S. A. Shelley: For many years, OWOE writers have advocated for a North American Energy Alliance (NAEA) to ensure robust energy supplies at reasonable costs and with minimal geopolitical risk. This idea has started to catch. Some commentators have recognized that “Energy is the lifeblood of all nations, but it has become a weapon in the hands of Russia and Iran.” (Diane Francis: How to turn Canada into an energy superpower). While other analysts have commented that the U.S. and Canada are being economically defeated by China and thus should focus on developing a unified economic response, including energy to overcome the challenge from China (Canada at Economic War: Being Outplayed by Beijing).

According to the Institute for Energy Research (2024 North American Energy Inventory) and the EIA (Country Analysis Brief: Canada), North America holds a significant share of the world’s oil and gas reserves, though the exact percentage depends on whether you’re looking at proved reserves or technically recoverable resources. Considering proved reserves the volumes are staggering:

Oil Reserves

• Canada is the standout, with about 170 billion barrels (fourth largest globally) mostly in oil sands
• United States has around 74 billion barrels
• Mexico contributes about 6 billion barrels

Combined, North America holds 14% of the world’s proved oil reserves.

Natural Gas Reserves

• United States leads with 625 trillion cubic feet (Tcf)
• Canada has approximately 87 Tcf
• Mexico has around 11 Tcf

North America holds a substantial portion of the world’s gas, enough to provide a century of supply at current consumption rates. While North America may not dominate the global reserve charts like the Middle East, it’s a powerhouse in production and has vast untapped shale and unconventional resources.

These proved reserves, along with ever growing production (US oil and gas production hit record high in December) allows the US to shrug off any impact on oil flows that may arise from the Iran – Israeli war. Europe, Japan and Korea, those allied technology powerhouses, are far more vulnerable to energy supply volatility from the Middle East. After the Middle East, there is Russia, but since 2022, that has also been a politically toxic supplier.

Thus, if North America can get its act together, it can become an energy superpower and supplier to all friendly, like minded, allied nations that are otherwise dependent upon dictators of various kinds and devious motivations.

Regrettably, when it comes to oil supply to the global markets, the U.S. is probably near its maximum production capacity and Mexico is just holding on. This leaves Canada, and production in Canada can be ramped up quickly. Unfortunately, getting additional production to overseas markets is a big problem. As one analyst summarized:

Canada is notorious for its red tape in the energy industry. Several consecutive liberal governments have done their best to stifle the industry with ever more environmental requirements that have added to producers’ costs and made it more difficult for them to do business overall. (Can Canada Replace Russia as an Oil and Gas Superpower?)

In terms of supplying the world with Natural Gas, here, the U.S. is at the forefront. Since having become the world’s largest exporter of LNG in 2023 (The United States was the world’s largest liquefied natural gas exporter in 2023), U.S. LNG has stabilized Europe and Asia as Russian gas has become unavailable. And again, Canada, though celebrating its first ever shipment of LNG (First Cargo Puts Canada on the Map of LNG Exporting Nations), is lagging far behind its economic potential and far behind the U.S.  (North America’s LNG export capacity is on track to more than double by 2028 and Figure 1).

While OWOE is also very much in favour of green energy and green technologies, we also recognize that the world will still need a lot of conventional energy, and it would be better for those energy dollars to be spent in North America instead of in Russia, Iran and Venezuela.

But this is not all that North America can offer the world, and in the next blog we’ll examine minerals, especially those critical to a modern and clean energy economy.

Until the next blog, let’s hope that someone will Shut Down Line 5!

S. A. Shelley: This week (June 10 to 12) I attended the Global Energy Show (GES) in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. There are a few things that surprised me about GES. First, that the Canadians have the gall to call it the Global Energy Show.  But then again there were more exhibitors at GES than there were at OTC (Offshore Technology Conference) in Houston last month. Secondly, that there were many Canadian politicians of all ilk speaking at the show: It’s been years since any politician of any note gave a keynote speech at OTC. Finally, that it is possible to book a dogsled with Uber in Canada. Though I had a short commute to the show from my place of stay, I did not fancy pushing through the deep snow and was very pleased that Uber Dogsled is available locally.

OWOE Editor: At this time of year OWOE likes to share with its readers some of the interesting and often offbeat energy stories that haven’t gotten much media attention over the past year. Unfortunately, this year one of our main contributors, a troublesome Canadian, who often blogged on controversial energy topics, was warned that he was on a list of possible foreign provocateurs to be rounded up and sent to El Salvador. He has since disappeared and was last seen diving in the Baltic in the vicinity of various undersea infrastructure. Therefore, we are only able to bring you one story this year…

Human Biodiesel

The Center for Sustainable Oil (CFSO) in Lincoln, Nebraska, recently announced a new product they are calling Human Biodiesel. The head of their research laboratory, Dr. C. Heston says that he got the idea after watching the classic movie Soylent Green. His lab has perfected the science of extracting subcutaneous and visceral fat from deceased humans. The process is to extract as much pure fat as possible using a liposuction technique. Then the rest of the body is then boiled, causing the remaining fat to rise to the surface where it is collected.

