Former United Conservative Party energy minister Sonya Savage spoke the truth on Friday when she forcefully suggested on a podcast that without public funding Premier Danielle Smith’s perpetual pipeline project is little more than a pipe dream.
This has been obvious from the get-go, of course. Still, it’s nice to hear someone long influential in the Alberta oilpatch and once associated with the United Conservative Party, albeit back when Jason Kenney still bestrode this province like a political colossus, saying aloud what no member of Ms. Smith’s cowed cabinet dares to admit.
To wit, as Ms. Savage told the CBC’s West of Centre podcast in a widely quoted clip, the chances of any private-sector actor ever stepping up to build another pipeline to Canada’s West Coast are basically zilch.
When podcast host Kathleen Petty asked her three panelists – Ms. Savage, former Liberal MP Martha Hall Findlay, and former Canadian Energy Regulator CEO Gitane De Silva – if they agreed the chance of a private proponent stepping forward to build the pipeline was diminishing, Ms. Savage responded: “I would say it’s not just diminishing … I would say it’s almost zero at this point.”
Ms. Savage spoke this so mildly that the exclamation mark her thought deserves can’t be used. Just the same, it was an important point made by someone who has an insider’s knowledge of both the fossil fuel business and the politics of pipeline building.
As befits the holder of the energy portfolio when Mr. Kenney’s bad bet on Donald Trump winning the 2020 U.S. presidential election and quickly restarting work on the Keystone XL pipeline cost Alberta taxpayers $1.5 billion, Ms. Savage went on to indicate she doesn’t have a problem with governments paying for pipelines.
“There’s going to be politics in there, and politicians are going to want to reinforce their narrative on how urgent it is to get a new West Coast pipeline going,” she explained calmly.
But since the hope that a private proponent will come forward is a faint one and with Venezuelan heavy crude re-entering the U.S. market sooner or later, as we have been saying here for months, public investment is the probably the only way Alberta’s pipeline demands can be met.
Anyway, governments playing a big financial role in building pipelines is nothing new in Canada, Ms. Savage kept trying to say, despite serial interruptions from the podcast host and the fact that little effort was made to identify which of three guests with similar voices were speaking at any given time.
Of course, as the podcast participants acknowledged, Premier Smith’s deal with Prime Minister Mark Carney requires a proponent to emerge from the private sector, but it seems likely that requirement will be tossed under the bus if the prevailing mood persists that, with Mr. Trump back in the White House, it’s in the national interest to get cracking on another bitumen pipeline to the coast so we can sell the stuff to China.
Never mind that China is electrifying at Manhattan-Project speed to avoid having to strategically depend on anything that must be shipped through the South China Sea and that for similar geopolitical reasons the Trump Administration is unlikely to permit Canada to sell anything of strategic value to China.
So much for Ms. Savage’s views on the likelihood of another pipeline getting built without taxpayers having to pony up. However, she also had some relevant and interesting observations on the likely impact on Alberta government budgets of shipments of Venezuelan heavy crude resuming to the United States.
For some reason, despite being quite significant, these seem to have generated less interest from the media that jumped all over her pipeline commentary.
“It doesn’t seem to be disputed that 10 per cent of Canadian oil could be at risk in the short term,” she observed. Right now, she added, we ship about four million barrels a day to U.S. refineries – most to the U.S. Midwest, and about 350,000 to 450,000 a day to refineries on the Gulf Coast. “That’s what’s at risk, that 350 to 450 thousand barrels a day to the Gulf Coast.”
So, never mind the impact on the energy industry and energy users, she continued. “You have to look at what the impact is, not only on the oil producers and the energy industry, but what is the impact on governments, on government revenue? And in Alberta, 10 per cent is not chump change!”
“Ten per cent of the production is a significant impact on the provincial budget and on royalties,” she explained. “Even a $1-a-barrel decrease in the price of oil, or a spread in the differentials, is $750 million dollars to the provincial budget in royalties.
“The provincial budget was predicated and budgeted on $64 a barrel, Western Canada Select is 14 bucks lower than WTI …” (That is, West Texas Intermediate, a global benchmark for international oil prices.) “WTI is about seven bucks lower right now than the provincial budget forecasted.”
Cue sinister music … “So we’re looking at about a $9 billion deficit,” she concluded, “and that’s a reason to pull the fire-alarm bell for the provincial budget.”
Just imagine how Alberta politicians will respond to the prospect of a deficit of $9-billion or more!
