Ata Ojani/Canada’s National Observer
This story was originally published by Canada’s National Observer and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Oil and gas executives in Canada are calling on Canadian federal leaders to take their cues from US President Donald Trump—they’re asking the government to declare a national energy crisis to fast-track expensive fossil fuel infrastructure that would increase production and export capacity.
“By declaring a Canadian energy crisis and key projects in the ‘national interest,’ the federal government will be able to use all its available emergency powers to ensure that the dramatic regulatory restructuring required to expand the oil and natural gas sector is rapidly achieved,” reads an open-letter from 14 oil and gas executives, addressed to Prime Minister Mark Carney, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, and Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet.
If the country boosts fossil fuel production, even if paired with carbon capture technology, global carbon emissions would still rise because the vast majority of emissions from fossil fuels comes when the fuel is burned. Climate science is clear that the planet will continue to warm to dangerous levels—leading to worsening extreme weather, premature deaths, lost species and disrupted economies—until greenhouse gas emissions reach net-zero (in other words, reduced until any remaining emissions created are offset by their removal from the atmosphere).
“Full decarbonization will require non-fossil fuel alternatives rather than a shift from coal to gas.”
The companies behind the letter include pipeline giants Enbridge, TC Energy, South Bow, and Pembina Pipeline, as well as major oil and gas producers like Imperial Oil, Suncor, Canadian Natural Resources, MEG Energy, Cenovus Energy, Tourmaline Oil, Strathcona Resources, Arc Resources, Veren, and Whitecap Resources.
According to an analysis of company spending plans, collectively, the signatories to the letter are already planning to spend more than $280 billion over the next decade increasing oil and gas supply and reaching new markets. But the companies now say to expand they need the Canadian government to “reset its policies and regulatory frameworks.”
Specifically, the fossil fuel executives say federal environmental assessment requirements and the West Coast ban on tanker ships of a certain size, are “impeding development and need to be overhauled.” They also want to see major projects approved within six months of filing an application, a commitment from the federal government to abandon industrial carbon pricing and its promised cap on oil and gas pollution, and for Ottawa to increase the amount of loans it is willing to backstop for Indigenous groups who want to invest in new oil and gas projects.
Environmentalists derided the request.
“As the source of almost one third of Canada’s carbon pollution, letting oil and gas CEOs off the hook for doing their fair share to fight climate change would make Canada a climate pariah, just like the Trump administration,” said Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada in a statement. “We can’t ignore that oil companies backed Trump’s rise to power and now demand Canada copy his declaration of an energy emergency to give them an unfair advantage against their clean energy competitors.”
The company officials say Canada is at a turning point and the country should grow its fossil fuel economy by boosting production and rapidly building new pipelines and LNG export terminals to reach new markets. The group claims that exporting Canadian LNG can help the world lower its carbon emissions, especially if Asian countries are willing to swap coal-fired electricity generation for gas—a position wildly at odds with climate science.
According to a recent study from Cornell University, emissions from American LNG are 33 per cent higher than coal emissions, when processing and shipping are taken into account. The findings add to a growing pile of evidence that the “bridge fuel” argument for LNG put forward by fossil fuel companies, is bunk. In China, for instance, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) found growing LNG imports have not reduced the country’s coal demand due to cost, energy security concerns, and the “meteoric rise” of renewables.
In 2023, carbon emissions from the fossil fuels Canada exported were 47 percent higher than its own domestic carbon emissions.
“LNG is likely to play a trivial role in supporting the clean energy transition in China’s power sector. Even outside China’s power sector, LNG is doing little to displace coal consumption,” said Ghee Peh, an energy finance Asian coal markets specialist with IEEFA in a statement. “Chinese investments in coal-based iron and steelmaking capacity still far exceed natural gas-based processes, and full decarbonization will require non-fossil fuel alternatives rather than a shift from coal to gas.”
The call to ramp up fossil fuel production for exports comes as Canada and the United States square off in a trade war, triggering public debate about building new pipelines to reach new markets. But ramping up fossil fuel exports goes against the grain of global energy forecasts from the authoritative International Energy Agency, which expects global oil demand to peak by 2030.
Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has embraced many items on the oil and gas industry’s latest wishlist. Like the executives behind Wednesday’s letter, he is calling for the removal of industrial carbon pricing, scrapping the oil and gas pollution cap, enticing Indigenous nations to support resource extraction projects with financial incentives, and repealing the federal environmental assessment for major projects.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said she “wholeheartedly” supports the letter from oil and gas executives, accusing the federal government, which spent more than $34 billion building the Trans Mountain expansion pipeline to help companies reach new markets, of doing “everything they can to keep our oil and gas in the ground.”
“To leave this treasured resource in the ground would be an outright betrayal of current and future generations of Canadians,” she said in a statement.
The oil and gas industry is Canada’s largest and growing source of carbon emissions domestically, but its exports to other countries are even more damaging to the planet. In 2023, the most recent year data is available, the oil and gas sector’s exported emissions surpassed 1 billion metric tons—significantly more than the country’s domestic total.
Since 2012, Canada’s domestic emissions have fallen about 6 percent, from 744 million metric tons (Mt) of CO2e to 702 Mt in 2023. Over the same period, exported emissions from fossil fuels have grown 58 percent, from 652 Mt to 1,030 Mt.
Even if the fossil fuel industry’s requests to the government to boost production and exports are ignored, emissions are still projected to get worse in the coming years thanks to the opening of the Trans Mountain expansion pipeline last year, and this year’s scheduled opening of LNG Canada.
