Why is Canada being such a schmuck? In worldwide oil play, where every other country does whatever it can to develop its oil and gas assets, how is it that Canada is the only player actively taking itself out of the game?
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s latest announcement that there will be additional delays in pipeline approvals must have prompted a chuckle that began in the U.S. and turned into an all out belly-splitter by the time it spread to Venezuela, the Middle East and North Africa. These countries get the main rule that we don’t: he who can deliver first, wins.
Anyone who still believes the environmental narrative that restricting oil production is about saving the Earth is naive; it’s all about money.
Let’s take the example of the United States. While Canada writhes to accommodate American concerns about our oil, the U.S. has taken complete advantage of the delay by exploiting its resources, and why wouldn’t it? It’s what smart countries do. In the time it’s taken to quash the proposed 1,400 kilometres of Keystone XL pipeline, 19,200 kilometres of American pipeline has been built, some of it serving Canada.
The U.S. has quickly gone from being an importer of oil, to becoming the largest oil producer in the world, now exporting overseas for the first time in 40 years. The large American-owned oil companies operating in Canada are actually doing quite well; in fact, the more paralysis on Canadian fronts, the bigger their value stateside. We’ve just paid for that by sacrificing the smaller Canadian companies with no net decrease in overall oil production. Oops.
In fact, while our governments are being do-goody apologists-in-chief, Washington has furthermore committed to helping Kenya raise $18 billion for a 900-kilometre pipeline that will roll through endangered species habitats in the Great Rift Valley to the Indian Ocean. It’s only an environmental issue it seems, when it’s a Canadian pipeline.
We even marginalize ourselves in our own country. How amusing it must seem to our competitors, that in turning on ourselves, we implode our industry, unable to get pipelines built to supply even our own family.
The irony that Eastern Canada will buy even more oil from the U.S. rather than from a domestic industry that employs so many of them and pays so many of their bills, is beyond a joke. That Canada sits on the third largest oil reserves in the world, and we can’t even create domestic independence, much less an export industry, is not only an embarrassing failure, but one can hardly imagine that it’s prudent national policy. Yet here we are.
Looking forward to a guarantee of massive government grants, alternative energy sources are the new frontier of capitalism, good at sponsoring the rhetoric that fits the stick-it-to-the-man perspective we seem to absorb with such fervour and lack of critical thinking. As for the other objectors, does anyone really think obstruction of pipelines can’t be salved with more money?
For its part, Alberta’s carbon tax will reduce energy use not a whit, but will cycle more money to government.
Ottawa’s new rules for project approval will be arbitrary, based on cabinet political opinion rather than the evidence-based science of National Energy Board professionals who achieve the most stringent standards on the planet.
This is nothing less than a way for the feds to take control of provincial assets — an egregious interference and outrageous demonstration of political swagger.
More dithering on pipelines is likely to make this all a moot point: Demand for oil doesn’t remain unsatisfied, and someone else will fill the order.
Delaying pipelines just changes who profits — and apparently, it won’t be Canada, even in Canada.
What rubes we must seem, behaving as though we believe other countries are joining us in a kind of lower-emissions Peace Corps initiative. Outmanoeuvred we are in this game, to say the least.
I couldn't agree any more.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s latest announcement that there will be additional delays in pipeline approvals must have prompted a chuckle that began in the U.S. and turned into an all out belly-splitter by the time it spread to Venezuela, the Middle East and North Africa. These countries get the main rule that we don’t: he who can deliver first, wins.
Anyone who still believes the environmental narrative that restricting oil production is about saving the Earth is naive; it’s all about money.
Let’s take the example of the United States. While Canada writhes to accommodate American concerns about our oil, the U.S. has taken complete advantage of the delay by exploiting its resources, and why wouldn’t it? It’s what smart countries do. In the time it’s taken to quash the proposed 1,400 kilometres of Keystone XL pipeline, 19,200 kilometres of American pipeline has been built, some of it serving Canada.
The U.S. has quickly gone from being an importer of oil, to becoming the largest oil producer in the world, now exporting overseas for the first time in 40 years. The large American-owned oil companies operating in Canada are actually doing quite well; in fact, the more paralysis on Canadian fronts, the bigger their value stateside. We’ve just paid for that by sacrificing the smaller Canadian companies with no net decrease in overall oil production. Oops.
In fact, while our governments are being do-goody apologists-in-chief, Washington has furthermore committed to helping Kenya raise $18 billion for a 900-kilometre pipeline that will roll through endangered species habitats in the Great Rift Valley to the Indian Ocean. It’s only an environmental issue it seems, when it’s a Canadian pipeline.
We even marginalize ourselves in our own country. How amusing it must seem to our competitors, that in turning on ourselves, we implode our industry, unable to get pipelines built to supply even our own family.
The irony that Eastern Canada will buy even more oil from the U.S. rather than from a domestic industry that employs so many of them and pays so many of their bills, is beyond a joke. That Canada sits on the third largest oil reserves in the world, and we can’t even create domestic independence, much less an export industry, is not only an embarrassing failure, but one can hardly imagine that it’s prudent national policy. Yet here we are.
Looking forward to a guarantee of massive government grants, alternative energy sources are the new frontier of capitalism, good at sponsoring the rhetoric that fits the stick-it-to-the-man perspective we seem to absorb with such fervour and lack of critical thinking. As for the other objectors, does anyone really think obstruction of pipelines can’t be salved with more money?
For its part, Alberta’s carbon tax will reduce energy use not a whit, but will cycle more money to government.
Ottawa’s new rules for project approval will be arbitrary, based on cabinet political opinion rather than the evidence-based science of National Energy Board professionals who achieve the most stringent standards on the planet.
This is nothing less than a way for the feds to take control of provincial assets — an egregious interference and outrageous demonstration of political swagger.
More dithering on pipelines is likely to make this all a moot point: Demand for oil doesn’t remain unsatisfied, and someone else will fill the order.
Delaying pipelines just changes who profits — and apparently, it won’t be Canada, even in Canada.
What rubes we must seem, behaving as though we believe other countries are joining us in a kind of lower-emissions Peace Corps initiative. Outmanoeuvred we are in this game, to say the least.
I couldn't agree any more.
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