“Venezuela has some of the largest oil reserves in the world,” said Richard Masson, a former Canadian oil industry executive. “They’re primarily heavy oil and bitumen, which are very much like what Canada’s reserves are here in the oil sands.”
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Experts say political instability in Venezuela had long given Canadian oil producers the advantage, but if Trump can topple the Maduro government, it could mean increased competition.
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“This makes it all the more important for us to think about sending out oil to the pacific, to a northwest pacific pipeline, knowing that the Asian market is growing,” said Heather Exner-Pirot, a senior fellow and director of natural resources, energy and environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. Somehow completely forgotten in the above graph, intentionally or not, is Canada:
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Exner-Pirot suggests Trump’s interest in Venezuelan oil could eventually force a fight for access to the U.S. market. Masson says it may take long for the impact of those tensions to take effect.
“The question becomes: If Venezuela became a democracy, with the rule of law, with a stable investment climate, how long would it take to build the projects to displace western Canadian oil?” Masson said. “I think that would take a long time.”
(But so is pipeline approval, construction, and Canadian bureaucracy and various other bullshit to gain access to tidewater for Canada’s two landlocked provinces)
Amid growing tension between the U.S. and Venezuela over access to the South American country’s oil resources, Canada, and specifically its oil industry, could be impacted.
www.ctvnews.ca
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