CALGARY – The push for Canada to send more of its oil and natural gas to markets outside of the United States intensified Tuesday as U.S. President Donald Trump pressed ahead with a 10 per cent levy on energy imports.
“This crisis demonstrates the clear and urgent need to build more natural resource infrastructure,” said the Explorers and Producers Association of Canada, which represents conventional oil and gas producers.
“A bold and necessary action that the Canadian government should take to respond is to build retaliatory pipelines to diversify our economy to other markets beyond the United States, growing our economic power and supporting Canadian values.”
Lisa Baiton, president and CEO of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, called for an urgent policy overhaul to allow viable projects to proceed.
She said diversifying exports into Asia and Europe would promote long-term stability, and that securing Ontario and Quebec’s energy supply must be a national priority as well.
“We are at a significant moment in Canada’s history — we need to seize this moment,” she said.
“The choices we make today will determine whether we become a global energy leader or continue to fall behind.”
Meanwhile, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said her province sits on one of the biggest petroleum reserves in the world, and before the tariffs came in, she would have loved to double the amount sold to the United States.
“Now we’re going to have to look at ‘Can we sell more off the West Coast, the East Coast and up north,’ because if the Americans don’t want our products, the rest of the world does,” she told CNBC in an interview Tuesday.
“America’s been in a very good position by being the first and primary customer and purchaser of a discounted oil, and we’re going to have to look for new markets, too, if this persists.”
The CEO of Enbridge Inc., which on any given day is the largest-single conduit for crude flowing by pipeline to the United States, said the tariffs aren’t likely to change his company’s near-term strategy or outlook.
“It would take a very long time of sustained tariffs before you see changing trade patterns and flow patterns,” Greg Ebel told reporters following a presentation to investors in New York.
Calgary-based Enbridge transports about 30 per cent of the crude oil produced in North America and almost two thirds of U.S.-bound Canadian oil exports. It accounts for 40 per cent of total U.S. crude oil imports.
The imposition of tariffs coincided with Enbridge announcing a $2-billion investment in its massive Mainline system, which connects oilsands crude to U.S. markets.
“You can’t say it’s of no concern,” Ebel said of the intensifying trade dispute.
“It’s just from a fundamentals perspective, you’re really trying to take the emotions out of it and go to ‘What is the economic reality and the interconnection between the two countries?’ And I think on any basis you would have to still say it is tight, it is difficult to break and it is strong, current unpleasantries aside.”
Ebel said the Mainline is running chock-full and he hasn’t seen customers move barrels to the newly expanded Trans Mountain system connecting to a port in the Vancouver area. He’s also not expecting to see tariffs applied to barrels that transit by pipeline through the U.S., but are bound for other final destinations.
Several years ago, Enbridge proposed to build the Northern Gateway pipeline to a port on the northern B.C. coast, enabling tanker exports to Asia. It was the subject of intense environmental opposition and was ultimately killed.
Enbridge has said it has no plans to resurrect that proposal, even with the trade strife spurring a renewed push to build out Canadian infrastructure.
“It’s not that we’re not interested,” Ebel said.
“It’s just that the environment in Canada and the ability to actually get anything done would take significant legislative changes to be able to realize that.
“Even when you had regulatory sign off and Indigenous support and customer support, it was a stroke of a pen by the federal government that ended that project by banning tankers off the West Coast.”
As for prices at the pump for U.S. drivers, the northeastern United States can expect to see the quickest and biggest increases as a result of tariffs, as much of that region’s fuel comes directly from the Irving Oil refinery in Saint John, N.B., GasBuddy’s Patrick De Haan wrote in a blog post Tuesday.
“By mid-March 2025, the Northeast could expect fuel prices — including gasoline, diesel, and other petroleum products — to be 20-40 cents (US) per gallon higher,” he wrote.
“For a typical 15-gallon fill-up, that’s an additional US$3-US$6 every time you visit the pump.”
De Haan added that it’s not so simple for U.S. refineries to simply switch to processing domestic crude. Many of those facilities and the pipelines that connect to them have been configured to handle heavy Canadian crude, not the lighter product produced in Texas.
“It’s like asking someone with a diesel truck to suddenly fill up with regular gasoline.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 4, 2025.
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