The economics of the refining business are very complex. As you will know, it's a very capital-intensive industry. When you're talking about building new refining capacity, for a modest size of refinery that's capable of refining the growing amounts of heavy crude, you're talking about an investment of $8 billion, $10 billion, or $15 billion, and of course the payback period for that kind of investment is 25 to 30 years or more.
There's a complex set of variables that really do determine if that is a smart investment and if that investment can address all of the issues associated with commercial risk, economic risk, technical risk, or regulatory risk. It's not a simple decision for someone to decide that they're going to put $10 billion on the table to invest in a new refinery capacity. Also, of course, we have to look at the overall supply and demand situation within the market where Canadian refineries would compete.
Certainly, the challenge in North America for our business is that it's really a declining market when you look at the demographics of North America and our mature transportation systems. There are significant new regulatory requirements that will substantially increase fuel economy and reduce the fuel demand from our vehicle fleet. Of course, there's the diversification of the transportation fuel mix, with more biofuels, electricity, and natural gas.
All of those factors really come together to create a market—at least in the North American context, where our refineries have traditionally been market participants—that is in fact flat to declining. That's not unique to Canada or North America. That's essentially the situation that exists in any OECD developed country.
We already have enough refining capacity in Canada to more than meet our own demand. We are net exporters of fuels, with significant imports into the U.S. and beyond. The challenge within our current market is that there is already more capacity than there is actual demand. As a result, unfortunately, we've seen refineries closing, particularly in what we call the Atlantic basin, and there's still an overcapacity.
Unfortunately, we've seen refineries close in Canada, and obviously one very close to your constituency, the Imperial Oil Dartmouth refinery. We saw a refinery close in Montreal. Back a decade ago, we saw a refinery close in Oakville, and we saw refineries close in the U.S., in the Caribbean, and in Europe. It really is reflective of this kind of supply and demand dynamics in an overcapacity. It creates a huge challenge in an investment environment to substantiate a $10-billion or $15-billion investment in new refining capacity.
Quite frankly, our members are challenged to keep our refineries viable, competitive, and open, particularly in eastern Canada. The Atlantic basin is the most challenging market right now with respect to an imbalance between capacity and supply.
So certainly, the access to western crude, the ability to have a more diversified crude access and make choices based in part on price differentials, is an important issue for sustaining the competitiveness of existing refineries. Investors will ultimately determine whether those issues change the competitive dynamics enough to warrant new investment.
Investment to pursue export markets beyond Canada is again very challenging. We are seeing significant refinery investment already happening in the U.S. Gulf coast and Asia. It's a question of whether the supply and demand dynamics within our traditional local North American markets and also the supply and demand dynamics more broadly across the globe really address satisfactorily the economic, commercial, technical, and regulatory risks that can warrant the investment of the kind we're talking about.
So that's really the complexity of.... It would be great to say that we are producing all this oil, we should just refine it here in Canada, and we should be selling refined products. You need to have a market for it, you have to be able to get it to market, and you have to be able to do it and actually make a reasonable return on investment. That's the issue that investors face today.