Arati Somasekar
HOUSTON – Alberta, Canada’s main oil-producing region, can help alleviate a global oil supply crisis caused by power outages, Alberta Energy Secretary Sonia Savage said Sunday.
Alberta has spare pipeline and rail capacity and can transport more oil to the United States, Savage said in Houston ahead of S&P Global’s CERAWeek energy conference. Oil prices in Asian trading on Monday soared to $128 a barrel from about $83 a barrel in January.
“We are the solution, not Venezuela and other countries,” Savage told Reuters, clearly alluding to the U.S. sending a delegation to Caracas last week to discuss easing U.S. oil sanctions.
She also stated that it would be “bad faith” for any country to buy Russian crude oil or oil products in light of its invasion of Ukraine.
Oil buyers avoid oil supplies from Russia, one of the world’s largest oil exporters. Russia exports 4-5 million barrels per day of oil and 2-3 million barrels per day of oil products.
Savage said the US should ban imports of Russian crude oil and petroleum products.
Last week, Canada banned imports of Russian crude oil and agreed to supply Ukraine with anti-tank weapons to counter a Russian invasion.
Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a “special operation”.
(Reporting by Arati Somasekara and Marcy De Luna in Houston; editing by Tom Hoag and Kenneth Maxwell)