Good morning, Mr. Chair, and good morning members of the committee. It's indeed a pleasure to be here once again. I certainly want to extend my sincere thanks for asking the association to appear on your study of the cross-Canada benefits to developing Canada's oil and gas sector.
I have provided some handouts. I think you would have all seen some of that material in the past, but it's clearly relevant to today's discussion.
Canadian Fuels Association's members comprise the downstream component of Canada's oil industry. They're the refiners, the distributors, and suppliers, of transportation and home heating fuels, and the chemical feedstocks that go into a myriad of products that Canadians use every day. If you look in the kit and the fact sheet there will be a listing of our current members.
Refining is an integral component of Canada's oil and gas value chain. Refineries, in essence, are the crucial manufacturing intermediaries between crude oil as it comes out of the ground and the refined products that we as Canadians use every day. Canada has 18 refineries located in eight provinces, and with a total capacity to refine about two million barrels per day of crude oil. They contribute about $2.5 billion in direct GDP, and employ some 17,500 Canadians in communities across the country, all the way from Come By Chance, Newfoundland, to Burnaby, British Columbia.
In many communities these refineries are a major, if not the major, economic anchor in communities like Come By Chance; Saint John, New Brunswick; Lévis, Quebec; Sarnia; Regina; Edmonton. The refining industry, interestingly, is most important to Atlantic Canada, where it now represents about 10% of overall manufacturing capacity in the Atlantic region. I think it's also important to note that in terms of the quality of jobs, refinery workers earn well above average wages and salaries, two-thirds more than the overall Canadian average, and even 50% more than workers in the overall manufacturing sector. Nearly 75% of refinery workers have some form of post-secondary education. They're scientists, engineers, technologists, technicians. They're highly skilled, highly valued workers who get paid good salaries and wages, and obviously then contribute to the communities in which they live.
Currently, about 60% of the oil refined in Canadian refineries comes from domestic sources, either from western Canada or the Atlantic offshore. This proportion—happy story—is gradually increasing, and industry is certainly looking to substantially increase its access to and use of western Canadian crude through new infrastructure investments like the reversal of the Enbridge line 9 pipeline between Sarnia and Montreal. We're looking forward hopefully to a favourable decision today from the National Energy Board. Also, of course, there is TransCanada's energy east proposal that would convert a portion of its existing natural gas pipeline that runs from Alberta to Montreal and extend it from Montreal all the way to Saint John, New Brunswick. These projects could be game changers for refineries in eastern Canada with significant economic benefits to the region.
Eastern refineries currently have virtually no access to crude oil from western Canada. Crude oil from Canada's east coast offshore is used to some extent, but imports are really the main source of crude supply. It's paradoxical in today's environment that oil producers in western Canada sell their oil at a price discount due to lack of market access, yet eastern refiners import crude at a price premium because they can't access western crude. Western Canadian producers and eastern Canadian refiners would both gain from oil and gas transportation infrastructure, pipelines in particular, that would bring western Canadian crude to the east, so those refineries benefit from the significant growth in oil output in western Canada, and, of course, for western producers, access to eastern Canadian markets enables a higher value for the crude they produce.
I think most important to note is that, for eastern refiners, access to crude oil from western Canada is an important opportunity to increase their cost effectiveness and maintain their competitiveness in what is an intensely competitive and increasingly global petroleum refining business. It really opens the door to a greater choice in crude oil selection based on availability, grade, and price. This is where we see this as a potential game changer for refineries that, quite frankly, are significantly challenged competitively in the context of today's global market for refined products.
The benefit of western crude access to eastern refineries was well documented last year in a study and report from the Montreal Economic Institute. In a note published in August last year, MEI concluded that access to western crude would certainly help improve the profitability and competitiveness of eastern Canadian refineries. Also of note is that MEI observed that access to western Canadian crude could trigger significant new refinery investments to allow the refiners to process heavier crude that comes from Alberta—in particular, Alberta bitumen.
Specifically, Suncor confirmed last September that it would reconsider a previously shelved plan to build a coker to process heavier grades of crude at its refinery in Montreal, if Enbridge's line 9 project gets the green light. We're obviously very hopeful that this will be announced today. But Steve Williams, the CEO of Suncor, made it clear that the addition of a coker and that kind of investment in its Montreal facility depended on gaining access to western Canadian oil. That's line 9. The energy east proposal will provide significant additional capacity to bring western Canadian oil to Canadian refineries. West-to-east pipelines that provide eastern Canadian refineries with access to western crude will really help secure the future of those refineries and the jobs they provide and the communities they support. For me, that's a great example of how investment in energy infrastructure delivers economic benefits across the country.
I think I'll leave it at that and will look forward to your questions.