Contortions abound in Canadian energy politics.
British Columbia Premier John Horgan went to court on May 1 to challenge legislation enacted the day before by which Alberta authorized itself to restrict energy exports. Proclamation of Alberta Bill 12 was first-day business of the newly elected United Conservative Party government led by Jason Kenney.
Alberta’s former New Democratic Party government passed the legislation last year to pressure Horgan, also of the NDP, away from resistance to twinning of the Trans Mountain crude and products pipeline between Alberta and Burnaby, near Vancouver.
Alberta desperately needs new connections to world markets for its rising bitumen output.
But Horgan won’t have it. He sputters about pipeline safety but mainly wants to please climate extremists opposed to oil and gas projects.
Requesting more petroleum to burn is a strange tactic for that. On the same day he went to court, Horgan asked Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to dispatch more products for BC through the Trans Mountain line.
Although Trudeau shares Horgan’s disdain for projects associated with emissions of carbon dioxide, his government owns the pipeline. It bought the system from Kinder Morgan when Horgan stymied expansion, notwithstanding federal approvals.
Pipeline ownership doesn’t endear Trudeau to his environmentalist supporters, of course, but he knows political jeopardy when he sees it—not to mention new and vocal opposition from Kenney to his program of nationwide carbon taxation.
Trudeau cannot welcome Horgan’s complaints about high fuel prices in British Columbia, which has had an escalating carbon tax since 2008 atop other energy taxes and levies. The province also has Canada’s highest gasoline prices.
But do governments not tax emissions of CO2 for precisely that reason—to raise prices and discourage consumption of hydrocarbon energy?
So Trudeau has a pipeline he doesn’t want, ending in a province with a premier nervous about fuel prices urging him to use it in conflict with policy they both espouse.
Politicians elsewhere should take note: Environmental sanctimony can be hazardous.
(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted May 3, 2019. To comment, join the Commentary channel at www.ogj.com/oilandgascommunity.)
