When the U.S. runs low on oil, how safe is Canada?

By most measures, “peak oil” is occurring now or will do so very soon. At that point, oil prices will spike and there may be shortages. (Recall that just prior to the bank meltdown, oil prices spiked to $147/barrel.) This will be disastrous for the U.S. economy. The question is, What will the U.S. do about the situation? If history is any guide, they will avoid addressing the root cause and instead invade or otherwise control a country that has oil. Guess who’s closest, has oil reserves second only to Saudi Arabia, and whose military could be vaporised, if necessary, as quickly as the late and unlamented Saddam Hussein’s?

That’s right, fellow Canadians, we’re next in line to have our resources liberated by the United States. The only thing that might save us – it certainly won’t be an attack of conscience by American leaders – could be the fact that they are already draining us almost as rapidly as possible. The only ways to get more will be to ramp up tar mining and/or leave Canadians with less. That, and the U.S. may collapse from within, castrating their abilities to go after anyone else. (Thanks to the Archdruid, John Michael Greer, for pointing this out.)

Sound far-fetched? “But the Americans are our friends,” I can hear some people bleating now. First, the Americans have no idea what it means to be a friend. They are an empire, and empires have needs that can only be fulfilled by taking from satellite nations; they can’t afford to have “friends.”

Second, their economy is totally dependent upon oil – there is a reason the U.S. has such a huge military presence in the Middle East and has a record for overthrowing anyone who stands in the way of ‘their’ oil. Remember Saddam? Installed by the Americans. Remember the Shah of Iran? Installed by the Americans. There’s hardly a democratically-elected government the Americans have not overthrown if it stood in the way of U.S. “national interests.”

Perhaps this sounds like paranoia to you. I confess I did read a pile of Richard Rohmer books as a teenager. However, the hard fact is that the Americans are going to find their backs up against the wall when oil prices go up. Remember the oil shock of the 1970s, which caused a big recession? We’re still in a recession caused largely by crooked Americans and can ill afford to have it worsened by increasing oil prices. (Some people, by-the-way, such as the Chief Economist at CIBC World Markets, say the current recession is actually caused by high oil prices.)

So the question is, what will the Americans do if they can’t get as much oil as they ‘need?’  The options, as I see them, are: reduce consumption, switch to substitutes, or get more.

Reduce consumption

According to the James Michael Greer in The Long Descent: A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age, if Americans used oil at the same rate as Europeans, they would be exporting oil. The problem is that they have consistently rejected this option since Ronald Reagan had the solar panels removed from the roof of the White House. The auto companies have successfully fought mandated increases in fuel efficiency for decades, even suing California to prevent it, to the point that U.S. fuel economy standards are considerably lower than China’s.

The American anti-conservation attitude is made worse by the fact that the U.S. is designed to use vast amounts of cheap energy – that’s a big part of their business model. Americans have outsourced much of their manufacturing capability to sweatshops in distant lands, for example. Another: most Americans live in suburbs and must commute everywhere – work, shops, school, play. Neither of these is easily or inexpensively changed. Europeans use much less energy than Americans because their houses are smaller, requiring less heat, and closer together, requiring less commuting.

Switch to substitutes

This is simply not possible on a large scale. Growing crops for ethanol has already caused food price spikes – and food riots – and has even been called a crime against humanity. I have confidence in the American ability to rationalise away starvation elsewhere as long as they can continue to drive their SUVs and mega-pickup trucks with Support the Troops bumper stickers, but the fact is there simply is not enough land to grow all the fuel needed. The U.S. currently has 440 million acres under cultivation. “It would take more than 546 million acres of U.S. farmland to replace all…current gasoline use with corn ethanol.” As if that’s not bad enough, corn ethanol requires about as much energy input as it produces.

There are more efficient methods of producing biofuels, but there still simply isn’t enough land. Algae-based biofuels have more promise, but are far from being commercialised.

The nuclear industry is advocating furiously for a ‘nuclear revival,’ but this would require massive subsidies, the public to absorb all risk financially (no insurance company will touch nuclear plants) and literally, there are questions about the amount of uranium remaining without reprocessing (which, of course produces material suitable for reactors or bombs), and would take years to accomplish. And after all that, how many electric cars are there on American roads?

Gotta get us some oil

That leaves finding a new source of supply. Many oil-producing nations are today quite hostile to the United States, and are far away…except Canada. All are also vulnerable to internal rebellions and terrorist attacks…except Canada, the home of the world’s second-largest remaining reserves. Will an American government really be able to resist internal pressures when Canada is just waiting to be pressured into supplying more? If Americans are freezing in their dark McMansions, unable to get to Wal-Mart or their jobs (which increasingly are at Wal-Mart), no U.S. President or Congress is going to say, “Too bad.”

Every pipeline from the tar sands currently leads south, and I have to believe there would be massive pressure on Canada to ramp up tar mining very quickly if the U.S. found itself running short. And if Canada resisted for whatever reason – CO2 emissions, perhaps, or not wanting to completely pollute the water supply for Alberta and Saskatchewan, or not wanting to use up our last reserves of natural gas to extract oil from the tar sands, or wanting to save some for ourselves – pressure would be applied.

And if American pressure was resisted, who knows where things would go. As mentioned earlier, this is a nation that has routinely protected oil supplies by overthrowing governments and even invasion. Will they allow Canada to keep ‘our’ oil, which surely will be considered a U.S. ‘national interest‘ under NAFTA?