Alberta has approached Rongsheng Petrochemical Co., China’s biggest buyer of crude from the Trans Mountain Pipeline, about signing a binding contract to purchase oil from the province’s proposed new pipeline to British Columbia, Bloomberg has reported.
The outreach puts a specific face on Premier Danielle Smith’s push to find Asian buyers before Trump administration tariffs make US export dependence untenable.
The proposed pipeline would carry 1 million barrels per day westward, with Alberta’s preferred route running to the northern BC coast.
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For Rongsheng, the pitch has obvious logic. The privately owned Chinese company operates an 800,000-barrel-per-day refinery on China’s east coast and already feeds it with heavy crude from the Trans Mountain Pipeline, currently Canada’s only system moving oil to a Pacific export terminal. China is also looking to diversify its oil sources, which makes Rongsheng receptive to an Alberta deal.
The Trans Mountain connection matters because it shows the relationship already exists, and that Rongsheng knows the grade and is setup to process oil from the region. A binding offtake on a new, larger-capacity line would simply extend what it already does at greater volume.
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