Service cuts and privatization, of course. More covetous eyes cast at your Canada Pension Plan funds, naturally. And with another pipeline proffered as a panacea absent any proponent, what do you think is going to happen?
Trump was apparently not very pleased when the head of Exxon recently said Venezuela was uninvestable. I suspect that was very triggering for him because that term was likely used in the past by someone he hoped would finance one or more of his many dubious, failed business schemes.
Likewise, it is quite possible another pipeline to the Pacific is also now univestable. I suspect our PM, who understands finance and business better than our former talk radio host Premier, realizes this. Ms. Savage who understands the energy business also seem to realize this. I don’t know if she got a Christmas card in 2025 from the Premier, but after speaking such uncomfortable truths publicly she is probably now off the list for 2026.
I actually thought Savage made the case for government involvement better than anyone else has so far. However, after how the UCP criticized the Liberals relentlessly despite their support for the Trans Mountain pipeline, it will take much more than this to convince them. As they say, once burned twice shy.
Lastly, I am amazed so few in Alberta are talking about the size of the deficit yet given languishing oil prices. The citizens of Albertans are in for a big shock soon. Although sadly, it will take more than a new pipeline to solve the fiscal problems caused by languishing oil prices.
Many are under a variety of pundit delusions:
It won’t have any short-term impact. We’re looking at billions of dollars to refit the refineries. The US couldn’t possibly put dilbit in tankers like the Russians did. Armed militias are waiting to kidnap Americans. How will they get oil from the wells (the way they do now)? Venezuelan oil is hugely different from Canadian oil, so refineries in Texas will have to be retooled to process it (never mind what the engineers say: that it’s essentially interchangeable). Look at the price at the pumps: $1.25/L. See, it’s all good!
Besides, if we separate from Canada the US might offer us each $10,000 like they did to the Greenlanders. We’ll be rich! Good luck with that. Please don’t look at what happened in the US before the (first) Civil War.
I was hoping that a few minutes of the podcast could have been devoted to Smith acting as a Quisling. or a Fifth Column, or a Petain while Canada is under threat. Maybe next weeks podcast.
Finally someone said the quiet part out loud. Nobody is paying for that pipeline unless the taxpayers, do.
Now let’s say the obvious part out loud. Part of Geopolitics is GEOgraphy.
Trump will soon have Greenland. We will have Greenland on one side of us, Alaska on the other and separatist loons from within. The USA below us and like Venezuela, the US war machines can park in our harbours and blockade us any time they like, thus cutting off our sales to any country they deem their enemy. They don’t want us to trade with anybody but *them* and they have little need for our oil and they don’t want to pay for it. They’d love it if the taxpayers were on the hook for a pipeline so their oiligarchs can just steal all the oil at a profit. There will be no CUSMA or any other deals whereby the USA isn’t just snatching everything up for free or near to while they sell us massive wads of their worthless treasury bonds and future debt to survive them.
Can we all just stop singing “la la la” with our fingers in our ears like Carney is doing right now and ignoring the geopolitics? Especially you, Alberta separatists?
This isn’t just Trump’s doing. It’s right there in their security statement that nobody will be allowed to sell to anybody but them. He didn’t write that…he’s functionally illiterate. It will go on, quietly or loudly, regardless of who the USA puts into power after him.
This is their plan.
Our mission, should we decide to accept it, is to find ways to stop it.
⊙﹏⊙ Gunboat diplomacy.
Just a point of clarification, the oil companies and insiders that have commented on the uninvestibility of Venezuela are talking about TACO Trump policies, not the internal stability of Venezuela.
The quote I read was something along the lines of “why would I invest when the entire foreign policy of the United States can change overnight via tweet?”
As far as Greenland goes, I honestly doubt it. It’s EGO creep, Trump didn’t get what he wanted in Venezuela, so now he’s going back to pick on some easier targets.
Don’t forget the poorly redacted Epstein files (which are still being released) Trump wants a distraction from his many, many crimes, and his many many failures, as a person, as a president, as a father, as a businessman, as commander in chief of the USM, as a statesman.
Dying empires rarely do it overnight, but they very rarely reconstitute to their former epoch, I would say that’s never happened anywhere in history, actually.
