Plant Dynamics and Productivity of the Canadian Petroleum and Coal Product Manufacturing Industry

The Canadian petroleum and coal product manufacturing industry primarily engages in transforming crude petroleum and coal into intermediate and end products. The dominant production is petroleum refining, which involves the separation of crude petroleum into component products through such techniques as cracking and distillation. The petroleum and coal products manufacturing industry is one of the industries with the weakest productivity performance in Canada in the post 2000 period. This paper assesses the structural change and plant dynamics facing the Canadian industry in such an environment with increasingly demand for energy products and unconventional deposits being extracted and processed, and discusses the industrial policy implications for the productivity performance of this industry.