Alberta’s oilsands, U.S. politicians have history
Biden’s shot at pipeline is province’s latest spar with U.S. — and may not be last
EDMONTON—If a U.S. politician decides to roll over a certain way, they can crush an entire Canadian province’s economic future.
It’s a fact of which oil-rich Alberta has long been aware.
In the past, boasting a healthy and stable industry, Alberta politicians have been able to gently lobby the Americans from a position of strength. But 2020 has seen the province’s oil industry battered and worn down by devastatingly low oil prices as well as the collapsing demand accompanying the COVID-19 pandemic.
Then, on Monday, came the latest gut-punch. The campaign of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, said he would not go ahead with the approval of the crossborder Keystone XL pipeline should he be elected president in November.
The stakes are high, for proponents and environmental critics alike. It’s a project that would see an estimated 830,000 barrels a day of crude transported from Alberta down to refineries on the Gulf Coast after its completion, which is currently set for 2023. It would provide billions in revenue to the province’s coffers over the years.
That said, Monday was just the latest turn for Alberta’s oilsands and Keystone XL, in particular, in the crosshairs of U.S. politics.
The initial phase of the project was first proposed in 2005 under former president George W. Bush, who has since reportedly called the Keystone XL expansion, proposed in 2008, a “nobrainer.” Years later, Barack Obama would nix Keystone XL due to the environmental impact of oil. President Donald Trump reversed that decision and approved the expansion in 2017.
Here’s a glimpse at some of the receptions — both friendly and hostile — that Alberta and its oilsands have received south of the border.
George Bush In many ways, oil was front and centre for the Republican president who led the U.S. into a war with Iraq in 2003. But he also appeared to recognize the need to wean his country off the politically turbulent product, at least when it came to imports.
In 2006, Bush said the U.S. was “addicted to oil” and that it needed to move away from it because oil often came from “unstable parts of the world.”
“The best way to break this addiction is through technology,” he said.
Alberta urged Bush to view the Prairie province as a stable supplier of oil as the world moved toward renewables. In 2006, the late Alberta premier Ralph Klein even travelled with a group of ministers to Washington where they promoted the province’s energy industries. Part of that tour included parking a massive yellow cargo truck, similar to the ones used in the Alberta oilsands, just outside National Mall in Washington.
The PR effort appears to have worked. In the years that followed, Canada’s oil exports grew and, as of 2018, made up more than 40 per cent of oil imports into the U.S.
But whether the iconic truck will come to represent the many others that today are idling in Alberta with less and less work, or the successful incursion of Prairie oil into the U.S. market, achieving energy independence, as some have termed it, remains an open question.
Barack Obama The Democratic president tiptoed for years around the Keystone XL pipeline, but finally put a stake in it in 2015, when he refused to approve the project, angering those in the Alberta industry who had experienced a collapse in oil prices only the year before.
Former prime minister Stephen Harper had criticized Obama for dragging his feet on approving it and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was “disappointed” at Obama’s decision in 2015.
Not long after, Trudeau’s government, under political pressure to show he could manage the environmental aim of emissions reduction as well as economic goals, would purchase the $4.5-billion Trans Mountain pipeline from Kinder Morgan. The move was met with tepid enthusiasm from Alberta, which had been desperate for more pipeline capacity to carry its energy products to markets in Asia via the pipeline. It left environmentalists and climate change activists outraged.
Mitt Romney
Mitt Romney’s stated goal as he campaigned to unseat Obama in 2012 was akin to Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s avowed goal today: North American energy independence.
“I have a vision for an America that is an energy superpower, rapidly increasing our own production and partnering with our allies Canada and Mexico to achieve energy independence on this continent,” Romney said at the time.
His plan included streamlining approval for pipelines from Canada to the U.S. and approving the Keystone XL pipeline. Obama’s camp, at the time, shot back, saying that energy independence should be achieved by boosting renewable resources.
Kenney said this week, in response to the stance taken by Biden’s campaign, that the premier wants to “ensure North American energy independence, economic growth and job creation,” especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, which has left many out of work.
Kenney said he was “disappointed” by the Biden campaign’s statement on Keystone XL.
Kenney’s government injected a $1.5-billion equity investment into the massive project this spring with a pledge to commit $6 billion as a loan guarantee in 2021 in partnership with owner TC Energy Corp.
Kenney said he wouldn’t rule out lodging a complaint with an international trade body should Biden revoke the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline.
“The government of Alberta would do everything within our power to defend our vital economic interests.”
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton was lobbied by environmentalists while she served under Obama as U.S. Secretary of State and was asked to kill the Keystone XL pipeline project.
Once she made her own bid for president against Trump in 2016, she said she wouldn’t give it her approval.
At the time, she was stuck between a rock and a hard place within her own party: the unions that supported the project and the environmentalists who opposed it — a tension still at play in 2020.
“I don’t think it’s in the best interest of what we need to do to combat climate change,” she said as she was eyeing
the presidency.
Al Gore
Al Gore, vice-president from 1993 to 2001, is now one of the most prominent environmentalists in the world. He’d been interested in environmental issues throughout his political career and has been an oil industry critic for many years since.
In 2018, long after leaving office, Gore interjected as former Alberta premier Rachel Notley was locked in a feud with her
British Columbia counterpart over the Trans Mountain pipeline.
“The Kinder Morgan pipeline carrying dirty tarsands oil would be a step backward in our efforts to solve the climate crisis,” Gore wrote, along with the #stopKM hashtag.
Notley slammed the former vice-president for “a lack of understanding about the overall issue and all the facts” citing widespread support in Canada for the project.
“I just think it’s starting to fall on a larger and larger number of deaf ears,” she said of criticisms around Alberta’s oil. Kenney, who was Opposition leader in Alberta at the time, called Gore’s remark “an inconvenient lie from a jet-setting millionaire,” seemingly referencing Gore’s storied global warming campaign laid out in the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”
“While the USA & OPEC countries ship more oil, this hypocrite who owns multiple mansions & flies private jets wants to landlock Canadian oil,” Kenney tweeted.
Donald Trump
The Keystone XL project was a mere footnote in the race between Clinton and Trump, but he made waves in Canada when he eventually approved the project in 2017.
The decision followed years of political resistance in Canada and the U.S., court battles and protests. “It’s a great day for American jobs and a historic moment for North America and energy independence,” Trump said at the time.
Now, Alberta will wait to see what happens in the next U.S. election, slated to take place in November with an anticipated race between Trump and Biden.