No, they are also talking about Venezuela which has nationalized at least one oil company twice in the past and could do again. Also there are gangs and/or guerrillas seeking revenge on Americans right now, so it seems like an unsafe place to send American employees.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/guerilla-venezuela-colombia-9.7041252
@Little Bird
Trump’s been talking about Greenland since his first term. You’re not wrong that it’s a convenient escape from his myriad failures on the domestic front. I suspect it’s more than that though. It’s an object lesson to other countries, just like the genocide in Gaza was a media storm of public cruelty to warn the masses, “Fight back and You will be next”
Much as we all loathe Trump, that instability didn’t just come from him–the USA has been robbing Peter to pay Paul in debt-ridden quagmire of their own making since Nixon went off the gold standard and been an oligarchy to some degree since it’s inception. Or as the quip goes, “No matter who you vote in, you get John McCain”
Right now the oligarchs are just robbing the artwork in the castle hoping to get their riches out of the country before the peasants revolt against Trump’s brown shirt army flooding the streets.
Empires do a crapton of damage before they finish falling. As the “protectorate” of one we need to figure out what of that damage, we can mitigate.
Russia had socialized housing, healthcare, transport, and communication, covered. Thus making their fall softer before the oligarchs swooped in and stole the rest. All of that in America is privatized already.
What do we need?
Savage did her damage to the province, now she is talking about other damagers.
I am tired of this script in our politics. We need to disclose them before they do the damage like Rose Lemay did about Pierre Poilievre. Here is just one paragraph.
‘Ironically, Poilievre’s line about socialism comes from the guy who makes approximately $300,000 per year, has a guaranteed pension, publicly funded health care, and a free house to boot. If he truly is against socialism, he can give back his pension, provincial health card, and the house. Be free!’
I wished we would just be less ‘Canadian Nice’ and more real about these predators.
@Carlos
I too find it appalling when those who benefit the most from public benefits–decide they’re pulling up that ladder for everyone else.
The USA is subsidizing every single mega-corporation in their country whilst cutting SNAP and medicare budgets.
None of those corporations with their 800x CEO:worker paycheques and record profits are offering to give any of their subsidies back.
That’s what PP wants for us, here. Bad enough we’re subsidising corporate interests to the extent we already are. Witness the Quebec Amazon fiasco.
I’d like to see us start to disengage from that kind of neo-liberalism and keep our profits to ourselves.
what can I say B. I could not agree more. I am tired of this Neo-Liberal garbage, using propaganda to convince people that they have to submit to this corporate feudalism and this inequality that is destroying everything we built with so much work. This is entrenched just like it was planned starting in the 80s and I doubt we will be able to change this without a strong fight. In the meantime the dodos in the US are all proud they are about to create the very first Trillionaire. Great what an accomplishment. In the meantime the government is now killing people at will. We should not just disengage from neo-liberalism but also from the US as much as possible. Unfortunately Carney is a NEO from top to bottom and the values in his book were just to get elected.
@Carlos,
You’ve just put my problems with Carney together in a nutshell.
While he’s globtrotting deals, which isn’t a bad thing necessarily but (don’t we have trade ministers for that?)–where is the housing he promised?
I don’t see any of my neighbours stacked up with their whole families into one-bedroom apartments because they can’t afford to move–packing their bags for their new modular homes any time soon.
I’m a pragmatist. Why should anyone fight for their homes when they don’t have one…
Don’t get me started on the monopolistic grocery chains that have been allowed to hold every citizen here to ransom.
I am not sure this URL will work but if you are interested to read, I think it is a great article. I never liked Pierre Poilievre, he just behaves as Trump 2. Somehow conservatives like him. I would like to understand why.
https://www.hilltimes.com/story/2026/01/12/poilievre-praises-a-president-who-threatens-democracies-including-ours-on-a-daily-basis/487322/
Love your “lady in the van” slip in the following sentence: “public investment is the probably the only way Alberta’s pipeline demands can be met.” My sense is you should have put parenthesis around the word “probably.”
It may be in Canada’s strategic interest to sell wheat, or now tar oil, to China. The Yanks won’t like it any better than they did when the Canadian Wheat Board defied the US food embargo against China, but so what? On the other hand, will the market for tar oil be there long enough to pay for a welfare pipeline? Might it be more intelligent to enhance the TMX? It is not running at capacity and its ability to economically load oil tankers is limited by its port facilities.
