This is from the Doug Sheridan LinkedIn account. We highly recommend following and connecting with Doug Sheridan.
The great Javier Blas writes in Bloomberg, over the years, liberals became increasingly hostile to fossil fuels as the evidence of climate change accumulated. From 2020 onward, the hostility turned into militant opposition, culminating with Biden’s election slogan of “no more drilling, period.”
It was an era of virtue-signaling, fueled by the nonsensical belief that the days of oil were numbered. Implausible scenarios of collapsing oil demand by 2050 became commonplace.
With the US-Iran war demonstrating not just how captive the world economy remains to fossil fuels, but also how easily energy can be weaponized, whether to drill at home is becoming an even more pressing question for some countries.
Canada under Trudeau was paradigmatic of the anti-fossil fuel trend. But the political landscape has shifted, making the nation, one of the world’s largest fossil fuel producers, a good place to ask: Can oil drilling be woke again?
That question was put to Tim Hodgson, the Canadian energy minister under center-left Prime Minister Mark Carney. He gave an emphatic yes. “We are value-based pragmatists… We’re going to engage the world the way it is, not the way we wish it was.”
He claims Canada has a right to produce more oil and gas because it’s reducing the emissions footprint of drilling, cutting the carbon intensity of its polluting oil sands by about 40% over the last two decades.
What about leaving the oil and gas in the ground as many on the left have advocated in the past? “If you have the luxury of leaving in the ground, God bless you,” Hodgson says.
For him, the solution is to produce more energy and keep it affordable. “What’s very clear to me today is there is a very large percentage of the human population that doesn’t want to make the trade off of economic growth for lower carbon.”
It’s a message more from the liberal and center-left spectrum are pushing, not just in Canada but also in Western Europe. Among political parties that jumped onto the anti-fossil fuel bandwagon, “all of the above” is now back in fashion. Many have realized the hard way that restricting oil and gas production before reducing demand means energy inflation and social discontent.
Now, some left-leaning govts with strong green credentials are backtracking. Look at Mexico, where President Claudia Sheinbaum, a climate scientist by training, recently announced a plan to tap shale oil and gas reservoirs. She didn’t use the word, but that means fracking, something that until only months ago was a taboo in her country.
Our Take: Moreover, it’s not clear that wealthier nations won’t start consuming more coal as well, including Europe… which has backed itself into a corner by making fossil fuels as expensive as possible as the only way to make renewables competitive. At some point voters are going to rebel and choose to consume domestic coal to a greater degree than appreciated.