Canada Ignored By Bipartisan Socialists

Canada's role missed in U.S. energy debate: Yergin.

BANFF, Alberta (Reuters) - The way Daniel Yergin sees it, the high-stakes debate over energy security in the U.S. presidential campaign has ignored one of the most critical parts of the United States' oil supply equation: Canada.

The United States' neighbor to the north has quietly become its largest foreign oil and gas supplier, and that has actually improved energy security in the United States, said Yergin, energy and geopolitical analyst, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

Meanwhile, Canada's oil industry is struggling at home to keep boosting production of the country's vast oil sands while facing major new environmental and cost hurdles, Yergin said.

"People debate oil imports, but what they don't know is 22 percent of oil imports come from Canada, that 13 percent of our natural gas comes from Canada. Imports of energy from Canada need to be seen in the larger context of the trade and investment network that ties the two countries together," he said in an interview in the mountain resort of Banff, Alberta.

"This shows interdependence at work."