Sure production curtailment might help short term, but imagine the long term implications on capital investment. Pretend for a second you’re someone who wants to invest in this province and the government responds “ok, but just in case this investment pans out and your competitor’s doesn’t, we may force you to give them some money to help them out”. That’s what this basically is and I as an Albertan who owns the resource am not ok with that.
About the only thing I’d be willing to at least explore is prorated curtailments based on everyone’s actual WCS sales volume (I.e. exclude all production which goes on to be upgraded, refined, or through commutes pipeline space). That way you don’t punish those who invested in integration, just those who invested in making more bitumen hoping to sell it through pipelines that didn’t even have a shovel in the ground.
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