We should stop caving in to North American virtue signallers
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has launched the latest political hit job on a Canadian pipeline. Whitmer is targeting Enbridge’s Line 5, which runs from Alberta through the Great Lakes region to refineries and chemical plants in Sarnia, Ont. The Sarnia terminus sells to companies that make products that fuel cars, trucks, vans, ships and airplanes…
Anyone who thinks the U.S. can do without Canadian oil, especially heavy oil, is misinformed. Canadian oil is critical to the Americans
By Mark Milke and Lennie Kaplan Canadian Energy Centre The United States banned exports of crude oil in the mid-1970s, as the result of an oil embargo directed at the U.S. by Middle Eastern countries. The embargo began as a result of American support for Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In response, some…
Are we prepared for the economic consequences of shutting them down?
By Mark Milke and Lennie Kaplan Canadian Energy Centre There’s nothing like real life as a corrective to Disney-like musings, where fantasies are concocted absent any connection to reality. The newest example comes from a recent ransomware attack directed against Georgia-based Colonial Pipeline. The American pipeline company, which ships 100 million gallons of refined fuel…
453,000 km worth of tubes provide a plethora of jobs
By Mark Milke and Lennie Kaplan Canadian Energy Centre “Designing hypothetical roadmaps outlining complete elimination of fossil carbon from the global energy supply by 2050 is nothing but an exercise in wishful thinking that ignores fundamental physical realities,” wrote Vaclav Smil a year ago. Smil, a University of Manitoba professor of the environment (emeritus), wants less…
Canada was the only free-country supplier of foreign crude oil to the U.S. between 1993 and 2020
By Mark Milke and Lennie Kaplan Canadian Energy Centre Imagine you’re in Germany and wonder if it’s a good idea to rely so heavily on natural gas imports from Russia, where the governing regime is accused by German politicians of killing journalists and the attempted murder of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. German Chancellor Angela…
Given what was known about Keystone XL, it’s hard to understand the decision-making the government undertook to buy into the scheme
The long-suffering citizens of Alberta recently learned that they’re on the hook for yet more billions of dollars via an ill-advised investment in an oil pipeline. The Keystone XL project was festooned with red flags well before the injection of hard-earned and now lost taxpayer funds. Political risk can be hard to quantify but it’s…
Canadian oil helps keep the United States economy humming and natural gas helps keep American homes warm
By Mark Milke and Lennie Kaplan Canadian Energy Centre In a world where Russian President Vladimir Putin is widely assumed to be behind the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, liberal democracies should stick together. This should be especially relevant on matters related to energy. Russia has been using energy exports as a weapon for…
A vocal minority opposed to resource development damaging our prosperity
By Mark Milke and Lennie Kaplan Canadian Energy Centre Oil and natural gas pipelines are like light switches on the wall. You take them for granted, along with the expectation that once flipped, your lights will come on. In normal company and normal times, few people would discuss over dinner something as arcane as tubes…
Reducing our dependence on any one particular market or supplier makes us much less vulnerable to arbitrary and unfair treatment
“It’s not fair!” How often have parents heard this loud, angry declaration from young children at any real or perceived injustice? Children have an innate sense of fairness that demands to be respected. Hence the practice of asking one child to divide a piece of cake and the other to choose first. Fairness has become…
An expected new nuclear deal, a pipeline project and an easing of sanctions all contribute to increased production and exports
Crude oil markets are focused on the Iran nuclear deal. A new United States administration under President Joe Biden has pledged to revert to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal. The world awaits the next moves, which will set the contours of future Iranian oil output. With…