Oil industry continues focus on returning cash to investors over new big projects

By Joel Dryden – CBC News

While Alberta’s oilpatch continues to make billions of dollars in profits, much of that money is finding its way into shareholder’s pockets rather than toward major expansions of their operations.

At the time of the last boom, oil producers poured a large portion of their earnings back into capital spending. In 2014, for example, oil and gas investment in Canada ranged around $80 billion. 

Today, it’s closer to $30 billion, according to the latest numbers from the ARC Energy Research Institute, which models the entire Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin.