This article will be but a superficial answer to the above question, simply because of the complexity associated with a realistic answer.
Canada’s oil reserves, mostly in the form of oil sands is believed to be in the range of 188 years, based on current consumption. America also has a vast amount of shale oil that can be extracted, somewhere in the range of 160 years of production.
So if so much oil and gas is available, why is America importing from Canada?
America is already the largest producer of oil in the world, producing somewhere in the range of 14 million barrels per day. However consumption is approximately 20.6 million barrels per day.
Not only is production finite, but demand is ever increasing, which suggests that ‘clean energy’ production, wind, water and solar is increasingly required to lower the demands made on fossil fuels.
But one area of use is also seemingly immune to electrification in the U.S. is transportation. EV adoption is slow vs continued fossil fuels (gas) use.
America’s 1% do not want you to buy an EV. They are immensely invested in the fossil fuel industry, and there is so much more wealth to be extracted from oil and gas. They just have to keep Americans convinced that gas engines are the way to go and continue to make up excuses about the problem with EV’s, battery production and the hazards of lithium and rare earth products.
Meanwhile fossil fuels are destroying the planet, but let’s ignore that, cause we’re still getting rich!
So what is America’s problem?
Well, I don’t have all day, so I’ll keep this really short.
America has a greed problem, that supersedes its ability to produce oil. Intent on maximizing profits, American oil companies want to keep the supply of oil such that prices remain artificially inflated, — plus the future value of oil may be much higher, if left in the ground.
So America chooses to import Canadian and Venezuelan oil assets rather than increase American production, because it artificially controls what it pays for Canadian and Venezuelan heavy crude.
This devaluation of foreign oil, (because it’s so dirty) makes it highly profitable to continue to import crude supplies, even though large amounts of shale oil is available in the United States. In actual fact, it is the burning of oil and gas that is ‘dirty’ since both CO2 and methane are destroying the earth’s atmosphere, its oceans and its forests.
But, let’s keep the essential lie going America.
Just pretend I never said that.
The Impact of a return to Nuclear Energy
Many nations that are large consumers of energy, almost all in the richest nations of the world, are eying a return to nuclear energy. New reactors that are increasingly safe, in fact much safer than burning fossil fuels with the attendant risks caused by global warming and green house gas emissions, are being designed, created, and in the case of China, about to become reality.
Rather than use Uranium in its various forms as a source of fuel for reactors, China, and to some extent other countries, are in the process of developing Thorium Reactors, which are considered to be much safer than uranium fuelled reactors.
It would take literally dozens of pages to explain why Thorium reactors hold so much promise, but suffice to say that if one does adequate research, it appears that Thorium is in fact, the nuclear fuel of the future.
Which begs the question. If nuclear is the means to energy self-sufficiency, why has America not adopted it?
The answer to that is quite simple.
Greed.
America’s GDP is highly dependent on the continued use of fossil fuels. America has placed essentially all its eggs in the fossil fuel basket, because the 1% derive immense wealth from its production and use.
Were America to wholly adopt electrical vehicles and nuclear energy production, oil and gas supplies could be but a fraction of what they are today, and their perceived value would fall like a veritable stone.
This cannot happen, so in turn, America attempts to manage the world’s oil and gas production along with its relative rate of delivery.
Does this seem calculating and smack of self-interest? Of course it does, but Plutocrats including demagogues like Trump are heavily invested in the status quo.
Wars create scarcity, which results in higher prices. America’s 1%, the kleptocracy and the plutocrats all profit from the relationship that exists between proportional fossil fuels scarcity, high demand and high cost.
Is it possible that the war in Ukraine is part of a supply side strategy?
Ahhh, but I digress.
The only problem is that greed has become a massive impediment to technological advancement in the United States. America’s nuclear reactors are aging out, and no new reactors are on the books past 2030. And of course they use uranium or plutonium fed.
Meanwhile, in China, where Thorium deposits have been discovered that have the ability to provide all of China’s future energy for an estimated 20,000 years, China is actually producing thorium reactors with the potential to scale up massively in just a few years.
Yes, you heard me right. 20,000 years.
America has shot itself, not in the foot, but the head.
Out of pure greed, America has failed to act, and because of this inaction, America will pay a heavy price if supplies of heavy crude from Canada or Venezuela becomes reduced or cut off.
America will suffer a crash in its finances if it cannot maintain costs for oil at a sufficient level and quantity to continue to profit exorbitantly.
So America needs to both maintain the supply and control the price.
Hence Trump’s interest in Canada, whose reserves it can consume willfully while it takes the next 20 years to gear up for a nuclear future, which is inevitable.
Because if America really got serious about nuclear, it would take at least ten years to see it begin in earnest.
America is now attempting to coerce Canada to stay the course, even though it wants, due to its insatiable greed, the greatest degree of wealth possible.
Why do you think this week that Trump, told Canada to build the Keystone XL pipeline?
Not to mention that those in the 1% own the supply of crude oil.
At the same time, Americans, ever the Capitalists, want undiminished growth and ever-increasing profitability and wealth extraction, from anywhere they can beg, borrow or steal it.
And this is where Trump’s specialty comes into play.
The Art of the Steal.
Canada’s crude can be stolen.
So like the good sociopath he is, Trump is using lies, (what else, as usual), to create a false impression that Canada is a source of both illegal immigration and illegal drugs. All the while, the agenda is to extort or coerce Canada to willfully be annexed by America.
It is a classic but overused tactic of dictators, demagogues and people like Trump.
But Canada has seen the game played one time too often and no sleight of hand, lie or force of coercion is going to work this time.
America’s collapse is unavoidable and inevitable, unless it’s willing to invade Canada or Venezuela.
I wonder what pretence he’ll use to attack Venezuela?
I seem to remember using a line to Congress that should have sent chills through the spines of Americans, dating back to his first administration. Which was.
“We have the greatest military in the world! Why don’t we simply use it!”
And you wonder why America is spending a Trillion Dollars a year on the military?
But right now, the U.S. needs another ruse.
All cocaine and some fentanyl comes from Venezuela!
Hold on to your jock strap America, because this flight is going to get fugly.
Brought to you by your favourite American sociopath and his side-kick, Muskrat Mutt.
(Gee, I wonder who Jeff is?)
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