Olivia Woods
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said on Wednesday that while Canada won’t be able to replace Russian oil imports with Canadian crude or natural gas, the country is looking at other options to export renewable energy to Europe.
Prior to the announcement of Canada’s new plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Guilbeault spoke at the Canadian Club Toronto to support the federal environmental strategy.
“Global oil prices are soaring as a result of this conflict and the issue of energy security in Europe is centre stage,” he said.
Over a quarter of Europe’s oil supply comes from Russia, and 40% of its natural gas comes from there as well. A ban on Russian oil and gas from both Canada and the United States on Tuesday was necessary to meet around 3% of global demand, despite the fact that neither country had imported any since 2019.
However, Russian fossil fuels remain crucial to Europe, warned European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, agreeing that this must stop. “We simply cannot rely on a supplier who explicitly threatens us,“ she said.
Although Canada is the world’s fourth-largest producer of oil and gas, Guilbeault noted that delivering Canadian products to Europe is logically impossible. “We have to be realistic,” he said.
Canada may be able to export an additional 200,000 barrels a day to the United States, allowing the United States to ship that quantity of oil to Europe from its own reserves. Guilbeault said Europe needed approximately three million barrels a day.
“European leaders want not only to reduce their reliance on Russian oil, they want to reduce their reliance on oil altogether,” said Guilbeault. “This is where Canada can really help.”
He affirmed that oil and gas aren’t the future of energy for Canada and Europe as a whole. Renewable energy is where it’s at, hydrogen to be specific.
Canada is one of the world’s leading hydrogen producers, but only produces about three million tonnes of hydrogen per year for industrial purposes, making it a relatively new business in Canada.
At the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston on Tuesday. Wilkinson highlighted Canada’s hydrogen as a “medium- and longer-term opportunity.”
“Canada has huge opportunities associated with the production of ultra low carbon-hydrogen,” he said. “Hydrogen will be important for domestic use but can also enable huge international opportunities for supply to geographies including Europe and Japan.”
Original source material for this article taken from here
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