Kenney urges U.S. to keep Line 5 pipeline going

The premier spoke to a U.S Senate committee about the role Alberta could play in solving America’s energy problems

WASHINGTON Alberta Premier Jason Kenney found mostly allies Tuesday as he brought his propipeline pulpit to Capitol Hill, urging a largely Republican cadre of U.S. senators to get behind the idea of new cross-border energy conduits and to speak out in defence of Line 5.

Speaking to a Senate committee, Kenney described Alberta’s exasperation with what he suggested was wilful White House blindness to the role his province could play in solving America’s energy problems.

Existing cross-border pipelines have current additional capacity of about 300,000 barrels of oil per day, which will be filled by year-end, Kenney told the committee. Line reversals and other technical tweaks could add an additional 400,000 barrels.

And the controversial Trans Mountain line linking Edmonton with the B.C. coast, which the federal government had to buy outright in order to get it done, could generate an additional 600,000 barrels to be shipped south by tanker when it is ready by the end of next year, he said.

Alberta is already the largest single source of U.S. oil imports, Kenney added — nearly 1.4 billion barrels, some 60 per cent of the 2.4 billion barrels imported from foreign sources last year, 10 times what came in from Saudi Arabia and five times the level of imports from OPEC countries.

And yet, with gasoline prices spiking, Russian oil banned and demand soaring as fear over the COVID-19 pandemic fades, Alberta never got so much as a phone call from President Joe Biden’s administration, Kenney said.

“We found it passing strange that following the invasion of Ukraine, there were clear efforts by the administration to reach out to OPEC, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Iran, but we have no record of any effort by the administration to reach out to Alberta,” Kenney said.