Gil McGowan, the president of Alberta Federation of Labour, has strong opposition against the Enbridge pipeline project due to the negative impact of the reduced “Asian” premium has on the Western Canadian labour market. Shrinking “Asian” premium suggests that North America no longer pay less for crude oil than China.

http://www.cbc.ca/asithappens/episode/2012/09/04/the‐tuesday‐edition‐45/

Asia, especially China, is prepared to pay more for raw bitumen because there is reliable and massive expansion of China’s refining capacity. However, if the Northern Gateway pipeline is built and oil sands bitumen is shipped to China, there will be lesser rawest form of crude oil available for the refineries in Canada. Total Canadian refinery market demand for Western Canadian crude oil in 2011 is 876,000 barrels per day. However, it is forecasted that with the Northern Gateway in place, Canadian refinery throughtput in 2018 is reduced to 830,700 barrels per day. This implies Canadian refinery activity is going to be cut down by 5% or 46,000 a day.

http://www.afl.org/index.php/Download-document/728-Shipping-down-the-pipeline-2012Sept04rev1.html

With the decrease in supply of crude oil, the price of crude oil is definitely going to rise when market demand remains the same and is going to rise even more if the market demand increases along the years.