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Beyond mere economics, the impact it could have on the democratic world is incomparable.
By Geoff Russ
By Resource Works
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At the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) convention in Toronto, Stewart Muir wrote of Daniel Yergin, “What a pleasure to see energy historian Daniel Yergin again today.”
Around the democratic world, from Washington to Tokyo to Brussels, policymakers and investors increasingly talk as if Canadian energy and minerals are strategic assets. In Canada itself, the argument is still treated as a quarrel.
Muir said the Vale Base Metals-hosted conversation had shifted from oil, the subject when he first interviewed Yergin years ago in Vancouver, to copper, which Yergin framed as essential to electrification, artificial intelligence, data centres and modern defence.
Muir’s summary was that Canada has the resource base and project pipeline, but still needs faster permitting, clearer policy and better supply-chain co-ordination to turn geological advantage into industrial strength. That is the same critique now being made, in different forms, about oil, gas and uranium.
The value of secure supply
Yergin’s own recent writing has sharpened the point. In the Financial Times and elsewhere, he argued that the Gulf War in the early 1990s had created a historic shock, with roughly 20 per cent of the world’s oil and LNG normally moving through the Strait of Hormuz. Today, however, the system is more resilient because supply is more diversified and the United States is now the world’s largest oil producer and LNG exporter. The implication for Canada is that in a volatile world, secure democratic supply matters more, not less.
Others have been even more explicit. 60 per cent of U.S. crude oil imports come from Canada, reaching 4.3 million barrels a day in July, and that nearly a quarter of U.S. refinery throughput is Canadian oil. Canada’s influence on global emissions is limited, but its influence on allied energy security is real. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith made the blunt political version, arguing that if Canada does not supply the world, less reliable regimes will.
The Canadian paradox
Yet the controversy in Canada is no longer whether politicians will utter the words “energy superpower.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney has done that. At Davos, he said, “Canada has what the world wants. We are an energy superpower,” while promising to fast-track investment. Heather Exner-Pirot pointed out that the rhetoric has run ahead of the machinery of government, and that “the noose is tightening, not loosening.” At a House of Commons committee, Lisa Baiton of CAPP said Canada needs “a new approach” if it truly wants to meet rising world demand.
That is the Canadian paradox. Allies want secure barrels, molecules and minerals. Analysts want Canada to use its century-scale reserves and its democratic credibility. Investors see the opening. Ottawa, at least in speeches, now sees it too. But Canada still hesitates at the point where speeches must become permits, pipelines, export capacity and hard decisions.
The democratic world seems increasingly settled on the value of Canadian energy. Canada is the holdout in its own case.
Geoff Russ is a writer for Resource Works, a non-partisan organization that champions responsible resource development in British Columbia and Canada. Reach Geoff at [email protected].
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