Peter Zeihan explains* that Alberta is selling their fossil
fuels into the most saturated place in the market. This is causing us to get a
far cheaper price for our product (20-40 dollars cheaper than the going
international market value). The solution was the Keystone pipeline, which
would bypass this saturated market and move our product beyond it, hooking into
supply chains in the central United States, allowing us to get far more equitable
value for our energy resource.
The Trans mountain pipeline could also elevate this problem.
It would travel to the coast of BC, where tankers could take it to
international markets. But BC is dead set against this. BC is unconstitutionally blocking
Alberta and Saskatchewan’s route to market. Because of BC, we are landlocked
from accessing the Pacific Ocean. When the West separates, we will not take BC,
they can go it alone without us. (And there are solutions to access the Pacific
waterways without involving BC - which I will not go into here).
Furthermore, the Trudeau Liberals are against this western
pipeline trajectory. They changed the regulations hindering all pipeline
project approvals (retroactively, after some were already approved and
construction was underway). They even went so far as to purchase the Trans
mountain pipeline to stop the unrelenting private sector from building it. All
construction died with that coerced purchase. Contemplate the lunacy of that
act. A private venture that would cost taxpayers nothing and would enrich the government
was nationalized at a cost of 4.5 billion dollars in taxpayer money. They even
passed a federal ban on tankers off the BC shore. So even if we negotiate an
approval with BC to build the pipeline, we can’t ship it overseas. The federal government
will not allow us. Note that there is no such ban for the East coast Atlantic
Ocean. It is a selective ban to hinder Alberta’s development. And proving the Canadian government's maleficence, why would they buy and build a pipeline to a market that they have also obstructed via the tanker ban? They would be building an irrelevant pipeline to nowhere.
Lastly, the Trans Canadian pipeline's eastern venture would
give Alberta access to the Atlantic Ocean (where there is no tanker ban), and the international markets beyond
those shores; as well as eastern North American markets. However, Quebec pulled
a BC and refused to allow the pipeline to pass through its provincial
territory; again land locking us from Atlantic access. The Federal Liberals supported this illegal
blockage by ignoring it (and thus enabling it).
How do we solve this? If the federal government of Canada is
stopping us from moving our product both westward and eastward, we need southward.
Trump is pro-oil. He is working to have the Keystone pipeline built on the American
side. So it is necessary for him to win another term. Trudeau’s new environmental
approvals and carbon tax are hampering development on our side, but the
approvals will come, albeit slowly and costly. And the federal carbon taxes’
purpose is to make such projects uneconomical and to kill them. That creates a
larger problem: One that is only solved by stepping outside of Canadian regulations
and federal taxes. As the video suggests, we could simply join the USA giving
us access to these markets.
As for BC and westward movement, that province is dependent on our
fossil fuels. And with the tanker ban, they can’t even ship it in from another source from
overseas. They need us whether they know it or not. We can starve them into
compliance. And imagine how much more BC would have to pay if Alberta was
American, the currency shift alone would cost them another 25 percent for our
oil.
As for Quebec and eastern movement, their entire provincial
budget is largely funded by Alberta fossil fuels. By joining the United States of America we
would be liberated from punitive Canadian transfer payments. We can effectively abandon an eastern
pipeline and allow eastern Canada to live off of Middle Eastern oil (which is
what they are currently doing). And that would save us billions in dollars and
billions in headaches.
This illustrates a portion of the problem to those
interested, and the forced direction Alberta is now venturing towards. The video is below (watch from 40:29). Or click here.
*Peter Zeihan is a geopolitical strategist who specializes in global energy
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