The collapse of the US global system seems likely to turn into a cascade in the near future. If this occurs it also seems likely that the Canadian population will be subjected to significant upheavals as the hegemon adjusts to the loss of control in other regions of the empire. We’re not even one century out from the socioeconomic conditions of the Great Depression and we could easily be rendered to the state of 1991-99 Russia. It probably wasn’t a great idea to accept the demonstrably absurd tenets of colonialism and late-stage finance capitalism as a way to go through life.
@Murphy
If I nod “yes” any harder my head will snap off
It’s an incredibly shallow reading of Canadian history to suggest the current system was created by anyone other than the elites who founded this country as crown loyalist resource extraction project that always saw Canada as a prize rather than an equal.
We are the victims of the elite, we aren’t their enablers. We (the people, our friends and families and small lives) have just been trying to survive.
Why would the O&G industry pay any of its expenses when industry-captured governments and politicians are willing to pick up the tab?
Federal and provincial governments are happy to cough up billions of dollars for CCS, pipelines, SMRs, blue hydrogen, clean-up and reclamation, etc.
Does CNRL need pencils and paper? OK, put it on the taxpayers’ tab.
Does Suncor’s CEO need a new private jet? Fine, put it on our bill.
Privatize the profits, socialize the costs. The fossil fuel industry’s business model.
Kinder Morgan showed us how it’s done.
Propose a pipeline.
Lowball the costs.
When costs rise, ring the alarm bells.
Point fingers at protestors, indigenous communities, and legal challenges.
Get government to “backstop cost overruns outside the company’s control”.
When costs spiral out of control, threaten to walk away.
Get Alberta’s Premier to light a match under the separatists.
Feds buy the pipeline in the “national interest”. (Corollary: Pipeline opponents are unpatriotic, if not traitorous.)
Taxpayers pick up the tab, billions over budget.
Creative accounting transfers debt to shell corporation.
Government minister proclaims pipeline is profitable, after all.
Mission accomplished.
“Is Trans Mountain’s Profitability an Accounting Illusion?” (The Tyee, 2025/12/23)
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2025/12/23/Trans-Mountain-Profitability-Accounting-Illusion/
The Government of Canada turns out to be an ill-disguised mechanism for siphoning public dollars from the public treasury into the pockets of largely foreign shareholders of oil and gas companies.
Another glorious win for free enterprise.
Potatoes. Don’t you know “there’s more than one way to peel a potato”? For these and other handy kitchen tips, visit any Alberta food bank where you can pick up a hamper containing nature’s starchy goodness packed (smugly, while gloating) by Premier Potato Head herself from spuds dropped on the legislature steps during the teachers’ strike. Hurry hard! Corporate donations to food banks will drop like a rotten russet when business dries up and individual donors become the ones seeking hampers. Don’t miss out. If you do, just lay your weary body on the road for the incoming American tanks. Mashed is fine.
https://youtube.com/shorts/6yzxyv0FiAc?si=-DqQofTNvu8yC8C1
I do not mention this lightly. But since certain Alberta ex- and current politicians have trotted it out when it suits them for political points, here goes. Canada is the next Scotland during the land clearances. Canada is the next Ireland during the potato famine. Food is always a weapon of war. Genocide happens when the people are too weak to fight back. Clear the people out, then take their land. The “jokes” by our premier about potatoes are as funny as Donald Trump’s “jokes” about taking over Canada. They’re not jokes. They’re a warning shot off the bow.
Think about it. Canada is the next Ukraine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
No, the “genocide famine” is not going to happen in Alberta. Good grief man. We are not an agrarian peasant society, just for starters. Secondly, uh, we are the ones who took the land, and attempted to starve and drive out the historical population. We did this. We were largely successful. Third, I don’t know how often you’re talking to farmers, but small subsistence farming is largely unheard of in alberta. Successful operations have a massive scale and it’s not unheard of for successful farmers (and ranchers) to be quite wealthy.
Four, most of our population is either urban or rural/urban , we left the land generations ago.
Five, we are a G7 country? Hardly an economic basket case.
I could go on! There’s so many contradictions in the comparison there are almost no parallels, other than black prairie soil and a lot of Ukrainians.
Hyperbole works well to get folks riled up, but it’s only a matter of time before the shock wears off, and people start to see how you’re playing with their emotions. They tend to not like it.
Peoples (states) desire to achieve something is always secondary to their ability to achieve it. This is why a materialist analysis is so important.
This is also why critical reading of history is important. So we don’t rely on cliches and buzzwords that have little relation to the current material reality we are living in.
My final point, if you all will allow me, we did take these Lands at the point of a gun, but we did it when it was easy to do so, I mean the people living here didn’t even think it was possible to own the land, they freely shared with settlers in many cases, until they realized the grave error in trusting the colonizers. It’s not easy to do it anymore, basically anywhere. It’s especially not going to be easy in canada, where the fastest growing population demographic is indigenous, where the most organized people are indigenous, and where those organized people are willing to fight both in the courts and on the land to protect their nation.
Assuming the US is just going roll over us like a freight train when even countries like YEMEN have beat them to a standstill is cowardly and embarrassing for me to read.
It’s the same reason why Delcy Rodriguez is the interim president of Venezuela and there was no ground invasion or significant military incursion of any kind. They did a snatch and grab, probably having paid for the ability to do so and that’s ALL THEY COULD DO, and I’m willing to bet a lot more important people than me noticed.
DJC, appreciate the column highlighting that which is in plain sight, but was generally refused to be acknowledged.
The other need to speak the truth relates to build timelines for said pipeline. While so-called knowledgeable experts emphasize that Venezuelan oil production will not ramp up overnight, backers of a pipeline to the west coast gloss over the fact that we are looking at 5-10 years before any pipe reaches tidewater (or as the old folks used to say, the ocean). TMX started construction in 2018 and became operational in 2024 (we’ll leave out the pre-construction timeline for consultations, surveys, approvals, etc.) and that was along an EXISTING ROUTE!! Spend some time in central/northern BC, especially in winter, and you will get a sense of the physical, environmental, and geographical challenges (not to overlook the First Nations’ interests) a new route will encounter. As you highlight, the electrification of much of the rest of the world will not stand still during this time. You can also reference TMX when it comes to budgeted vs. actual costs, but hey, if it is the taxpayer paying, money is no object.
One minor note, the caption on your photo of Ms. Savage has her time as a minister as 2019-2013, assume you mean 2019-2023, while it seems humanity is digressing as a species, time still moves forward (for now).
Why go west?
Go east, Moe in Saskatchewan is on board, Ford in Ontario, Kinew in Manitoba has not shot it down. Reviving Energy East, at least into Ontario, replaces Enbridge Line 5, which runs through the excited states and which the governor of Michigan is trying to shut down.
If Quebec ever agrees, the pipeline can then go all the way to Atlantic tidewater, which already has port facilities. Bonus is we can then stop buying Saudi oil for the Maratimes, and retooling the eastern refineries for heavy crude creates more jobs.
In summary, a revived Energy East keeps Canadian dollars at home instead of flowing to Saudi Arabia, removes a pipeline from American jurisdiction, and builds the Canadian economy.
So my question is why has Prime Minister Carney not interested?
Look, this is pretty straightforward. If China electrifies rapidly, then there is little market for Alberta’s dilbit, Then too, no point in a pipeline to the coast as the south East Asian market has become tiny. So no government or private group should invest. The sun is setting on expensive oil apparently. Economic substitutes remain a remain a reality.
I wonder why the brains in the government are the only ones that cannot get that including Carney.
How will Alberta politicians respond to a deficit of $9 billion or more? A 6% provincial sales tax could generate $9-10 billion annually. Perhaps, a PST is when, not if. High end vehicles, recreation vehicles, new houses with contents (much of which is still evident here in Alberta), etc., alone, could generate a significant portion of a PST, and could be well afforded. As well, increased tourism here with increased tourism spending, without a PST, is appearing to be unwise. We, certainly, do not see other right wing provincial governments in Canada getting rid of their PST.
Have to wonder if Carney and Xi are going to discuss China’s loss of some 370,000 barrels/day of oil they were getting from Venezuela [assuming, logically, that King Donnie has halted such exports from ‘his’ country]. They could also discuss EV’s, solar and geothermal along with oil and canola. But King Donnie will hear about all this and object since it his empire only that matters, and all ‘quislings’ will summarily be punished for any acts that do not benefit all that is ‘his’!
There are unaccounted for loan guarantees that cost $6 billion, so KXL is $7.5 billion. Sonya Savage was part of the UCP, who did so much harm to Alberta. Now she’s gone. The rest of the UCP has got to go.
I tried to check that as I wrote the blog post, Anonymous, and I couldn’t find any evidence that the loan guarantees were ever accessed. At this point, I believe without being certain, those are a dead letter. DJC
David Climenhaga: From what I recall, those loan guarantees were not traced. With the UCP, who can be certain?
