GOLDSTEIN: Carney’s claim he wants to make Canada energy superpower is suspect

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The problem with Prime Minister Mark Carney saying he wants to make Canada an “energy superpower” in both conventional and clean energy is that Canada is already a superpower in conventional energy.

We’re the world’s fourth largest producer of oil and fifth largest producer of natural gas.

The problem is that when it comes to exporting our oil and natural gas to anywhere but the U.S., we’re a 10-pound weakling.

Last year 97% of our oil exports and all of our natural gas exports went to the U.S. at a huge discount because it’s our only customer, costing the Canadian economy an estimated $25 billion a year.

Before we can address that, we have to build up our energy infrastructure, and the key to that is to build more pipelines and processing and refining plants, so we can get our vast landlocked oil and natural gas resources from western Canada to tide water and from there to global markets.

Doing so would be a win-win for Canada, making us less dependent on the U.S. which, as Carney says, is no longer a reliable trading partner, while injecting billions of new dollars into our economy, including new taxes paid to government to fund such things as health care, income support programs and social services.

It would also help to address concerns of the Alberta and Saskatchewan governments about federal policies that negatively impact their economies and thus bolster national unity.

The problem with Carney’s statement is that he also supports Bill C-69, the so-called “no pipelines” bill which imposes so many regulatory delays on building energy infrastructure that it makes it financially untenable for the private sector to do it.

A case in point is the Trans Mountain expansion, which the federal government had to finance, although even that has had a positive impact on our economy, increasing our exports from Canada’s west coast to foreign markets other than the U.S., albeit for only a tiny fraction of Canada’s total oil production.

A recent report by the Montreal Economic Institute estimated that building just two cancelled projects, the Energy East oil pipeline and GNL Quebec’s natural gas facility, would have diverted 27.7% of our existing oil exports away from the U.S. to other markets at a value of $36.7 billion and 19.4% of our exports of natural gas at a value of $1.7 billion.

In addition, these two projects alone  would have generated almost $30 billion in new capital investments according to initial estimates, creating new jobs and boosting our economy.

Carney’s distinction between “clean” and “conventional” energy is also misleading because replacing coal-fired electricity with natural gas is the single most effective way to reduce global industrial greenhouse gas emissions because natural gas burns at half the carbon dioxide intensity of coal.

The global demand for natural gas became evident both during the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (given that Russia is a significant supplier of natural gas to Europe) when political leaders from Japan, South Korea, Germany and Poland, among other countries, all sought exports of LNG  (Liquified Natural Gas) from Canada.

Canada’s first large-scale LNG project — LNG Canada in Kitimat, B.C. — is scheduled to begin operations later this year, delivering LNG to Asian markets, with many other projects still going through Canada’s lengthy regulatory process.

While Carney’s rhetoric on turning Canada into an energy superpower is welcome, his illogical support of Bill C-69 makes it suspect.