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Biden chose Venezuela over Canada for oil

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6 minute read

From the MacDonald Laurier Institute

By Brian Lee Crowley

Biden is welcoming oil from one of Latin America’s most odious regimes. It’s a big win for Nicolás Maduro, but a bad deal for America and Canada

The United States needs more heavy oil for a whole series of reasons. President Joe Biden could have chosen to have that oil come from a close friend and ally, environmentally-conscious Canada, or from one of the world’s nastiest regimes, Nicolas Maduro’s Venezuela, which doesn’t give a toss about the environment. Which did he choose?

Venezuela, of course.

In exchange for modest concessions on electoral reform, the Biden administration just lifted sanctions on Venezuela, allowing them to export hundreds of thousands of barrels a day of vital heavy oil to the United States. The shale oil revolution has not and cannot change the fact that the US produces virtually no heavy oil, yet many of this country’s refineries, especially on the Gulf Coast, were set up to refine that kind of oil. Most of their heavy oil is from Canada, which is why that country is far and away the largest exporter of oil to America— more than twice as much as Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Russia, and Colombia combined. If America is now a net exporter of oil, it can thank Canada.

The war in Ukraine caused unpopular price hikes at the gas pump. In response, the Biden administration has drawn down the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). That drawdown focused on medium and heavy crudes. OPEC responded with supply cuts aimed at throttling the supply of these strategically important crudes.

The drawdown of the SPR is reaching its limits but the risk of higher gas prices in an election year is rising. To OPEC and Ukraine, we must now add the heightened risk of conflict spreading in the Middle East.

In this context, recall that one of the very first acts President Biden took on reaching office was to cancel the permit for the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline, a permit issued by his predecessor. Keystone XL was intended to provide 830,000 barrels a day of Canadian heavy crude to those Gulf Coast refineries. Pipe was already being laid.

Had President Biden allowed KXL to proceed, the supply of heavy oil to the US industry would have been secure, risky drawdowns of the SPR unnecessary and America would have been much less vulnerable to global supply disruptions and OPEC’s manipulations.

Instead, the President colluded with a campaign to vilify oil from Alberta’s oilsands as “dirty oil.” Yes, producing Canada’s heavy oil emits greenhouse gases. But then all heavy oil is GHG intensive, and Venezuela is the highest emitting in the world.

The Canadian oil & gas sector has invested heavily and successfully in emissions reductions. The industry has a $75 billion plan to decarbonize and achieve net zero by 2050, focused on carbon capture and storage and small modular nuclear reactors.

Venezuela has done nada in terms of real improvement in the environmental footprint of its heavy oil production. What it does have is a regime that is world-leading in terms of its human rights abuses and the damage it has inflicted on a once-prosperous economy. Every dollar America spends on Venezuelan oil will prop up one of the most violent and repressive regimes in the Americas, where Amnesty International says in 2022:

The security forces responded with excessive force and other repressive measures to protests…to demand economic and social rights, including the right to water. Impunity for ongoing extrajudicial executions by the security forces persisted. Intelligence services and other security forces, with the acquiescence of the judicial system, continued to arbitrarily detain, torture, and otherwise ill-treat those perceived to be opponents of the government of Nicolás Maduro.

A recent UN Fact Finding Mission to Venezuela talked about the “unremitting human rights crisis” and patterns of crimes against humanity in that country. Nearly 8 million Venezuelans are estimated to have fled the economic and humanitarian crisis there.

Meanwhile, Canada, while not perfect, has robust human rights protections and high environmental standards. It is also a magnet for immigrants (including tens of thousands of Venezuelans), having one of the highest shares of its population born elsewhere in any country in the world.

In 2021 President Biden was happy to offend one of America’s closest allies by blocking KXL because it was inconsistent “with my administration’s economic and climate imperatives.”  Three short years later, behind the fig leaf of Venezuelan electoral reform, he is welcoming much more environmentally damaging oil from one of Latin America’s most odious regimes, all to try and keep the price down at the pump. That’s a big win for Nicolás Maduro, but a bad deal for America and Canada.

Brian Lee Crowley is the Managing Director of the Center for North American Prosperity and Security (www.cnaps.org).

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2025 Federal Election

Mark Carney Wants You to Forget He Clearly Opposes the Development and Export of Canada’s Natural Resources

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From Energy Now

At COP26, Mark Carney also said that he thinks “we have both far far too many fossil fuels in the world” and “as much as half of oil reserves, proven oil reserves need to stay in the ground” climate goals.

Mark Carney claims that he supports Canada’s oil and gas industry and wants to see Canada export more of our natural resources. But Carney is yet again lying.

If Carney was sincere, he would immediately commit to the full repeal of the Liberals’ C-69, the ‘No More Pipelines’ Act, C-48, the West Coast Tanker Ban, and the production cap. Instead he doubled down on capping Canadian energy production.

But it’s not just that, Mark Carney has a clear history of opposing Canadian energy and infrastructure projects in favour of his radical anti-energy ideology and his goal of shutting down Canadian energy production.

However, while deliberately fighting against Canadian energy, this high flying hypocrite was having his company, Brookfield Asset Management, invest in some of the largest global pipeline projects in Brazil and the United Arab Emirates.

When asked by Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre at an Industry Committee meeting, if he supported Justin Trudeau’s decision to veto the Northern Gateway pipeline, Mark Carney said “given both environmental and commercial reasons … I think it’s the right decision.”

Then, just six months later at COP26, Mark Carney also said that he thinks “we have both far far too many fossil fuels in the world” and “as much as half of oil reserves, proven oil reserves need to stay in the ground” climate goals.

