David Staples: Alberta offers a safe and sound way out of North America’s chaotic energy policy

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Two things can be true at once. First, that as long as Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau hold power, energy policy in North America will be chaotic. There will be too much emphasis on producing unreliable wind and solar power and far too many billions spent importing oil from violent and unstable dictatorships.

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Second, this is the best time in decades for Alberta to make its argument that our near inexhaustible oil reserves are the smartest and safest route to short-term energy security in North America (with next-generation Canadian and US-made nuclear power plants the long-term answer to global warming concerns).

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney gave his best sales pitch on Tuesday for Alberta oil at the massive Houston CERAWeek conference on world energy, but the big news was Biden announcing the US’s ban on oil and gas imports from Russia.

Energy security is the hottest domestic issue in the US right now. Biden and his Democrats from him are reportedly looking at importing more oil from dictatorships like Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Their longer term focus is on solar, wind and nuclear power. Republicans are even more pro-nuclear, but the beating heart of their energy security strategy is more domestic production and importing Alberta oil through the Keystone pipeline, a project axed by both Barack Obama and Biden.

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Former Republican vice-president Mike Pence just spent $10 million on an ad campaign to beat Democrats in tight districts in upcoming fall elections, with Biden’s rejection of the Keystone pipeline the main message: “Before Russian bombs fell on Ukraine, before hundreds of innocent Ukrainians lost their lives, a horrid decision had already been made. Joe Biden caved to the radical environmentalists and stopped America’s Keystone pipeline and dramatically increased America’s dependence on Russian oil, endangering America’s security and helping Russia fund the invasion.”

Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo weighed in on a related issue: “Biden is banning buying oil from one evil autocrat, only to buy it from two others. He should immediately reverse his ban on new oil and gas leases and restart the Keystone XL Pipeline.”

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In his own speech, Biden never mentioned Keystone, denied his administration’s policies had anything to do with high gas prices, and pushed for an acceleration of clean energy projects.

The Trudeau Liberals are singing from a similar hymn book, minus the nuclear power preference, with Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault, a long-time anti-nuclear activist, now pushing for quick deployment of a costly and unreliable mix of solar and wind, while denying Canada can do anything to fill in for Russian energy in Europe.

“Let’s be reasonable, we can’t help Europe with oil,” Guilbeault said in an interview withBloombergNews. “Our export capacity is pretty much maxed out. We’re building a pipeline. It’s just going in the wrong direction and the idea that we could somehow start to build a bunch of new infrastructure in Canada and it would magically happen — either for gas or for oil — is not very serious.”

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Guilbeault is right about that but in large part because his own government has made it near impossible for private companies to proceed with oil and gas projects and pipelines.

In Houston, Kenney countered Guilbeault, noting that governments can “de-risk” the Keystone XL project to proceed, something the TC Energy company understandably refuses to entertain just now given that Biden is in office.

But Kenney made a strong bid for other Americans to keep pushing for Keystone. If Biden has his way on imports, it will mean more funding for Saudi aggression in Yemen, for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and for the ongoing oppression of the Venezuelan people, Kenney said. “None of this makes — it is time for realism when it comes to global energy, and that is why I truly believe that Alberta and Canada are the answer.”

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Kenney pointed to Alberta’s record in environmental protection and its investments in clean hydrogen. “Do we want to continue to have a liberal democracy with bold ambitions on environmental performance to be effectively landlocked, while handing over a growing share of global energy markets to some of the world’s most unstable regimes? The people of Ukraine are paying the price for that right now.”

As much as Alberta has been ignored in the past, I suspect Kenney’s arguments will resonate in the US Energy security is going to be a ballot box issue for years to come, and I’ll end with a prediction, that voters will speak loudly, sweeping away leaders who fail to support domestic oil and gas, reject nuclear power, and imperil us all.

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