As I argued back in April (see “Sandy Alberta, the Saudi Arabia Next Door“), America can import its oil from our democratic, market-oriented, environmentally friendly neighbor to the north, or from anti-American crackpots like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and anti-American madmen like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Obama administration appears to be leaning toward the crackpots and madmen.
As the Wall Street Journal reports today, the administration has been causing endless to a TransCanada Corp. proposal to build a pipeline linking the oil sands of Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico refinery complex. By approving the pipeline, the United States could create thousands of construction and oil refinery jobs and capture much of the economic value of the oil production in Canada itself– American companies are big participants in the oil sands boom –in the process.
But President Barack Obama has said publicly that he wants to investigate “how destructive” oil-sands operations might be to the environment before approving the line. The Environmental Protection Agency has urged a more thorough environmental impact study. And the State Department is dragging its feet in signing off on the transnational pipeline, which would cross the Canadian-U.S. border.
Let’s set aside the concern that America’s job creation numbers remain dismal: only 18,000 net jobs created last month. Let’s overlook the arrogance of the United States dictating environmental policy to Canada, a nation with mature democratic institutions and a mature environmental movement. Let’s look at the hypocrisy. Canada’s heavy oil is very similar to the heavy oil we import from Venezuela. Which country do you think is a better steward of its environment — Canada, where the nation’s strong democratic institutions provide for ample input by environmentalists, or Venezuela, a Third World kleptocracy where a populist thug is running the economy into the ground through short-sighted policies geared to keeping him in power?
Is President Obama concerned about the oil pollution in Lake Maracaibo and the Caribbean? Does he want to investigate “how destructive” Venezuelan policies are to the Amazonian rain forest?
Wow, this is just breathtaking. In one policy-debacle trifecta, the Obama administration is harming U.S. energy security, dampening U.S. job creation, and discriminating against an environmentally friendly democracy.