Lost in Biden's salacious courting of autocrats is much talk about the role Canada could play in contributing to the West’s energy security — largely because we no longer have the ability to do so
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To summarize: in order to punish its longtime enemy, which it tried to be friends with, but is now quite sure is an enemy again (Russia), the U.S. turned to a friend that should be an enemy (Saudi Arabia), which won’t talk to the Americans because they’re helping a common enemy (Iran), while negotiating with another enemy (Venezuela), even though it’s friends with the enemy that started this whole crisis (Putin). Got that?
Lost in all this salacious courting of dictators and autocrats is much talk about the role Canada could play in contributing to the West’s energy security — largely because we no longer have the ability to do so.
It’s true that Canada supplies the U.S. with around 4.3 million bpd of oil and could increase that to some extent. According to Alberta Energy Minister Sonya Savage, there is
excess capacity in Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline and along rail lines, which could handle around 200,000 bpd.
And some companies do have the ability to increase output. Canadian Natural, for example, said it planned to
increase production by about five per cent this year. Others will undoubtedly follow suit if prices remain high and they have the means to do so.
But experts
seem to agree that our contribution will be marginal at best, because our energy industry has been starved of investment for years. All because governments have scared away investors by consistently blocking proposed pipelines and LNG export terminals, which could now be supplying our allies in the U.S., Asia and Europe with oil and gas from a democratic country that abides by the rule of law, has strong environmental standards and has no imperial or genocidal ambitions.
The tragedy is that if governments — including the Biden administration, which nixed the Keystone XL pipeline on Day 1 — had simply gotten out of the way and allowed decisions over pipelines and other infrastructure projects to be made by private businesses and landowners, including First Nations, Canada would have a much greater ability to produce and export its natural resources, at little to no cost to the treasury.
Instead, billions of dollars worth of public money has been poured into the Keystone and Trans Mountain pipelines and the leader of the free world is running cap-in-hand to some decidedly unfree countries because they seem like the lesser evil at the moment.
It is, of course, never too late to start turning things around. Even if Canada cannot be part of the solution to the current crisis — though for all we know, the West could have reason to impose crippling sanctions on Russia for years to come — we could help free the democratic world from being at the mercy of tyrants and despots for its energy needs.
That would take a concerted effort on the part of all levels of government to remove the impediments to energy development in this country. Which seems unlikely. But stranger things have happened, I suppose.
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