Pumpjacks at work pumping crude oil near Halkirk, Alberta. Pipeline snarls remain a key concern among the largest producers in Alberta’s oil patch, even as the sharp increase in rail capacity and concerted efforts to expand current export outlets has narrowed the discount on Canadian heavy crude.The Canadian Press
A former Norwegian finance minister says Alberta's new government should take inspiration from the same place the Scandinavian country found it – Alberta.
Kristin Halvorsen, in Canada for a speech in Ottawa, says Norway looked to Peter Lougheed's Alberta Heritage Trust Fund when the country was deciding what to do with its North Sea oil in the 1980s.
She says Norway's fund is now worth about one trillion dollars and contributes about $40-billion a year to government finances – about the size of Alberta's entire budget.
Halvorsen says it wasn't always easy keeping politicians' hands out of the oil royalty cookie jar.
But she adds Norwegians now understand that they can't spend their country's non-renewable resource revenue in a single generation.
Alberta's new NDP government has promised to review how the province's oil royalties are raised and spent.