My latest: there’s pain at the pump. Some of this is inescapable fallout from conflicts in the Middle East and Russia/Ukraine. But much of it is self-imposed. The clean fuel regulations cost 13.57 cents a litre for diesel and 12.24 cents a litre for gasoline. To add insult to injury, tax is charged on top of these costs. Even worse, to comply with them, refiners must blend in biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel. Canada is not self-sufficient and imports over half of what it needs, predominantly from the US. Somehow, in the middle of a trade war and an energy crisis, it has gone unnoticed that Canada — the aspiring energy superpower — has artificially made itself dependent on the United States for fuel. nationalpost.com/opinion/can…

In case anyone was worried that more Canadian oil exports to Asia would conflict with American interests - here is the Atlantic Council advocating for it to advance East Asian energy security. "If the East Asian democracies—Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea—decide that Western Canada’s Pacific Link project is meritorious, they should consider investing in coker retrofits at existing refineries to intake Canada’s heavy oil sands crude... The US oil export complex might not be able to sustain exports at its current levels indefinitely. A growing number of analyses find that crude oil production in the Permian Basin will plateau, or even begin to decline, as prime acreage is exhausted. If the largest and most important basin in the United States faces output declines, and is not paired with concomitant decreases in demand, then US crude oil exports to Europe and East Asia will decline." atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth…