Ever since the OPEC oil embargo of 1973, America has unfortunately been made to realize how vulnerable their reliance on foreign energy makes them.  For so long they have yearned for independence, but until recent technological changes they have been reliant on primarily Canadian and Saudi oil.  Now while the US looks to be walking towards one of the biggest oil booms in their history, Canada stands as the one with all to lose.

A huge part of our economy has been built around the premise of exporting oil to the US, an average of 2,324,000 barrels of crude oil were shipped a day to the US out of a total of around 3,580,000 produced.  With the US becoming less reliant on their northern neighbour to meet their energy needs, we lose the ability to fund our already ridiculously expensive ventures into oil sands which has already cost a staggering $125 billion.

I’d expect from this a few things, firstly an urgent need to diversify who we export our products too, as suggested by the article.  Secondly, as energy currently accounts for 6.8% of our GDP, a restructuring to our exports like this will surely be a blow to our spending in the coming years.

Word Count: 199        Canada says US oil boom illustrates need to diversify energy exports