For years I was a voice in the wilderness calling for an oil pipeline to bring western oil to Eastern Canada. Now that TransCanada and Enbridge each have plans to build one, I should be pleased. But I'm not. Canada is in the absurd position of promising the U.S. oil security through the export of oil from Alberta, while Canada itself is the most oil insecure country in the global North. While Canada exports two-thirds of its oil -- 99 per cent of that to the U.S. -- Quebec and Atlantic Canada rely overwhelmingly on oil imports, half of that from the volatile Middle East. Unlike all other member countries in the International Energy Agency, Canada has no strategic petroleum reserves to use when the next international oil supply crisis strikes. Despite a short-term surge in U.S. oil output, global oil production has not grown since 2005. It is not likely to in the future either, for reasons that Jeff Rubin and others have argued. Oil pipelines to the East, then, could finally bring Canada the energy security we will need. Once built, and if dedicated to serving Canadians first, they could catapult Canada from the most oil insecure country to the head of the line. Why, then, am I skeptical about TransCanada's proposal to partially convert its natural gas main line to an oil pipeline to Quebec and perhaps New Brunswick, and about Enbridge's plan to reverse its Montreal to Sarnia pipeline to once again bring western oil to Quebec? Because it's all about exports and corporate profits and it has nothing to do with energy or environmental security for eastern Canadians. Big, mainly foreign, oil and the big pipeline corporations seized on sending Alberta oil east, after they were blocked from shipping oilsands oil south through the planned TransCanada's Keystone XL line to Texas and west via the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline to the B.C. coast. Shipping oil from Alberta 4,400 kilometres to the Atlantic is a big project, but big oil is desperate to get oil to tidewater -- any tidewater -- where oil prices are much higher. But whatever the motivation for building them, won't the west-to-east oil pipelines make eastern Canadians more energy secure? Not necessarily. That incidental benefit could quickly be dropped if and when big oil decides that exports are more lucrative than supplying Canadians with their own oil. Read more..