Jason Kenney makes a timely pitch for Alberta oil to U.S. senators. But will it work?

With skyrocketing gasoline costs, Washington scrambling for extra oil and the U.S. midterm elections across the nook, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s look earlier than a U.S. Senate committee to pitch his province’s oil could not come at a greater time.

The premier, who has championed his province as a reliable supply of vitality to the U.S., will converse right this moment earlier than the vitality and pure sources committee. He was invited by its chair, West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, a crucial swing vote within the evenly divided Senate, who, simply over a month in the past, visited Alberta to tour the oil sands and meet with executives and key gamers within the province’s oil business.

“This is unquestionably the appropriate time to attempt to ship the message in the US,” mentioned Andrew Campbell, government director of the Vitality Institute at Berkeley Haas. 

“Whether or not it is going to be receptive is difficult to know.”

His look comes as demand for oil is outstripping provide, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompted some Western nations to chop their vitality ties to Moscow, inflicting the U.S. to think about in search of different oil suppliers, together with unfriendly regimes like Venezuela and Iran.

However it is going to take “years or a long time” for a rustic like Venezuela to extend its manufacturing, in keeping with James Coleman, an vitality legislation professor at Southern Methodist College in Texas.

“Nicely, how a lot of a greater alternative is Canada?” 

In the meantime, the Wall Avenue Journal reported final month that the Biden administration officers had been in search of methods to spice up oil imports from Canada, however with one massive caveat — they do not wish to resurrect the Keystone XL pipeline.

Not lengthy after being sworn in as president, Joe Biden fulfilled a marketing campaign promise by signing an government order scuttling the 1,897-kilometre pipeline enlargement, as a part of the administration’s effort to battle local weather change.

“I believe we have by no means been ready of extra flux on what precisely U.S. vitality coverage is,” Coleman mentioned. “Clearly now we have an administration that got here in and, at the moment, the [Democrats] gave the impression to be moderately unified by way of restraining oil and gasoline manufacturing.

“Step one was clearly killing Keystone XL. It is only a very totally different second now.”

The committee has an essential position in spending and coverage payments associated to vitality.

“It is one of many extra bipartisan committees and has been for a very long time,” and, so, is commonly the supply of profitable omnibus vitality payments, Campbell mentioned. 

“That is the status of the committee. Each the main members from the 2 sides are typically to the centre of their respective events.”

The committee may even hear digital testimony from Pure Assets Minister Jonathan Wilkinson. Nathalie Camden, Quebec’s deputy minister of mines, and Electrical energy Canada president Francis Bradley are additionally scheduled to testify.

By way of vitality coverage, “it does not get any extra influential,” than the Senate’s vitality and pure sources committee, in keeping with Maryscott Greenwood, CEO of the Canadian American Enterprise Council in Washington, who has been serving to Alberta put together for this journey to D.C.

“On high of all of that, you could have each the chairman of the committee and the rating member [Wyoming Republican John Barrasso] … collectively are focused on listening to from the Canadian panel, together with the premier,” she mentioned.

Regardless of the committee’s bipartisan nature, Republican members have voiced help for Keystone, whereas nearly all of the Democrats have opposed it, apart from Manchin.

Certainly, the West Virginia senator, who annoyed the Biden administration’s plans by rejecting a key spending invoice, has mentioned cancelling the pipeline was a mistake and mused about rebranding it in some type.

However excessive gasoline and oil costs are a “main voter concern” heading into this fall’s midterms which, to date, Republicans have been efficient in linking to Democrats mentioned Christopher Sands, director of the Wilson Heart Canada Institute.

Kenney’s pitch to D.C. is an “alternative for Democrats to melt their anti-fossil stance and maybe enhance their odds,” Sands mentioned in an e-mail to CBC Information.

And, until the midterms change the stability within the Senate, Biden and Democrats should have Manchin’s help, he mentioned. 

“What is going to they concede to get it? That is the place Kenny’s go to might be a possibility: if Democrats see a favour to Canada and Alberta as not the worst concession they might make … the listening to might be the beginning of some constructive negotiations,” Sands mentioned.