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In this episode of Energy Newsbeat – Conversations in Energy, Stuart Turley welcomes back author Terry Etam to discuss U.S.-Canada trade tensions, the impact of tariffs, Canada’s energy potential, critical mineral strategies, and the future of oil, gas, and nuclear energy. They tackle political challenges, the dangers of rail transport for oil, and the urgent need for stronger U.S.-Canada energy collaboration amid global volatility.
Terry is a great friend of the podcast, and I thoroughly enjoy every chance I get to talk with one of my favorite Canadians.
Please follow him on X here: @TerryEtam
And check out his book here: https://a.co/d/9gHRkAa
Highlights of the Podcast
00:00 – Intro
01:08 – U.S.-Canada Trade and Tariffs
02:16 – Canada’s Missed Energy Independence
04:05 – Tariffs, Trade Problems, and Global Reset
04:57 – LNG Export Ban Controversy
05:10 – Leadership Failures in Canada
07:49 – Fentanyl Crisis and Border Issues
08:24 – Importance of Canadian Oil Sands
09:38 – California’s Oil Hypocrisy
10:41 – Integration of U.S. and Canadian Energy
11:45 – War in Ukraine and Global Costs
12:48 – Canada’s Critical Mineral Opportunity
14:43 – Canada’s Weak Military Reality
15:11 – U.S.-Canada Energy Partnership Needed
16:58 – Green Hydrogen vs. Reality
19:22 – Oil, Gas, and Support for Nuclear
20:58 – Keystone Pipeline Shutdown Fallout
22:05 – Dangers of Rail Transport for Oil
23:01 – Closing: How to Connect with Terry Etam
Stuart Turley [00:00:07] Hello everybody, welcome to the Energy Newsbeat Podcast, my name is Stu Turley, President of the Sandstone Group. Today I actually have an old friend of the show, an absolutely outstanding human. He is the author of End of Fossil Fuel Insanity, and it is clearing the air before cleaning the air. And he happened to sign my book and it goes, Stu, you are the best podcast host in the industry. Thank you, Terry, for stopping by the podcast. Anytime, always happy to be here. It was so nice of you to sign that for me. That sure was. But you know what, I’ll tell you what, I love Canada and I just was watching a short reel yesterday about one of the Canadian great arm wrestlers and his great, have you seen him? He is he’s absolutely cool He’s just nice and he beats all these guys and he does not look like he can arm wrestle That he is a true Canadian in a great sense of humor
Terry Etam [00:01:09] Well, yeah, that’s nice to hear whether it seemed to be in short supply these days cranky folks
Stuart Turley [00:01:14] Well, let’s talk about tariffs, you know, and I, I think that when I saw that list of all the tariffs and everything that president Trump had out there, I don’t think people understood that people are tariffing the U S is unbelievable in these trade practices. In fact, you and I were talking about Tammy Nemeth before this. She’s the owner of the Nemeth report and she is Got great information on the tariffs and the trades and all those things. And I highly respect her opinion. She’s smarter than both of us put together, by the way. I just thought I’m afraid to say, you’re not wrong. But when we sit back and take a look, I did not realize that the Canadians tariff our dairy products and all of our other stuff. And we have such an integral part, Terry. The Canadians shut down the pipelines that they could have avoided a lot of this stuff and become energy independent. Canada can be energy independent if you actually used pipelines.
Terry Etam [00:02:17] Yeah in many many ways and that’s so the the situation that we found ourselves in I think it’s accumulated kind of slowly over time and like the frog in the water that starts boiling right eventually you realize I’m in big trouble but it’s too late then and then your first point there the tariffs I think that also built up with the US globally over time just these trade relationships that happened and just kept creeping and creeping and part of it was was with good intentions right like after World War II the US wanted to see a lot of economies back on their feet and the Marshall Plan and all of that. So there was a lot of beneficial aspects that were put in place. And then the US is a large consuming society, it all worked, right? Because the US consumed a lot and so it made sense. But you get to a certain point where these things have crept in and you mentioned the Canadian dairy one and it’s kind of, that even bugs me as a Canadian and I have friends that are dairy farmers, but the fact remains that we put this wall up of against US products and we say we want to talk free trade except you can’t talk about that that’s off the table that’s not me saying that but that’s what happens in Quebec or Ontario’s like yeah we’re we would love to have free trade with the US except for this and this and you can to own our cultural institutions you can own our newspapers or your banks are limited to how they operate in Canada we can’t have that it’s like you want your cake and you and to eat it too right so so this this whole dislocating of Trump’s tariffs and a lot of people are having a field day making fun of them and ridiculing them and whatever but there’s a purpose there and and like we’re talking earlier i think that when you try and reset things that are so entrenched it’s not going to be perfect and it’s not going be smooth but it’s there’s so many things that we’re being forced to look at both you in the US and us in Canada here as well it’s like well why haven’t we paid attention to this for 30 years. And so.
