I have often published posts that suggest that North America pay attention to it’s relationship with the rest of the Americas. This article is juct another reason as to why.
For the first time in decades, the emerging prize of global energy may be the Americas, where Western oil companies are refocusing their gaze in a rush to explore clusters of coveted oil fields. Even Panama has started exploring new oil reserves.
“This is an historic shift that’s occurring, recalling the time before World War II when the U.S. and its neighbors in the hemisphere were the world’s main source of oil,” said Daniel Yergin, an American oil historian. “To some degree, we’re going to see a new rebalancing, with the Western Hemisphere moving back to self-sufficiency.”
RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil has begun building its first nuclear submarine to protect its vast, new offshore oil discoveries. Colombia’s oil production is climbing so fast that it is closing in on Algeria’s and could hit Libya’s prewar levels in a few years. ExxonMobil is striking new deals in Argentina, which recently heralded its biggest oil discovery since the 1980s.
Up and down the Americas, it is a similar story: a Chinese-built rig is preparing to drill in Cuban waters; a Canadian official has suggested that unemployed Americans could move north to help fill tens of thousands of new jobs in Canada’s expanding oil sands; and one of the hemisphere’s hottest new oil pursuits is actually in the United States, at a shale formation in North Dakota’s prairie that is producing 400,000 barrels of oil a day and is part of a broader shift that could ease American dependence on Middle Eastern oil.
Canada has enough oil to supply all of Canada and all of the USA for the next 200 years for $25 per barrel less than the world price (Brent price).
People opposed to Canada’s oil are mis-informed into thinking it is “dirty” oil even though it’s the same as any other oil. CO2 produced in Canada’s oil sands production is about the same as conventional oil production when you take everything into consideration, which environmentalists don’t.
Unlike other oil producers, Canada treats and pays it’s workers to the highest world standards, looks after the environment to the highest world standards, and is a good world citizen.
Oil sands areas that are mined out are put back to their original natural state except the oil has been removed from the soil. So it’s actually a cleaner environment than it was before.
So let’s stop these hysterical environmental protests over issues that are made up and/or exaggerated. Some common sense, reality, and honesty are needed.