Venezuelan oil is coming and the Liberals need to stop blocking Canadian energy development

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A major geopolitical fault line shifted Saturday morning, as the United States arrested Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro after a quarter century of socialist tyranny.

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This is a good thing. Canada did not recognize Maduro as the legitimate president of Venezuela, and with him out of the way, we hope that Venezuelans will finally be able to enjoy freedom and democracy.

I have called for the recognition of the legitimate winner of the 2024 election, Edmundo González, along with the courageous hero and voice of the Venezuelan people, María Corina Machado, and I will continue to do so. Venezuelans must be allowed to choose freedom for themselves. But this moment also resets the clock for global energy markets.

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For the past decade, Liberals blocked Canada from producing the oil and gas needed to replace Venezuelan oil that the U.S. was sanctioning.

Those sanctions could soon end. And Venezuelan oil could soon return to its historic level of 3.5 million barrels per day, up from its current one million. Its heavy crude is very similar to Alberta’s oilsands, which means it will directly compete for scarce and specialized U.S. refinery capacity that can handle our bitumen. Each Venezuelan barrel the Americans take could therefore be a barrel less they will need from us. So we need other customers fast.

That is why we must immediately move to approve a pipeline to the Pacific Coast. Prime Minister Carney has not clearly stated that he would support such a pipeline. His only commitment, in his Memorandum of Understanding with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, is to declare that such a pipeline “can be referred to the Major Projects Office for consideration of designation under the Building Canada Act.”

Refer the project for consideration to a new office for years of further study? We don’t have time for politics, paperwork and bureaucratic busywork. And given this Liberal government’s