Politics or economics? Revived Canada pipeline talks is ‘wishful thinking’: Expert
To build or not to build: that’s the question facing Canadian politicians, oil and gas experts and industry leaders when it comes to domestic pipelines, as U.S. President Donald Trump continues to tout plans for American energy independence.
In a wide-ranging virtual address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, Trump made an array of comments, including repeating his statement of not needing Canadian cars, lumber, or oil and gas amid the threat to impose 25 per cent across-the-board tariffs on Canadian imports.
His statements in recent weeks have fuelled conversations about where else Alberta could send its oil.
“We have to wake up to the reality that there’s been a major shift south of our border and at the same time, we have to look at diversifying our our market,” said Sonya Savage, who was Alberta’s energy minister under Jason Kenney.
“I think if you look back at the last 10 years, it’s been an extremely difficult time in the history of our country,” she said of cancelled pipeline projects such as Northern Gateway to the west, Energy East to the Maritimes, and the Keystone XL expansion to the U.S. Gulf Coast.
“I think it took this threat of tariffs coming out of the U.S. to expose how vulnerable we are in Canada,” said Savage, who before being elected was a oil and gas executive that, among other things, worked on the Northern Gateway pipeline project.
Savage argues the project moving Alberta oil to Kitimat on B.C.’s north coast would have opened up opportunity beyond the United States.
“I think the veto of Northern Gateway in 2016 was probably the biggest, if not one of the biggest, mistakes this country has ever made. That project would have would have moved 525,000 barrels of oil to the
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