Mr. Trump has made much fuss over the US’s energy purchases from other countries. The US imports most if not all, of the Alberta Oil sands production. Mostly, as its cheaper than what the US themselves produce, and current US refineries, particularly in the mid-west, are ill suited to drink the premium juice coming out of Texas. So, all this no matter how you spin it means that Americans will have to pay more at the pumps, at least in the short term, and that to any politician is disaster.
To begin with, Albertan oil is quite a bit cheaper than what Texas produces. The two benchmark price indexes are Western Canada Select (WCS), and West Texas Intermediate (WTI), and are charted below, in $ per barrel.
Seems Albertan oil is at the time of this writing 15$ less per barrel, which is about 25% more expensive. Generally, WTI is considered to be more “sweet”, while WCS is more “sour”. Seen from the lens of gas prices, this matters, as WTI can more easily produce more barrels of motor gasoline than WCS. Thats not to say that WCS can’t produce the same yield of motor gasoline (generally around half), its just that additional processing is such as cracking and coking are required (source, and source). However, most refiners have likely already re-tooled to accept WCS, and its possible these re-tooling expenses have been paid off long ago (source).
These re-tooling expenses are significant, so much so, that the preferred path seems to be to replace WCS with comparable oil from somewhere else (source). Well, that place is not Texas, nor shale oil, something more like Venezuela, Iran and less palatable countries (source). Not only that, but transport costs are also significant as pipelines exist to transport crude from Alberta to say, Illinois as the Midwest swing states are heavily reliant on WCS.
For a politician, gas-prices are well worth paying attention too. For example, looking into Mr. Trumps predecessor, Mr Biden, it seems to be that for every 10c /G price increase in gasoline prices, his approval rating dropped by a whopping 1%!. Well, Mr. Trump, if gas prices truly double from the current $3/G (source) to $6/G, your support might tank by 30%! There be some food for thought (source). Things could also get substantially worse, as the 1970’s oil crisis suggests (source).
Not that we here at electriccaradventures.ca would be complaining, this blog has long argued that gas prices are far too low, as they typically do not price in externalities such as health problems associated with fossil fuels (source), the costs associated with a warming climate and so on. Perhaps interest in EVs would climb dramatically too (source), strange times we live in.
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