Executive Leadership Roundtables

Topic: As CCUS infrastructure expands across Canada, Indigenous nations are moving from consultation toward co-ownership, but that shift has been uneven across the industry. This roundtable brings developers, funders, and Indigenous leadership together to define what genuine, front-loaded engagement looks like in practice.

Why now: This week's Pathways MOU has renewed public debate over consultation timelines, with several First Nations along the route saying their concerns have not been meaningfully addressed.

Core questions: How do equity structures avoid being read as compensation for gaps in consultation rather than genuine partnership?

Who's in the room: Indigenous rights holders and development corporations, project sponsors, lenders, and government relations leads.

Key Questions

1. What would a project sequencing model look like where Indigenous partners help shape routing, design, and monitoring commitments from the earliest planning stages?
2. What ongoing monitoring and emergency-response frameworks would give communities durable, long-term confidence in projects operating on their territory?

Topic: Carbon capture economics live or die on the durability of the price signal. With federal carbon pricing under political pressure and Alberta's TIER system recalibrating, project sponsors are increasingly discounting long-term carbon revenue in their FID models.

Why now: Continued uncertainty around federal carbon pricing and adjustments to TIER benchmarks are directly undermining the bankability of capture projects.

Core questions: What policy guarantees or contract structures can credibly substitute for price certainty?

Who's in the room: Provincial and federal policy officials, industrial emitters, project financiers, and carbon market advisors.

Key Questions

1. With TIER benchmarks and compliance costs shifting, what near-term adjustments would restore confidence for emitters underwriting multi-decade capture investments?
2. Can contracts for difference, price floors, or other risk-sharing instruments credibly de-risk carbon revenue where legislated pricing alone cannot?

Topic: Canada has no shortage of proposed CCUS projects, the bottleneck is converting proposals into positive final investment decisions. This session brings together the capital providers, developers, and policymakers who control the levers that determine whether a project reaches FID or stalls indefinitely.

Why now: Persistent financing gaps, cost inflation, and unresolved stakeholder concerns are keeping several major hub and point-source projects in prolonged pre-FID limbo.

Core questions: What combination of public incentives, private capital, and early stakeholder alignment is actually closing the gap to FID?

Who's in the room: CCUS developers, institutional and infrastructure investors, federal/provincial finance officials, and industrial off-takers.

Key Questions

1. Which financing structures — investment tax credits, contracts for difference, blended public-private capital — are proving most effective at closing the gap between proposed and sanctioned projects?
2. How is cost escalation and construction risk being allocated between developers, financiers, and government to keep projects investable?

Topic: This month's MOU between Ottawa, Alberta, and the five-member Oil Sands Alliance commits the Pathways CCS project to stage-gated construction, targeting infrastructure in service by 2032 and full completion by 2035. This roundtable examines what it takes to move from framework agreement to a built, financeable asset.

Why now: The MOU was signed this week, tying Pathways directly to approval of a new West Coast pipeline and setting a November 15 deadline for binding agreements between each Oil Sands Alliance member and government.

Core questions: What has to happen between now and November for the MOU's stage-gated commitments to convert into binding, financeable agreements?

Who's in the room: Oil Sands Alliance members, federal and Alberta officials, midstream and storage-hub developers, and project financiers.

Key Questions

1. What binding terms — on tax credits, TIER incentives, and cost-sharing — need to be locked down before the November 15 deadline to keep the project financeable?
2. With capture targets scaled back from earlier pledges, what will credibly demonstrate to investors and communities that the revised first phase is durable?

Topic: A pipeline of megaprojects, Pathways among them, is about to test whether Canada's fabrication, steel, and skilled-trades capacity can deliver on overlapping timelines. This roundtable looks at what's needed to avoid the queuing and cost inflation seen in other capital-intensive sectors.

Why now: With Pathways targeting service by 2032 alongside several other capture and storage projects advancing toward FID, competition for compressors, specialty steel, and EPC capacity is intensifying.

Core questions: Where are the real supply chain bottlenecks, and what needs to happen now to keep them from becoming the reason projects slip?

Who's in the room: EPC contractors, equipment manufacturers, labour and trades representatives, and project owners.

Key Questions

1. Which components or skill sets are most likely to bottleneck if multiple megaprojects move to construction on similar timelines?  
2. What role should domestic manufacturing and workforce investment play versus importing capacity from established CCUS supply chains abroad?

Topic: Large-scale CCUS projects are now under construction or operating in Norway, the U.S. Gulf Coast, and the Netherlands, offering hard-won lessons on delivery, cost control, and technology partnerships. This roundtable brings international operators together with Canadian developers racing toward FID.

Why now: With Pathways and other Canadian hub projects entering construction planning, there's a narrow window to apply international lessons before Canadian designs are locked in.

Core questions: Which technology choices and delivery models from international projects translate to Canadian conditions, and which don't?

Who's in the room: International CCUS operators and technical leads, Canadian developers and EPC firms, and technology licensors.

Key Questions

1. What construction and commissioning lessons from operating international projects should inform Canadian design decisions now, before they're locked in?  
2. Where do technology partnerships and licensing arrangements with international players make sense versus building domestic capability?