Look west or southward bound? This isn’t the title of a TV sitcom, but a question facing Canadian politicians and oil industry leaders.

As western Canadian oil output ramps up and is expected to fill export pipelines, where should capacity from a new oil artery point to, and what projects will be built first?

Should it extend south, such as through a revised Keystone XL-type pipeline or another development that ships additional crude to the United States, where Canada is already the largest foreign supplier of energy?

Or should it go to the Pacific Coast, as Alberta is proposing with a new bitumen line, offering enhanced access to international customers and greater market diversification?

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And how will this play out against the backdrop of trade talks with the United States, a war in the Middle East and a new federal-provincial energy pact?

“You obviously can’t fill both of them at the same time,” said Heather Exner-Pirot, director of natural resources, energy and environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

“Strategically, especially at this time in the Iran crisis, you’re seeing how important it is to actually get barrels to tidewater, to get them to different allies . . . But if 2026 wasn’t the time when Canada thought about what is being an energy superpower (about) — and that absolutely means getting your own barrels to tidewater, in your own tidewater — it feels to me a bit of a generational fumble here.”

Alberta’s energy sector has been setting oil output records and existing pipeline systems in Western Canada are filling up, less than two years after the Trans Mountain expansion project was completed.

On Wednesday, Trans Mountain Corp. announced an open season to gauge shipper........

© Calgary Herald