Stuart Turley [00:04:05] Well, let me ask this of you, because I don’t want to get you canceled or in trouble, because I’m under attack in the United States by a lot of folks that are, I know who you are if you’re hacking my site, it just really kind of irritates me. We get, you know, between three to five thousand. Sometimes 7,000 denial of service attacks a day on my site, and it just drives me nuts. Yeah, no doubt. And the sad part is I know who they are, and it just is really irritating. But before we do that, when we go into it and we take a look at Canada and we say, wait a minute, we’ve got Justin Trudeau, who’s almost, I’m going to say President Biden was worse than Trudeu, if that’s even possible, because he wasn’t even And when you banned LNG and he goes, I didn’t ban LNG. I mean, and the Canadians were like, we don’t want to even build the LNG export facility. So, I mean which is worse? I don’t know.
Terry Etam [00:04:58] I don’t know that’s a it’s a toss-up. You’re right. We both suffered and and the logjam is being broken in the u.s And unfortunately in Canada, it looks like we’re stepping right back into the cow patties again. It’s we just my goodness
Stuart Turley [00:05:10] Carney is someone I would not trust. He is a World Economic Forum fan and very tight with even Epstein and a few other really not so savory folks.
Terry Etam [00:05:23] Swab and yeah, yeah
Stuart Turley [00:05:25] Yeah, I mean, this whole thing is not-
Terry Etam [00:05:27] No, here’s him in a nutshell. He wrote a book called values, which is his personal statement of values Like this is what I believe in. This is what society needs This is and it’s all he’s like a hundred percent climate advocate He’s a UN special advocate for climate climate policy or whatever And so that’s his statement of Values and he that came out about four years ago now here He is running for prime minister or he is prime minister and he’s all of these policies that announcing are our direct contradiction to what? Book of values was so what are your values again what’s why would we believe you when you said like if you tell me your values are that you don’t steal and then you say but stealing is works when i need it like you don’ t have a lot of credibility so that’s how it is to me but for some reason a lot of Canadian voters are flocking to him they think because he’s the next banker they’re willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and it’s i don’t get it it’s he’s just totally untrustworthy. Isn’t he Trudeau’s big financial advisor? He has been for a long time and he backpedals on that now. He says he had nothing to do with it. He takes credit for hearing Canada through the, I think he was the governor of the Bank of Canada in 2008 in the global financial crisis. He takes credits for steering Canada through that, even though Canada’s politicians at the time said, well, hold on there, buddy. You didn’t have much to do with it at all. That was like policy decisions. So yeah, I just don’t find much to trust there at all, He’s but he’s he’s true to a 2.0 and things just seem to run off the media doesn’t give him grief like they should he keeps Having scandal after scandal and and and they would sink a normal politician or a conservative politician They wouldn’t walk out alive from the things that he does But he and the Chinese influence thing is just everywhere to its the the infiltration of our elections is it’s just it’s been documented incredibly well now and and it’s out there in the open and our Canadian security service warned about it and they gave a report to Trudeau I think in 2019 saying, you have a big problem here and it just like kind of went under the rug and now they’re out there posing with their whatever. So it’s quite appalling and this all ties back to the US trade problem because we’re not taking the drug trade seriously. That there’s people like love to quote the statistic that well hardly any fentanyl comes into the US like the only caught I think like I don’t know 40 pounds worth of fentanyl or something going across the border.
Stuart Turley [00:07:49] And that’s about 200,000, 300,000 people dead.
Terry Etam [00:07:53] Well, yeah, and how much went through just because you caught that much doesn’t mean anything. It’s a huge undefended border They busted one drug lab in british columbia here late last year and it made the news I think it had 54 kilograms of fentanyl which is like 120 pounds in inventory sitting right there So like that’s what they’re had made and ready for shipment So they’re presumably doing that every week or something So to say that we don’t have a problem with it is and that was one lab So but but we just haven’t been taking it seriously enough So maybe we’ll be forced to now.
Stuart Turley [00:08:24] You know, it’s really sad that it has come to this because, Terry, we need the great oil field sands. You and I have talked about this for a long time. I love Canada’s oil and gas industry because you do it just as good or better than the United States, and I don’t want to admit that, but Canada does great.
