“After launching his vision on Monday for Australia to become an energy superpower based on its huge reserves of coal, gas and uranium, Mr Howard said he was working closely with Canada to ensure that the world’s two biggest uranium producers were not locked out of the nuclear fuel cycle,” Paul Kelly wrote in The Australian yesterday. Really?

“With the right policies, we have the makings of an energy superpower,” the PM told CEDA on Monday.

Yet Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, had already claimed that tag. It’s odd that our PM or Kelly didn’t mention that. Aren’t Canada and Australia resources rivals, too?

On Friday, on his way to the G8 summit in St Petersburg, Harper told an audience in London about “the emerging energy superpower our government intends to build”:

  • We are currently the fifth largest energy producer in the world.
  • We rank third and seventh in global gas and oil production respectively.
  • We generate more hydro-electric power than any other country on earth.
  • And we are the world’s largest supplier of uranium. But that’s just the beginning.
  • Our government is making new investments in renewable energy sources such as biofuels.
  • And an ocean of oil-soaked sand lies under the muskeg of northern Alberta – my home province.
  • The oil sands are the second largest oil deposit in the world, bigger than Iraq, Iran or Russia; exceeded only by Saudi Arabia…

Harper didn’t say it, but he could have mentioned that Canada is closer to key energy markets than Australia, too. And every advantage counts if you want to claim superpower status.