Alberta’s oil production booming but majority of revenue leaving province

Alberta's oil production is booming but a smaller share of revenue is staying in the province.

Since the start of the year, Alberta’s oil production has been booming.

“We’re producing about $12 billion a month of oil,” said Alberta Central’s chief economist Charles St-Arnaud.

“To give a comparison, in 2014, the maximum we reached was $7.7 billion so it’s a big increase.”

However, St-Arnaud said we are not feeling the same effects of this boom like we did in 2014.

“What’s happening is that a greater share of this revenue is actually leaving the province,” St-Arnaud explained.

“The issue there is that 75 per cent, on average, of those of those producers or the shareholders of those producers are foreigners — they’re not even Canadian. So it doesn’t even stay in Canada and even less in Alberta.”

He noted the other part to this is there’s a much smaller share of revenue being reinvested into the business.

“Over the past year, about seven per cent of revenues have been returned into investment. Back in 2014, it was 25 per cent, so there’s a lot of money that is no longer staying and creating jobs and spillovers to the rest of the economy,” St-Arnaud explained.