For too long, the oil and gas industry has been vilified by those ignorant to its critical role in supplying a product absolutely essential to our way of life. Having endured an eight-year bear market that witnessed several price collapses due first to the rise of shale hyper growth in the United States, and then to a pandemic-induced demand shock of epic proportions, the willingness of industry to make risky, long-dated investment in new productive capacity has plummeted.
A recently published analysis by a consumer advocacy nonprofit maintains that shutting a 4.5-mile section of a nearly 70-year-old pipeline that spans the Great Lakes from Wisconsin to Ontario would impose $23.7 billion in higher fuel costs on families and businesses in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
Consumer Energy Alliance’s (CEA) 14-page report estimates that closing Canada-based Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline in the Straits of Mackinac, which connect Lake Michigan to Lake Huron, would spur regional fuel price spikes of 9.47 to 11.66 percent “independent of any other market conditions, such as the surge in fuel prices observed over the past 12 months that are tied to international oil markets and logistical challenges caused by the pandemic.”
The US and the EU have announced a major deal on liquified natural gas, in an attempt to reduce Europe’s reliance on Russian energy.
The agreement will see the US provide the EU with at least 15 billion additional cubic metres of the fuel – known as LNG – by the end of the year.
The bloc has already said it will cut Russian gas use in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russia currently supplies about 40% of the EU’s gas needs.
I bet Canada was considered an unreliable source of energy thanks to the idiot in Ottawa.
Ukraine war: How reliant is the world on Russia for oil and gas?
The US and EU have agreed a deal for the US to supply liquified natural gas to help reduce Europe’s reliance on Russian energy.
It follows restrictions on oil and gas imports from Russia after it invaded Ukraine in February.
What about Canada Justin?
… Fortunately, our challenge is one of policy, not geology. We have the resources to supply significant domestic production for many of the metals most essential to advanced energy technologies. From nickel and cobalt to graphite, copper, lithium and rare earths, we have them, and with further exploration and mapping, likely even more than we realize. Promising lithium reserves and projects in Nevada, California, Arkansas, North Carolina and even Maine speak to the variety and breadth of the resources within reach. But producing these resources remains an enormous challenge made only more difficult by self-imposed barriers.
The future does not happen without nuclear.
We need energy and renewables can’t provide, so best to just lean into it
Covid rates are abating just in time for surging gas prices to eclipse the pandemic as our crisis du jour, and people from both sides of the political aisle are crying out in unison: something must be done!
The current energy crisis debate consists of a few camps: one group professes that they can’t abide fossil fuels being used at all, while another can’t imagine living without them. The third group makes up the middle of the Venn diagram, and though a paradoxical state of mind, it contains the most members.
“The Biden administration has flirted with lifting oil sanctions on once-shunned Venezuela to temper surging oil prices, yet it appears unwilling to encourage investment in domestic energy production,” Fox News reported.
Meanwhile, Biden’s advisers “are discussing a possible visit to Saudi Arabia this spring to help repair relations and convince the Kingdom to pump more oil,” Axios reported.
But one Canadian energy official last week expressed frustration with the Biden administration for not just turning to its neighbor to the north, which is among the world’s top oil producers.
The projected cost of twinning the Trans Mountain pipeline has nearly tripled because of natural disasters, environmental protection measures and rising debt payments, according to the government-owned pipeline corporation.
The latest figures show TMX’s initial $7.4 billion price tag — projected when the federal government purchased the project in 2018 — has since ballooned to $21.4 billion.
The federal Department of Finance updated those figures in February during a Friday news conference — held on a day when media outlets were distracted by Ottawa police beginning to clear out an entrenched anti-vaccine mandate convoy protest on Parliament Hill.
More than a year after President Joe Biden killed the Keystone XL project, support for the pipeline has surged in the U.S. in the wake of the country’s ban on the import of Russian oil, a new poll shows.
The exclusive poll of Americans conducted by Maru Public Opinion for Postmedia found that 71 per cent of Americans think Biden should give an executive order to “green light the restart of the building of the Keystone XL pipeline that would transport oil from Canada’s oil sands region through the Midwest to refineries in Texas.”
