The energy industry has been strangled in regulation

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There is something perverse about a government that once claimed there is “no business case” to sell natural gas to Europe so our allies don’t have to rely on Russia, but whose prime minister is happily going to China to talk energy exports. That energy, by the way, could very well end up powering a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The Liberal party’s disreputable habit of siding with authoritarian enemies of the West aside, the government’s position on whether there is a “business case” for an energy project has nothing to do with the market, and everything to do with politics.

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When, on Thursday, Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith mocked those who want pipelines built “with no business case or analysis,” he wasn’t entirely wrong. Of course there is no business case for a pipeline, because the Liberals have engineered it that way. They’ve strangled the energy industry with regulation to such an extent that few businesses would ever risk hundreds of millions, if not billions, in investing capital, on their own.

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