If Barack Obama doesn’t approve the Keystone pipeline, another president will, says Stephen Harper – by Theophilos Argitis (National Post/Bloomberg News – February 11, 2014)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

As far as Stephen Harper is concerned, history and economics carry far more weight in Canada-U.S. relations than whoever happens to occupy the White House at a given moment. That’s why Canada’s prime minister remains relatively unperturbed about the drawn-out Keystone XL pipeline review, maintaining its approval is “inevitable.”

In a wide-ranging interview on energy policy in his Ottawa office last month, Harper described how historical and economic forces and broad-based support for resource development determine whether projects like Keystone get built, rather than short-term political calculations. If Barack Obama doesn’t approve the pipeline, another president will.

“It is, in my judgment, a necessary and inevitable victory,” Harper said in a Jan. 16 interview as he awaited a State Department environmental assessment of the project. “I absolutely believe that. I can’t see how it will be otherwise.”

“It takes a lot of energy to repress and to block a decision that is clearly and overwhelmingly in the national interest of the country,” he said.

Harper has been openly critical of Obama for repeatedly “punting” on Keystone and interfering with a long-standing and mutually beneficial energy relationship forged in war and codified in peace.

After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, the U.S. War Department quickly secured agreement to build a 600-mile (965- kilometer) pipeline across Canada’s north to supply a military base in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Almost five decades later, former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney incited the wrath of nationalists by accepting in the historic 1988 Free Trade Agreement between the two countries that Canada would not reduce supplies of oil to the U.S. in times of shortages. Energy security would be a continental affair, with Canada enjoying market access while the U.S. gained security of supply.

Today, Canada ships 99% of its oil exports to the U.S., and U.S. companies are the largest foreign investors in Canadian oil and gas. Over the past two decades, more than half of the US$103 billion in foreign acquisitions by U.S.-based oil and gas companies have been of Canadian producers, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Harper’s energy policy is informed by convictions that global demand for oil is surpassing supply, market forces override politics and the western world would rather buy energy from stable democracies like Canada. He also harbors an aversion to government intervention in the industry — including policies to curb carbon emissions — while being focused on the economic growth potential of further energy development.

Nation Building

“As an economic conservative, he knows what it takes to create better jobs for Canadians,” said Dimitri Soudas, Harper’s former director of communications and now executive director of Harper’s Conservative Party. “Imagine for one second had we not built the railroad across the country. Natural resource development is nation building, all natural resources, and we have an abundance of them.”

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