WASHINGTON –
Alberta Prime Minister Jason Kenny found mostly allies on Tuesday as he brought his Capitol Hill Pipeline Pulpit, urging largely Republican cadres of U.S. senators to stand behind the idea of new cross-border power lines and speak in defense of Line 5.
Speaking to a Senate committee, a rarity for Canadian politicians, Kenny used various adjectives to describe Alberta’s irritation with what he suggested was the White House’s deliberate blindness to the role his province could play in resolving energy issues. problems of America.
Existing cross-border pipelines currently have an additional capacity of about 300,000 barrels of oil per day, which will be filled by the end of the year, Kenny told the commission. Line reversals and other technical changes could add an additional 400,000 barrels.
And the controversial Trans Mountain line connecting Edmonton to the coast of British Columbia, which the federal government had to buy directly to do so, could generate an additional 600,000 barrels to be sent south by tanker when ready by the end of the year. next year, he said.
Alberta is already the largest single source of oil imports from the United States, Kenny added, with nearly 1.4 billion barrels, about 60 percent of 2.4 billion barrels imported from foreign sources last year, 10 times more than Saudi Arabia and five times the level of imports from OPEC countries.
However, as gasoline prices soar, Russian oil is banned and demand grows as fears of the COVID-19 pandemic fade, Alberta has never even received a phone call from President Joe Biden’s administration, Kenny said.
“We found it strange that after the invasion of Ukraine, there were clear efforts by the administration to contact OPEC, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Iran, but we have no evidence of efforts by the administration to contact Alberta,” Kenny said.
Alberta’s energy producers are now sticking to “incredibly ambitious environmental and emissions targets”, while the same cannot be said for the majority of state-owned enterprises operating in countries such as Venezuela, he added.
“Probably in the end, in a similar sense, we are punished because we are so self-critical. We are so transparent, “Kenny said. “I don’t think we really know the emission profile of energy produced in Venezuela.”
Kenny was joined virtually by Natural Resources Secretary Jonathan Wilkinson and personally by Natalie Camden, Quebec’s Deputy Minister of Mines, and Canadian Electricity President Francis Bradley to talk about ways the two countries could join forces in critical efforts. minerals.
Wilkinson dismissed, albeit diplomatically, Kenny’s suggestion that the United States had not come to knock on Canada’s door.
“We had constant talks with the administration and I have certainly spoken to (Energy) Secretary (Jennifer) Granholm many, many times since the invasion of Ukraine,” he said.
Canada increased its production by 300,000 extra barrels a day after the invasion, in part as a result of those discussions, including meetings with U.S. officials at the International Energy Agency meetings earlier this year in Paris, Wilkinson said.
“I was at the White House last week and I had similar conversations,” he added.
Most of the senators who appeared at the hearing were on the Republican side of the aisle. Only a handful of Democrats, including Sen. Catherine Cortes Masto of Nevada and Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper, joined by Independent Senator Angus King of Maine, appeared.
As a result, the committee has faced mostly friendly issues, many of them related to Biden’s decision to revoke the presidential permit to expand the Keystone XL pipeline, a Day 1 executive order that haunts medium-term cautious Democrats amid rising prices. the pump.
Wyoming Sen. John Baraso, a Republican-ranked member of the committee, immediately issued a press release after the hearing, demonstrating his swift, offensive Biden lines of inquiry.
“Is it fair to say that President Biden’s decision to kill the Keystone pipeline has increased costs, damaged the environment and added to problems in our supply chain?” Baraso asked.
“I think that’s a reasonable conclusion,” Kenny said.
Keystone XL, Kenny acknowledged, is “finished and dusted” – but that’s no reason why the United States can’t stand behind such a bilateral project, with many purchases from US suppliers, stakeholders and indigenous groups ending once. forever the country’s dependence on less favorable producers.
“With the political will of Washington, we could build another big pipeline that will forever allow the United States to get rid of imports from hostile regimes,” he said.
“The Alberta government is willing to work with you and your friends in the United States to build another major pipeline to achieve North America’s dream of energy independence and security.
Step 1, he added, needs to strengthen the protection of existing energy infrastructure, in particular Line 5, the Alberta-Michigan pipeline that Governor Gretchen Whitmer is trying to close to avoid an oil spill in the Makinak Strait, where it crosses the Great lakes.
For months, the White House has been diverting questions on line 5, insisting it will not take a public position while the case is in court. But Ottawa and the US State Department are in talks for a deal, at Canada’s urging, in hopes of halting Whitmer’s efforts.
“I don’t think there should be negotiations,” Kenny said. “The United States government must make it clear that it is against the national interest of this country to stop this project.”
Kenny also backed the idea of prioritizing Canadian oil and gas under the U.S. Defense Act, a Korean War-era law that allows the president to require businesses to prioritize the production, production and supply of certain materials during a crisis .
“The strategic decision to treat Canadian energy as American energy… would send an extremely important signal to our companies that there will be a future market here, that you are not hostile to Canadian energy.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on May 17, 2022.
Add Comment