Canada can, and should, play a larger role in the global energy market, in order to protect the environment and guarantee Canadian living standards
The Canadian economy, and its currency, are intricately tied to oil markets. The good news is that the price of oil is up and is likely to stay that way for years to come.
Canada is an energy superpower, and has been for a number of years. It’s an exporter of electricity, uranium and natural gas, and is the world’s fifth-largest producer of oil. And its oil exports have grown in recent years, thanks to pipeline workarounds and growing demand south of the border.
Though oil prices dropped off precipitously at the start of the pandemic, they have been climbing ever since, and are likely to stay high, at least in the medium-term. This month, the price of the benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude surpassed US$85 ($108) a barrel, nearly double the price in October 2015 of US$45 a barrel and almost eight times higher than the bottom of US$11.26 in April 2020.
This contributed to the increase in the TSX from 15,400 in January 2017 to 20,600 in January 2022. And naturally, the TSX Oil and Gas Index increased 43.5 per cent between August 2021 and January 2022.
For the rest of this column: https://financialpost.com/diane-francis/diane-francis-the-sustainable-path-to-becoming-an-energy-superpower