$18.70 a barrel. That is the initial fixed toll the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis puts on Alberta’s proposed West Coast oil pipeline in 2032 under its cheaper scenario, rising to $23.72 a barrel by 2034 under the expensive one. Against a 2013 Trans Mountain contracted toll of $3.60 to $3.90 a barrel, that is roughly five times the number, which is our own arithmetic on their figures. The report was published on 1 September 2026 and the toll section is the part of it that deserves an answer.
Key facts
- The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis published its assessment of the proposed West Coast oil pipeline on 1 September 2026, putting capital cost between $35.2 billion and $43.7 billion.
- That assessment models an initial fixed toll of $18.70 a barrel in 2032 under its low-cost case and $23.72 a barrel in 2034 under its high-cost case, and puts the resulting cost to producers at $2.2 billion to $3.2 billion a year over 20 years.
- The International Energy Agency World Energy Outlook 2025, published 12 November 2025, shows global oil demand rising to 113 million barrels a day by 2050 without peaking, in its Current Policies Scenario.
- The Government of Alberta has committed just over $18 million to early planning work on the project, per alberta.ca.
- The project was referred to the federal Major Projects Office on 2 July 2026, and as of that office’s page update on 2 September 2026 it had not been added to the national interest list.
A toll is a permanent deduction from the netback
Here is the mechanism, because it gets skipped. A producer sells a barrel at a reference price, then subtracts what it costs to move that barrel to the buyer, and what is left is the netback. A pipeline toll is not a fee the producer pays out of profit at year end. It comes off every barrel, every day, for the twenty or thirty years the contract runs, and it is set to recover the capital cost of the line whether or not the line is full.
That is why capital cost and toll are the same conversation. A line costing $35.2 billion and a line costing $43.7 billion are not two versions of the same project. They are two different deductions from every barrel in the basin that ships on it, and the difference between them is roughly $5 a barrel in the modelled tolls. Nobody in this industry should wave that off, and the people who dismiss the report because of who wrote it are dismissing the one piece of arithmetic the proponents have not published themselves.
The demand argument uses one scenario and calls it the forecast
The report’s supporting claim is that global oil demand peaks around 2030, before the pipe would ever run. That number comes from the International Energy Agency’s Stated Policies Scenario. The same agency, in the same publication, on the same day, also publishes a Current Policies Scenario in which demand climbs to 113 million barrels a day by 2050 and does not peak at all. World Energy Outlook 2025 was released on 12 November 2025 and contains both.
A scenario is an input somebody selected. It is not a finding, and citing one without naming it is the oldest trick in energy modelling. Anybody writing about this project, on either side, who says the International Energy Agency expects demand to peak in 2030 has quietly chosen a scenario and hidden the choice. Name the scenario or do not use the number.
The toll argument does not depend on that choice, which is why it survives the criticism and the demand argument does not. Even in a world where demand keeps climbing, a producer still pays $18.70 a barrel to move oil through a line that costs $35 billion to build. Volume does not fix a toll. Volume is what the toll is charged on.
The competing toll estimates do not agree with each other either
An independent analysis published on 4 August 2026 by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute runs the same problem and arrives at a required West Coast toll of roughly $11.80 to $14.30 a barrel against a market-clearing toll near $11, with a capital cost it puts as high as $60 billion to $100 billion. It also estimates that Trans Mountain itself would need tolls of roughly $8.50 to $13.20 a barrel to cover its real cost, rather than the contracted figure everyone quotes. Three documents, three toll ranges, no agreement. Attribute each figure to the document it came from and never average them, because they are built on different capital assumptions and different allocations.
What Alberta has actually spent so far is just over $18 million on engineering and early planning, which buys a case rather than a pipeline. The named partners include Trans Mountain Corporation and Pembina Pipeline Corporation, and also the Alberta Petroleum Marketing Commission, which is a provincial Crown agency and not a private partner, a distinction worth keeping straight when anybody describes the ownership structure. The file was referred to the Major Projects Office on 2 July 2026. It has not been listed.
This province has been told before that a line was not needed, and that advice aged badly for everyone who took it. That history is a reason to build, not a reason to skip the toll arithmetic. Smaller producers in particular need the tolling structure argued out loud now, while the capital estimate is still a range and not a contract, because a fixed toll signed in 2032 cannot be renegotiated in 2040.
The date that matters is 1 October 2026, which is when Ottawa said it intended to publish notice on listing. Watch that page, not the press releases.
