The think tank asked eight industry experts to estimate how much of Russia’s exports Canada could replace and how quickly. The experts were to work under certain assumptions, one being that the government would not allow protesters to halt the building of pipelines or other infrastructure.
Over the next 7 to 10 years, the report said, Canada could offset almost 60 percent of Russia’s natural gas exports and about 46 percent of its crude oil exports. In the short term (one year), it couldn’t do much, as infrastructure would need to be built. In the medium term (the next few years), Canada could replace about 20 percent of Russia’s gas and oil.
SecondStreet.org averaged out the estimates made by the experts, which varied widely.
“One reason for the large variation in estimates could be related to investor confidence in Canada. Simply put, the past decade has seen investor confidence plummet as government regulatory decisions have contributed to the demise of many large-scale projects,” the report said.
The project examples it cited include the Teck Frontier Oil Sands Mine and the Keystone XL Pipeline.
Respondents were asked to assume that new energy sector projects would be private sector-led. “Some respondents may have been more optimistic [about that] than others,” the report said.