Tariffs: Canadian oil imports to U.S.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Amidst the constantly changing tariff situation between the U.S. and Canada, on Tuesday we saw a suspension of a Canadian imposed surcharge on electricity to New York and other states. That came about after President Trump threatened a 50 percent tariff on Canadian produced steel and aluminum.  

But 2 on Your Side also looked at another form of imported energy from Canada. 

You can see signs for the pipelines bringing Canadian crude oil into the U.S. under the Niagara River. Some of it flows about 100 miles down to the United Refining refinery to our south in Warren, PA. There is also a map showing the interconnected energy flow between the two countries with other Midwest refineries producing our gasoline and heating oil.

Chief Petroleum Industry Analyst Patrick De Haan of GasBuddy sums it up this way: “Western New York does rely on some Canadian crude oil and refined product simply because some of Buffalo’s products can come from refineries nearby that do rely on Canadian crude oil. There’s a couple of refineries in Ohio.”

And at this point, a ten percent U.S. charged tariff on Canadian sourced oil is on hold until April 2. 

If the White House does go ahead to impose that tariff, there have been projections from De Haan of adding 20 cents to 40 cents or more to a gallon of gas in some New England states and upstate New York to our east. 

But De Haan says perhaps less of an impact here specifically in Western New York with the oil flow. “Given the economic volatility that has ensued it would probably be far lower than that. Maybe to the tune of five or ten cents a gallon.”

That is a prediction and De Haan says usually gas prices go up this time of year with the arrival of spring and warmer weather as refineries switch to lighter gasoline blends.

But with the tough tariff talk on both sides of the border, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said this Monday with another implied threat about cutting off the oil flow as he previously had done on Monday with electricity to the states. Again that was temporarily lifted on Tuesday. 

Ford had told reporters, “Remember the 4.3 Million barrels of oil that’s coming from Alberta as Premier (Danielle) Smith said on her comments I think over the last couple of days she has the Trump card.” Ford went on to explain that ‘Trump card’ could be for Smith to “give approval for an export tax” on oil. 

Ford then added, “I know the Americans. All of sudden their gas prices go up 90 to a dollar a gallon – they will lose their minds.”

When asked about that comment by Ford analyst, De Haan said, “Canada in essence would be shooting itself in the foot if it turned off those Enbridge pipelines that run down from Alberta to Minnesota, through Michigan, down in to Chicago  and then east to back into Ontario. So there’s been a lot of (political) rhetoric – this is kind of a race to the bottom.”

De Haan also said that pre – existing trade agreements would likely keep the oil flowing those international pipelines unless there were some form of federal executive orders.