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ENERGY: Study says Canada should set up Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR)
    (AlbertaIndex, February 4, Monday) --- Two think tanks have issued a joint report calling for Canada to establish Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) to ward off short-term supply oil disruptions.
        In their report, “Freezing in the Dark: Why Canada Needs Strategic Petroleum Reserves”, Alberta’s Parkland Institute and the Polaris Institute said Canada is the most vulnerable among industrialised countries to oil supply crises.

The report points out the precariousness of current global oil supplies, especially given current tensions in the Middle East, and fact that Canada imports close to one million barrels of oil per day to supply the needs of central and eastern provinces.

“We are virtually the only country in the industrial world without strategic petroleum reserves,” says Gordon Laxer, a political economist at the University of Alberta and author of the report.

“The combination of our energy commitments under NAFTA and the north-south flow of our pipelines virtually guarantees that Eastern Canada will face shortages during global supply shocks—this puts Canadians at risk.”

Canada imports 40% of the oil it uses, with almost half of that coming from OPEC countries. This makes Canada very susceptible on a volatile region for a significant portion of its oil supply.

The report said there are no pipelines or infrastructure in place to get Alberta oil to Eastern Canada in case of a crisis.

“The sad reality is that our government continues to prioritize the energy security of the US despite the needs of Canadians,” says Polaris Institute Director Tony Clarke.

Ricardo Acuña, executive director of Parkland Institute, said: “Albertans will argue that there is enough oil in the tarsands to supply for all of Canada’s needs well into the future, but unfortunately people in Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces do not have access to that oil—it all flows south.”

The report also goes into detail about what function they would serve, what they would look like, and where they could be located.

This study represents one part of the ongoing work being done by both Parkland and Polaris to develop a Canadian energy security strategy which will meet the environmental, economic and energy needs of Canadians over the long term.


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