Oilsands execs say nowhere to invest in green technology, despite record profits

The federal government says it wants to see the oil and gas industry 'step up', especially after record profit years due to high energy prices.

Oilsands executives insist they are all in on cutting emissions and will make big investments in green technology, but they maintain there isn’t a place to invest that money yet.

Many companies are coming off a year of windfall profits not because they pumped out more product, but because the war in Ukraine and global supply chain crunches pushed world oil prices way up.

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault has said repeatedly over the last year that the companies need to prove their commitment by putting some of that cold hard cash into climate initiatives.

But in an interview with The Canadian Press, Cenovus CEO Alex Pourbaix said the companies are moving “as aggressively as (they) can.”

“We’re not yet at the point where we can invest billions in these projects,” Pourbaix said.

Cenovus is one of six oilsands companies in the Pathways Alliance, a consortium created to work together to decarbonize their production entirely by 2050. The companies are looking to spend $24 billion by 2030 on emissions cutting, including two-thirds of that on carbon capture and storage systems.

However, who will pay for those investments is a point of contention.

So far, the consortium has spent half a billion dollars on Phase 1 of these projects, according to the alliance’s president Kendall Dilling.