If this wasn’t enough Mark Carney has now teamed up with Trudeau’s radical anti-energy ministers to finish off Canada’s energy sector, a goal that he has outlined while attending a World Economic Forum event in Davos.

Starting with the radical, self-proclaimed socialist, Steven Guilbeault, who’s history of anti-energy and infrastructure policies is all too familiar to Canadians.

Mark Carney has enabled Steven Guilbeault to do even more damage by promoting him to his Quebec Lieutenant, giving him three new ministerial responsibilities so he can continue his climate crusade against Canadian energy and infrastructure projects.

Canadians remember when Guilbeault said that “I disagree with the [Trans Mountain] pipeline” and that “Canada shouldn’t be investing in new infrastructure for fossil fuels.”

They also remember when he proudly proclaimed that “Our government has made the decision to stop investing in new road infrastructure.” All from a minister who shamed Canadians for owning cars.

Then there is the pipeline hating Jonathan Wilkinson, who Carney appointed as Canada’s Minister of Energy and Natural Resources. Recently, Wilkinson wrote a scathing letter to Canada’s energy leaders for their opposition to the Carney-Trudeau Liberals production cap on Canadian oil and gas.

Despite Canadian industries being subject to unjustified tariffs from the United States, Jonathan Wilkinson recently told reporters that “Everybody’s sort of running around saying, ‘Oh my God, we need a new pipeline, we need a new pipeline.’ The question is, well, why do we need a new pipeline?”

Finally, there is Carney’s new Minister of Environment and Climate Change Terry Duguid.  Duguid has doubled down on Mark Carney’s climate radicalism by stating that “a Mark Carney government will maintain the cap on emissions from the production of oil and gas”.

From 2015 to 2021 Carney-Trudeau environmental and anti-industry policies have cancelled over $176 billion in Canadian energy projects, with many more being cancelled afterwards. That means $176 billion worth of jobs and powerful paycheques have been blocked from Canadians so Mark Carney and his Ministers can impose their radical net zero ideology.

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2025 Federal Election

Canada’s pipeline builders ready to get to work

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From the Canadian Energy Centre

By Deborah Jaremko

“We’re focusing on the opportunity that Canada has, perhaps even the obligation”

It was not a call he wanted to make.

In October 2017, Kevin O’Donnell, then chief financial officer of Nisku, Alta.-based Banister Pipelines, got final word that the $16-billion Energy East pipeline was cancelled.

It was his job to pass the news down the line to reach workers who were already in the field.

“We had a crew that was working along the current TC Energy line that was ready for conversion up in Thunder Bay,” said O’Donnell, who is now executive director of the Mississauga, Ont.-based Pipe Line Contractors Association of Canada (PLCAC).

“I took the call, and they said abandon right now. Button up and abandon right now.

“It was truly surreal. It’s tough to tell your foreman, who then tells their lead hands and then you inform the unions that those three or four or five million man-hours that you expected are not going to come to fruition,” he said.

Workers guide a piece of pipe along the Trans Mountain expansion route. Photograph courtesy Trans Mountain Corporation

“They’ve got to find lesser-paying jobs where they’re not honing their craft in the pipeline sector. You’re not making the money; you’re not getting the health and dental coverage that you were getting before.”

O’Donnell estimates that PLCAC represents about 500,000 workers across Canada through the unions it works with.

With the recent completion of the Trans Mountain expansion and Coastal GasLink pipelines – and no big projects like them coming on the books – many are once again out of a job, he said.

It’s frustrating given that this could be what he called a “golden age” for building major energy infrastructure in Canada.

Together, more than 62,000 people were hired to build the Trans Mountain expansion and Coastal GasLink projects, according to company reports.

O’Donnell is particularly interested in a project like Energy East, which would link oil produced in Alberta to consumers in Eastern and Atlantic Canada, then international markets in the offshore beyond.

“I think Energy East or something similar has to happen for millions of reasons,” he said.

“The world’s demanding it. We’ve got the craft [workers], we’ve got the iron ore and we’ve got the steel. We’re talking about a nation where the workers in every province could benefit. They’re ready to build it.”

The “Golden Weld” marked mechanical completion of construction of the Trans Mountain Expansion Project on April 11, 2024. Photo courtesy Trans Mountain Corporation

That eagerness is shared by the Progressive Contractors Association of Canada (PCA), which represents about 170 construction and maintenance employers across the country.

The PCA’s newly launched “Let’s Get Building” advocacy campaign urges all parties in the Canadian federal election run to focus on getting major projects built.

“We’re focusing on the opportunity that Canada has, perhaps even the obligation,” said PCA chief executive Paul de Jong.

“Most of the companies are quite busy irrespective of the pipeline issue right now. But looking at the long term, there’s predictability and long-term strategy that they see missing.”

Top of mind is Ottawa’s Impact Assessment Act (IAA), he said, the federal law that assesses major national projects like pipelines and highways.

In 2023, the Supreme Court of Canada found that the IAA broke the rules of the Canadian constitution.

Construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline. Photograph courtesy Coastal GasLink

The court found unconstitutional components including federal overreach into the decision of whether a project requires an impact assessment and whether a project gets final approval to proceed.

Ottawa amended the act in the spring of 2024, but Alberta’s government found the changes didn’t fix the issues and in November launched a new legal challenge against it.

“We’d like to see the next federal administration substantially revisit the Impact Assessment Act,” de Jong said.

“The sooner these nation-building projects get underway, the sooner Canadians reap the rewards through new trading partnerships, good jobs and a more stable economy.”

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