S. A. Shelley: Over the last couple of months there has been a lot of discussion about tariffs. The Trump administration is keen to apply tariffs on Mexico and Canada, and a host of other nations (except maybe China?). In terms of the percentage of GDP that international trade contributes to their economies, it is obvious that the US can sustain a trade war quite well compared to other nations or regions (Fig. 1).

S. A. Shelley: After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the global trade order allowed for unprecedented bounties of consumer goods to flow to more and more people while lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty.  But it also allowed the political class of the West to become self-deceived and inured to the continued dangers to our way of life.  I’m not a Marxist, but I will definitely agree that society has been a constant struggle for power across all spectrums since antiquity. Consequently, in the west we built institutions around law, order and good governance to assuage that struggle, while in the East they went the authoritarian route to hammer that struggle into remission. But while Western politicians splurged on largesse for the masses, the more authoritarian ones did not forget to splurge on defense. We did and we will pay dearly for it shortly.

S. A. Shelley: In a recent article in The Telegraph, Norway is a Cautionary Tale, the author argues that Europe as a whole has made itself energy insecure because of adding renewables to the energy mix. I agree somewhat mostly with that conclusion about energy insecurity, but I do not agree that this is because of renewables. It is true that the wind doesn’t always blow and that the sun doesn’t always shine. But, over time, technologies will arise that can compensate for such variance. Thus, I believe that the energy insecurity in which most Western states find themselves is a result of the mad dash to renewables foisted upon us by somewhat well meaning, but technically and fiscally clueless politicians (a common refrain of OWOE staff). Politicians always promise things faster than can be delivered by reality. Politicians have put us into this precarious position by building wind farms without sufficient energy storage or grid improvements to support such a rapid build out.

S. A. Shelley: For those of you too young to remember, in the late nineties and early naughts (naughties?), there was a super major company called Enron. Enron was a darling of Wall Street and was hugely profitable in trading energy. It was an inventive company, too, in that it developed things such as weather derivatives and dubious accounting schemes. But it was mostly a scam, a fraud undertaken on a massive scale. The company eventually collapsed, and from time to time in Houston, you can still meet a former Enron employee in a pub who, after a beer or two, will tell you wonderful tales of excess at that company.

S. A. Shelley: At OWOE, we have repeatedly advocated for a North American Energy Alliance of some kind to ensure cheap and robust energy supplies at reasonable costs and with minimal geopolitical risk. In some forms, it already exists when you consider how the Northeast is supplied by cheap Newfoundland hydropower via Quebec (after a huge markup), or how the overwhelming majority of Alberta Oil is shipped to the Gulf refineries.

OWOE Staff: This month, the American Petroleum Institute (API) presented its “5 Point Policy Roadmap to Secure American Energy Leadership and Help Reduce Inflation” to President-elect Donald Trump and the 119th US Congress. Given that the API is an organization that was created by the oil industry, is supported by the oil industry, and is funded by the oil industry, it is no surprise that it is a blatantly self-serving plan whose primary purpose is to ensure income and maintain shareholder value for the fossil fuel industry. However, OWOE has reviewed the plan and concluded that it is a not unreasonable plan in many ways. With that in mind, OWOE has done some minor editing to address several serious problems that will negatively impact our planet over the long term and hereby presents its own “5 Point Policy Roadmap to Secure American Energy Leadership and Ensure the Planet is Protected for Future Generations”.

Guest blog by S. A. Shelley: When it comes to energy matters, as in all matters that affect our health or fiscal wellbeing, we tend to be our own worst enemies. There are two components to the global warming surge:  greenhouse gases, which insulate the planet and prevent heat energy from radiating into space, and heat exhaust generated by human activity. The latter is often overlooked and forgotten by most people but is just as critical a factor in global warming. We wrote a blog a few years back highlighting the thermal inefficiency of internal combustion engines (ICEs) which on aggregate pump out a heck of a lot of waste thermal energy compared to their transport energy use (Throwing Away 3 of every 4 Gallons of Gasoline Bought). This is one area in which electric vehicles (EVs) crush ICEs:  EVs use a much greater proportion of their energy to move people and stuff and emit far, far less waste thermal energy. Point to EVs. But there is a myriad of other personal choices that people can make today, without switching to EVs, that will on aggregate reduce the rate of global warming.