Energy
Biden chose Venezuela over Canada for oil

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?
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).
Daily Caller
Cover up of a Department of Energy Study Might Be The Biggest Stain On Biden Admin’s Legacy

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By David Blackmon
News broke last week that the Biden Department of Energy (DOE), led by former Secretary Jennifer Granholm, was so dedicated to the Biden White House’s efforts to damage the dynamic U.S. LNG export industry that it resorted to covering up a 2023 DOE study which found that growth in exports provide net benefits to the environment and economy.
“The Energy Department has learned that former Secretary Granholm and the Biden White House intentionally buried a lot of data and released a skewed study to discredit the benefits of American LNG,” one DOE source told Nick Pope of the Daily Caller News Foundation.. “[T]he administration intentionally deceived the American public to advance an agenda that harmed American energy security, the environment and American lives.”
And “deceived” is the best word to describe what happened here. When the White House issued an order signed by the administration’s very busy autopen to invoke what was supposed to be a temporary “pause” in permitting of LNG infrastructure, it was done at the behest of far-left climate czar John Podesta, with Granholm’s full buy-in. As I’ve cataloged here in past stories, this cynical “pause” was based on the flimsiest possible rationale, and the “science” supposedly underlying it was easily debunked and fell completely apart over time.
But the ploy moved ahead anyway, with Granholm and her DOE staff ordered to conduct their own study related to the advisability of allowing further growth of the domestic LNG industry. We know now that study already existed but hadn’t reached the hoped-for conclusions.
The two unfounded fears at hand were concerns that rising exports of U.S. LNG would a) cause domestic prices to rise for consumers, and b) would result in higher emissions than alternative energy sources. As the Wall Street Journal notes, a draft of that 2023 study “shows that increased U.S. LNG exports would have negligible effects on domestic prices while modestly reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. The latter is largely because U.S. LNG exports would displace coal in power production and gas exports from other countries such as Russia.”
An energy secretary and climate advisor interested in seeking truth based on science would have made that 2023 study public, and the “pause” would have been a short-lived, temporary thing. Instead, the Biden officials decided to try to bury this inconvenient truth, causing the “pause” to endure right through the final day of the Biden regime with a clear intention of turning it into permanent policy had Kamala Harris and her “summer of joy” campaign managed to prevail on Nov. 5.
Fortunately for the country, voters chose more wisely, and President Trump included ending this deceitful “pause” exercise as part of his Day One agenda. No autopen was involved.
So, the thing is resolved in favor of truth and common sense now, but it is important to understand exactly what was at stake here, exactly how important an industry these Biden officials were trying to freeze in place.
In an interview on Fox News Monday, current Energy Secretary Chris Wright did just that, pointing out that, fifteen years ago, America was “the largest importer of natural gas in the world. Today, we’re the largest exporter.”
He went onto add that, “the Biden administration put a pause on LNG exports 14 months ago, January of 2024, sending a message to the world that maybe the US isn’t going to continue to grow our exports. Think of the extra leverage that gives Russia, the extra fear that gives the Europeans or the Asians that are dying for more American energy.”
Then, Wright supplied the kicker: “They did this in spite of their own study that showed increasing LNG exports would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and have a negligible impact on price.” It was an effort, Wright concludes, to kill what he says is “America’s greatest energy advantage.”
This incident is a stain on the Biden administration and its senior leaders. The stain becomes more indelible when we remember that, when asked by Speaker Mike Johnson why he had signed that order, Joe Biden himself had no memory of doing so, telling Johnson, “I didn’t do that.”
Sadly, we know now there’s a good chance Mr. Biden was telling the speaker the truth. But someone did it, and it’s a travesty.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
2025 Federal Election
The High Cost Of Continued Western Canadian Alienation

