Canada has been selling 94% of our oil to the U.S. at below world market prices for decades.
“The US buys Canadian oil at a discount and exports at full price, which currently yields a US$19 billion annual windfall,” the CD Howe Institute reported earlier this year.
“The 4.4 million barrels per day imports from Canada permit the US to export a corresponding 4.4 million barrels per day of light oil (at) the benchmark WTI price of US$74 per barrel. This results in annual exports from the US of US$119 billion. These light crude oil exports to countries in Europe and elsewhere help the US reduce its trade deficits with those countries, and maybe even to achieve a trade surplus.”
Why?
“Canada’s barrels are also largely landlocked, with most production being far from North America’s key transport hubs and refineries, and its lower price reflects higher transportation costs and Western Canada’s limited access to global markets,” the Financial Post explained.
Breaking the U.S. monopoly for our petroleum exports has long been a Canadian goal.
Since 1953, the Trans Mountain pipeline, almost 1,500 Kilometres from Edmonton to Burnaby, has been carrying some Canadian oil to Asian markets … expanded from 300,000 barrels a day to 890,000 barrels a day in May 2024.
Literally, a drop in the potential bucket!
Now, it’s not just a goal: it’s a KEY to breaking Canada’s economic reliance/subservience to the U.S. in the face of President Donald Trump’s economic war against Canada!
The country and the people have never been more united, more determined to Buy Canadian and expand our exports to new markets.
So much so that Manitoba, Ontario and even Quebec, have now bought into the idea … and greater potential economic independence … of pipelines and port facilities that will allow Canadian oil and gas reach European markets!
But not BC.
Premier David Eby at first explained there was no proposal on the table for a new northern oil pipeline to increase exports to Asia: what major company or consortium would be stupid enough to waste hundreds of millions of dollars to scope out, prepare and propose such a project, in light of BC’s open animosity to the idea and Canada’s current emissions cap and ban on north coast tanker traffic?
Premier Danielle Smith … clearly anxious to get discussions/changes going again … last week announced Alberta would be committing $14 million to initiating a plan for a pipeline to the northern BC coast.
““What stands before us right now is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to unlock our wealth and resources and become a world-leading energy superpower,” Smith told a news conference in Calgary.
The response from Eby, and BC’s Coastal First Nations, was immediate and negative.
““The problem that we have is Smith continues to advance a project that is taxpayer-funded, has no private sector proponent, is not a real project and is incredibly alarming to British Columbians, especially First Nations along the coast,” Eby said.
“As the Rights and Title holders of B.C.’s North and Central Coast and Haida Gwaii, we must inform Premier Smith once again that there is no support from Coastal First Nations for a pipeline and oil tankers project in our coastal waters,” said Marilyn Slett, president of Coastal First Nations and elected Chief of the Heiltsuk Nation.
How “provincial”, how parochial, how selfish … and how sweet their sounds must be to Donald Trump and his friends/supporters in the US oil industry!
The message from Eby, the BC NDP government and the Coastal First Nations is clear: We’ll make sure Alberta cannot expand oil exports to Asia … so they’ll be forced to continue selling it at a discount, to US corporations that can then export it at world market prices!!
So much for turning Canada into an oil-based resource-based economic Superpower!
In my view, given Canada’s current economic strangulation … with hundreds of thousands of Canadian jobs in jeopardy or already lost … the federal government MUST roll over BC’s and Coastal First Nations’ obstructionism.
And, legally, the federal government has the right to do that!
Section 92 (10) of the 1867 Constitution Act granted the federal government exclusive authority over inter-provincial infrastructure … including pipelines, as reaffirmed in cases before the BC Court of Appeal and the Canadian Supreme Court.
“These projects are of such enormous value … nation-building projects to reduce our dependence on the United States … there are no projects that can produce the kind of wealth, export value, job creation and tax revenue as these oil sands projects,” former Alberta Premier Jason Kenney noted on CBC last week.
Kenney estimated a new pipeline could bring Canada $30 Billion dollars a year in revenues … greater than total revenues from lumber sales.
Meanwhile, BC is in a mess!
The 2025-26 Budget deficit is projected at $11.6 Billion and expected to increase to $12.6 Billion in 2027; the debt reaching $134 Billion in 2025 … UP more than 50% in two years.
Horrible!
And BC taxpayers are paying the price: the province’s Credit Rating was recently dropped by Fitch to an AA+, with a “negative” outlook, while S&P rated BC at A+, also with a “negative” outlook. A lower rating raises debt interest costs.
And how’s this: BC was the ONLY province to LOSE population this Spring; it now also has the lowest birthrate in Canada; and, just last week, Vancouver dropped to 36 on the Global Power list of 48 major cities … down from 20th in 2015.
(I guess someone from the “List” took a stroll down Granville Street downtown and saw what NDP policies/ideology have done there!)
Maybe that’s why BC is having trouble recruiting enough doctors to keep even Hospital Emergency Departments open?
Time to stop the bleeding.
The country cannot let BC NDP hard-line ideologues and Coastal First Nations militants keep Canada’s economy dependent and at the mercy of Donald Trump and the United States.
Time to remove the impediments blocking a new oil pipeline and other resource exports through BC to the world!
Harv Oberfeld
🇨🇦🇨🇦Check the labels! BUY CANADIAN!🇨🇦🇨🇦
(Follow @harveyoberfeld.ca on “X” from FREE First Alerts to new postings on this BC-based Blog.)