Reply #3: Which is all well and good...

[GliderGuider]

So long as the proportion of our oil that we are allowed to keep remains above our domestic requirement, then we're fine. But our demand is increasing, our conventional crude production is falling, and the tar sands will hit a wall(*) within the next 5 years that will limit or halt their production growth. When that happens, all bets are off. We will be abrogating NAFTA within the next 10 years due solely to Article 605, but the political and economic fallout from that process will be really ugly.

(*)The wall the tar sands will smack consists of: declining gas supplies, increasing capital and operating costs, and massive pollution. In a way the tar sands are a microcosmic illustration of what I call The Converging Crisis: a convergence of problems in the domains of energy, ecology and economics.

Paul Chefurka
Ottawa