In 1974, Canada inaugurated its first system for pricing oil with three objectives: to regulate prices of domestic crude oil by federal-provincial agreements, to subsidize imported oil so that consumers in Eastern Canada would enjoy lower prices, and to control prices and quantities of crude oil and products in the exporting market. Synthetic crude oil (upgraded petroleum from oil sands) was exempted from the policy and was sold at the world price. The federal government levied a tax on all oil refined in Canada to pay for the difference between the price of synthetic and that of conventional crude oil.