Muscatine

In a post last month, I noted that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s patience with Obama’s dithering over the Keystone Pipeline in order to pander to the rainbow and unicorn crowd that forms his political base wouldn’t last forever. Harper, I wrote, fully understands what motivates Obama, and it’s not sound energy policy:

Harper looks at the Obama Administration and understands that they have no intention of ever increasing the supply of proven energy sources.  With Obama and the far Left, of course, attempting to discern a logical reason for what amounts to economic suicide is a fool’s errand.  It’s not like the pipeline hasn’t been “studied” for years, so Obama’s excuse that more time is needed is ludicrous.  The other objection, as far as I can tell, is that many Lefties think that the oil sands shouldn’t be developed at all, as if stopping the Keystone Pipeline would achieve that result.  It won’t, regardless of what Obama’s Hollywood brain trust says.  The fact is that output from the Canadian Oil Sands will triple in the next 25 years. The only question is who will benefit from its development: Canada and the U.S. — or Canada and China?  For any president other than the current one, this would be nothing more than a rhetorical question.

At the time there were some on the left which claimed Harper’s threat to abandon the Keystone project and sell Canadian oil to China was just political posturing or something.  I didn’t think so then, and I certainly don’t think so now, as the Canadian Government recently announced the Prime Minister will be visiting China next month with the expressed purpose of selling oil to China via a new plan which involves the construcion of a pipeline to link the rich oil fields of Northern Alberta to British Columbia for shipment to China, via Jim Fox:

Canada is now looking to Asian countries to market its abundance of oil, natural gas and minerals as plans to build the proposed Keystone XL pipeline have stalled with the U.S. administration.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will travel to China next month to discuss selling Canada’s bounty to the rapidly growing nation.

The preferred initial plan was to build the $7 billion Keystone pipeline to deliver Alberta’s oilsands crude to refineries in Texas on the Gulf of Mexico.

Harper reasoned that the U.S. government would prefer to deal with a friendly neighbor to help meet its energy needs while creating thousands of jobs.

With widespread opposition by U.S. environmentalists, the Obama administration has delayed its decision on whether to approve the project proposed by energy giant TransCanada Pipelines.

The new plan would market to China and Asian countries through the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline that would transport Alberta’s oil and natural gas to British Columbia for shipment by tankers.

Fantastic.  With gasoline up 50 cents per gallon in the past year and expected to rise to $4.50 per gallon this summer, Obama’s message to our friend and neighbor Canada is “we don’t need your stinkin’ oil”.  This, apparently, passes for energy policy in the Age of Obama.