First, let me say I wish I could agree with Mr. McGowan, because it would be great to have more jobs in Canada. We have to remember that as you do more in Canada, you're actually creating an even bigger energy industry that's absorbing more resources in the Canadian economy. Unfortunately, I would totally disagree with a lot of the information provided or the understanding provided of how the market is currently operating.
First of all, we have to remember that upgrading can make sense, especially with existing refineries. That's because the cost of doing the upgrading is much less in those cases. For example, there is a potential increase in upgrading if we build the eastern pipeline, where you could actually do more with the Irving plant in New Brunswick. Certainly, there's an argument for more western Canadian feedstock to go to Quebec refineries as well as Ontario refineries. Even the Edmonton refineries could take some more capacity, and there is some potential increase in upgrading.
The problem is that what we're really talking about is building new upgraders, which could be very expensive. The problem is that in the United States—this is where I don't agree at all with Gil's comments—we've had a tremendous change in refining capacity utilization in the past 20 years. If you go back to the early nineties, capacity utilization in the refineries in the United States was roughly 70% just after the recession. Then it climbed in 2005 and 2006 to over 95%. There was a lot of tightness in the market. That's the reason oil prices partly went through the roof in those years.
What happened after the recession in 2009 is that there has also been a tremendous shift in the market at the same time. The view is that we may actually have seen the maximum amount of refining capacity we will need for some time. Now utilization is down to 70%. It's actually a lot cheaper to do the upgrading where you do have excess capacity. That's the reason why shipping bitumen down to the United States to do the upgrading there makes sense compared to doing it here.
Let me just finish with one very quick point. There's one upgrading project in Alberta that's been going ahead. That's a northwest upgrader. The market risk, because the margins are not expected to be that high in the future, is being absorbed by the Alberta government. There's a toll charge that's being paid to the operator.
I don't know, but maybe, Gil, you would like to put money into an upgrader in Alberta, putting it at your own risk. But I think that's an issue that has to be dealt with, because right now there's no profitability in the future for market [Inaudible--Editor] upgrading.