbon reduction plans, calling themselves "strong supporters of Canada's action on carbon pricing and other climate policies such as legislated caps for oil sands emissions". They even aim to be carbon-neutral by 2050.
Blaming the death of the Frontier project on the Canadian government is therefore just a face-saving ploy for Teck, and perhaps a way of giving more long-term ammunition to the Conservative opposition and pro-oil provincial governments like those of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Not cool, Teck.
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