Anonymous: I can’t argue with you about that. I have seen it written they were never used, but I am not confident about the source. Perhaps the AlbertaPolitics.ca hive mind can go to work on this. DJC
There are very good reasons for the disciples of profit maximization to promote and lobby for ever increasing government pipeline (specifically and oil and gas more generally) investment/backstops/”de-risking”, i.e., the background physical reality looms large and is unchanging as is the undying devotion to the growth at any cost economic religion, where; risk and loss continues to be socialized while profits remain private and individual. For example:
“Based on current green transition policies, mid-term action plans to cut emissions, and long-term net zero targets, the report finds that global economic exposure to fossil fuel asset stranding risk amounts to $2.28 trillion by 2040,” the UKSIF wrote, adding that “In comparison to the cost of climate inaction, this is still a much smaller loss to bear. In a warming scenario between 2.5°C and 2.9°C, climate-intensified natural disasters may lead to $12.5 trillion in economic losses by 2050.”
Does Sonya Savage and also recently, Jason Kenney, think that we miss their opinion? Just asking.
It is amazing to me the egos of these people. Did they forget that we were just elated when they disappeared? Please, keep your crap to yourself and stop pretending your matter.
Carlos: It’s like a plague with the UCP. It goes from bad to worse.
Anonymous I agree with you but I cannot believe Albertans do not educate themselves and just believe in their propaganda face value. Come on it is time to start getting factual information instead of just believing this conspiracy garbage. We are destroying the province and the world with this total illiteracy.
Those of us who had ties to the oil industry would like Sonja Savage to tell us what we would have had if these damn Reformers hadn’t destroyed the oil royalties and corporate tax structures Lougheed had put in place, we agree with economist Trevor Tombe that we we’re screwed out of $575 billion, while oilmen think we lost another $300 billion with Klein’s deregulation of Natural Gas and accountants think we lost another $300 to $400 billion by cutting corporate taxes down to 8% from a progressive 16%, and I bet they are right.
How much has Savage cost us by destroying Lougheed’s protection on our mountains. Apparently the $238 million already lost could be $16 billion if my conservative friends are correct?
Savage never did anything for this province but she comes back to criticize another idiot like her. Unfortunately we now like to have clowns as celebrities. I would love to have the power to check the personal finances of all these people.
The way I see it, Dingy Smith will push really really hard to get the CPP and turn it into an Alberta Pension Plan, then use it to build an unnecessary pipe line to the west coast. She has clearly demonstrated she does not listen to anyone other than the vacuum between her ears. She will claim this is private funds, as it belongs to Albertans and is not Public Funds specified in the MOU.
The problem that is very evident for decades now is the Government relies on oil and gas revenue and when advised to diversify, they glance at it and go back to the oil revenue. There have been many warnings about what is Alberta going to do when the oil runs out, or there is no longer any demand for it? When that happens the lure of big money oil has left us with what will become a real big disaster. Dingy Smith is clearly not paying any attention to any of that by simply keeping focus on the oil right now.
When shall we three meet again?
With all the intellectual depth and hubris of an online Postmedia troll, they dithered through all the tropes: China bad, Canada good but we can’t do all the heavy climate lifting so we might as well not do any, the world still clamouring for our immaculately conceived squeaky clean oil… etc. They mentioned the grandchildren awwww.
Oh, and technology will save us all in every circumstance. Fresh, pure, innocent CCUS petroleum, Mike Young’s Super Selenium Science, tankers that levitate on demand in the Hecate strait, waterless data centres running on dinosaur farts, Danielle Smith’s Komplex Kiddie Kare AI lesson plans. What a wonderful world they inhabit!
One of the ladies did have the fortitude to speak the truth. “We don’t know,” quoth she. I can’t bear to listen again to figure out which one though.
What Sonya Savage apparently failed to point out is that Canadian crude oil will be cheaper than Venezuelan crude oil for some years, even if some oil companies do be ome willing to invest in the uncertain and possibly unsafe Venezuelan oil patch. We would probably still be out-competing them after Trump is gone.
EnergiMedia has put out a number of excellent interviews explaining various issues with Venezuelan oil. This one is especially relevant here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuP3uvx8xSc
Also this one points out Trump may want to stop Venezuela from selling crude oil to China but if that oil is still going around it could still end up in China. And if China could not get as much as it needed, what would stop China from buying from Canada?