From EnergyNow.Ca
By Jim Warren
Energy Issues Carney Must Commit to if He Truly Cares About National Cohesion and be Different From Trudeau
If the stars fail to align in the majority of Western Canada’s favour and voters from Central Canada and the Maritimes re-elect a Liberal government on April 28, it will stand as a tragic rejection of the aspirations of the oil producing provinces and a threat to national cohesion.
As of today Mark Carney has not clearly and unequivocally promised to tear down the Liberal policy wall blocking growth in oil and gas exports. Yes, he recently claimed to favour energy corridors, but just two weeks earlier he backtracked on a similar commitment.
There are some promises Carney hopefully won’t honour. He has pledged to impose punitive emissions taxes on Canadian industry. But that’s supposedly alright because Carney has liberally sprinkled that promise with pixie dust. This will magically ensure any associated increases in the cost of living will disappear. Liberal wizardry will similarly vaporize any harm Carbon Tax 2.0 might do to the competitive capacity of Canadian exporters.
Carney has as also promised to impose border taxes on imports from countries that lack the Liberals’ zeal for saving the planet. These are not supposed to raise Canadians’ cost of living by much, but if they do we can take pride in doing our part to save the planet. We can feel good about ourselves while shopping for groceries we can’t afford to buy.
There is ample bad news in what Carney has promised to do. No less disturbing is what he has not agreed to do. Oil and gas sector leaders have been telling Carney what needs to be done, but that doesn’t mean he’s been listening.
The Build Canada Now action plan announced last week by western energy industry leaders lays out a concise five-point plan for growing the oil and gas sector. If Mark Carney wants to convince his more skeptical detractors that he is truly concerned about Canadian prosperity, he should consider getting a tattoo that celebrates the five points.
Yet, if he got onside with the five points and could be trusted, would it not be a step in the right direction? Sure, but it would also be great if unicorns were real.
The purpose of the Build Canada Now action plan couldn’t be much more clearly and concisely stated. “For the oil and natural gas sector to expand and energy infrastructure to be built, Canada’s federal political leaders can create an environment that will:
1. Simplify regulation. The federal government’s Impact Assessment Act and West Coast tanker ban are impeding development and need to be overhauled and simplified. Regulatory processes need to be streamlined, and decisions need to withstand judicial challenges.
2. Commit to firm deadlines for project approvals. The federal government needs to reduce regulatory timelines so that major projects are approved within 6 months of application.
3. Grow production. The federal government’s unlegislated cap on emissions must be eliminated to allow the sector to reach its full potential.
4. Attract investment. The federal carbon levy on large emitters is not globally cost competitive and should be repealed to allow provincial governments to set more suitable carbon regulations.
5. Incent Indigenous co-investment opportunities. The federal government needs to provide Indigenous loan guarantees at scale so industry may create infrastructure ownership opportunities to increase prosperity for communities and to ensure that Indigenous communities benefit from development.”
As they say the devil is often in the details. But it would be an error to complicate the message with too much detail in the context of an election campaign. We want to avoid sacrificing the good on behalf of the perfect. The plan needs to be readily understandable to voters and the media. We live in the age of the ten second sound bite so the plan has to be something that can be communicated succinctly.
Nevertheless, there is much more to be done. If Carney hopes to feel welcome in large sections of the west he needs to back away from many of promises he’s already made. And there are many Liberal policies besides Bill C-69 and C-48 that need to be rescinded or significantly modified.
Liberal imposed limitations on free speech have to go. In a free society publicizing the improvements oil and gas companies are making on behalf of environmental protection should not be a crime.
There is a morass of emissions reduction regulations, mandates, targets and deadlines that need to be rethought and/or rescinded. These include measures like the emissions cap, the clean electricity standard, EV mandates and carbon taxes. Similarly, plans for imposing restrictions on industries besides oil and gas, such as agriculture, need to be dropped. These include mandatory reductions in the use of nitrogen fertilizer and attacks (thus far only rhetorical) on cattle ranching.
A good starting point for addressing these issues would be meaningful federal-provincial negotiations. But that won’t work if the Liberals allow Quebec to veto energy projects that are in the national interest. If Quebec insists on being obstructive, the producing provinces in the west will insist that its equalization welfare be reduced or cancelled.
Virtually all of the Liberal policy measures noted above are inflationary and reduce the profitability and competitive capacity of our exporters. Adding to Canada’s already high cost of living on behalf of overly zealous, unachievable emissions reduction goals is unnecessary as well as socially unacceptable.
We probably all have our own policy change preferences. One of my personal favourites would require the federal government to cease funding environmental organizations that disrupt energy projects with unlawful protests and file frivolous slap suits to block pipelines.
Admittedly, it is a rare thing to have all of one’s policy preferences satisfied in a democracy. And it is wise to stick to a short wish list during a federal election campaign. Putting some of the foregoing issues on the back burner is okay provided we don’t forget them there.
But what if few or any of the oil and gas producing provinces’ demands are accepted by Carney and he still manages to become prime minister?
We are currently confronted by a dangerous level of geopolitical uncertainty. The prospects of a global trade war and its effects on an export-reliant country like Canada are daunting to say the least.
Dividing the country further by once again stifling the legitimate aspirations of the majority of people in Alberta and Saskatchewan will not be helpful. (I could add voters from the northeast and interior of B.C., and southwestern Manitoba to the club of the seriously disgruntled.)
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