Terry Etam [00:08:48] You guys I would say yeah
Stuart Turley [00:08:49] I think we’re right out there. I mean, we’ve got to have a little competition. You guys beat us on the last hockey game. I’ll give you that. But, you know, we sit back and go, both of us are great at pulling out the natural resources and we need the heavy oil sands. I’d rather buy it from Canada. Then I would rather buy it from Venezuela and in California. Terry, how do we stupefy anybody any dumber than the Canadian leadership? You go to California. They’re importing 60% of their oil from sanctioned countries. They’re also bringing in oil. They’re bringing in 90% of the oil that’s produced in Ecuador and the rainforest from Chinese companies. They bring it in. It’s just like…
Terry Etam [00:09:38] Questions asked and California itself has enormous reserves that are that they’ve they’ve shut down that entire industry There’s a great guy out of San Diego named Mike Umbro. He’s I love Mike. Oh, you know like yeah. Yeah
Stuart Turley [00:09:50] Yeah, Mike has been on the podcast too, several times. Yeah, he is absolutely a wonderful guy. In fact, I was teasing him on X yesterday that he needs to run for governor. And he goes, I can’t, I got ethics.
Terry Etam [00:10:04] Is excluded. You mentioned the integration of the oil and the industry. Well, I think Canadians, one reason Canadians and Americans are competitive in terms of their abilities is that they’re the same thing, essentially. The company I work with here, they’re all like Chevron people, right? So they were trained in California at Chevron’s labs and offices, the geotechnical people. The North American energy sector is as good as it gets globally, I thin. And we’re just totally integrated people. American companies work up here, Canadians go down there, we speak the same language, we’re just no-nonsense people that want to get something done and build things.
Stuart Turley [00:10:41] Until a Canadian and a guy with a Tex-Mex-Oakey accent get in the room and nobody understands me. Everybody understands the Canadians, but now you throw me into a room with somebody from Baton Rouge and I have no idea, I’m lost. So I love Calgary though.
Terry Etam [00:10:58] Oh, yeah, I know and you’re coming should come up here visit and I want to go down to Houston one day, too I know some good people there and I’d like to spend a few days down there. Yeah
Stuart Turley [00:11:06] Well, when you do, we’re doing a live podcast and a steak dinner, so.
Terry Etam [00:11:10] Oh, that sounds fantastic
Stuart Turley [00:11:11] You just let me know. We will make sure we take you out on the town there. But this is a big deal for Canadian relationship. Because when you sit back and take a look at the financial and what is coming around the corner, I think it’s actually a right sizing. And I think President Trump is on the right track. But boy, I sure want the war, Terry, in Ukraine to end. And I put President Zelensky right up there with Trudeau. And he is an absolute non-ethical.
Terry Etam [00:11:48] Well, yeah, I try and stay out of that one is but the the situation that’s been set up We’re just a meat grinder that’s killing people it just like and for years now Provide Ukraine just enough weapons to keep it going and it’s and and then it’s this is just insanity. It’s it’s
Stuart Turley [00:12:05] And who makes the money? The warmongers.
Terry Etam [00:12:08] The warmongers and that it does nobody any good. No, no, it just circulates right back through that. The industry, it’s terrible to to to witness. And it’s also leaving like the US is exposed, right? They use up a lot of armaments in Europe. They’ve been Putin is a very smart guy. And people think that means adoration, but he’s a very smart guy and he knows how to. He’s a master tactician and he know how to make things work in Russia’s favor. And I don’t think he really cares how he does it. Things work in Russia’s favor. So yeah, so it’s there and the it’s a very very deep stream there You’re talking about the ukrainian aspect of their how they got to their political situation for sure. Yeah
Stuart Turley [00:12:48] Now, here’s where I got a question on critical minerals, and that would be, it would make sense to me, because there’s a lot of critical minerals not being exploited or explored in Canada. And again, this goes back to my first comment, Terry. I would rather do business with a great Canada. Than I would Ukraine, because Zelensky went and he’s allegedly given away the rights to his critical minerals and guarantees to the EU and the UK. Why would I want that kind of a guarantee?
Terry Etam [00:13:22] Yeah, no, that’s why Canada and the US just need to be working together and once we sort these bugs out We will if we’re an exporting nation and we have this the best customer right right next door And we do trade a lot both ways I know we the dollar value is higher for us because we send a lot of oil there But that’s just a dollar value, but you’re absolutely right about critical minerals We have between Alaska and Canada and North America is such a powerhouse It has everything you need and what one way that we shot ourselves in the foot is we’ve handed control of metals and minerals processing to China because they don’t care about the environment as much as we do right so so we let them take control of that and they don t need to own all of the zinc supplies if they own all the zinc processing so we’re we’re at their mercy right and that’s we have to and I hope Canada and the U.S. Start working together to rectify this that we can we need to like take control here in North America and and for Canada to try and do all this in isolation is just dumb we’re not we don’t have a big enough population to our own industries and we need, we’re an exporting nation, we have a small population with 10 million square kilometers and full of minerals and materials and everything else and we just need that healthy relationship with the U.S. And it got unhealthy because mind we’ve let a lot of things slide that we shouldn’t have slid. We don’t live up to our NATO spending obligations and the U S is expected to just protect it.
Stuart Turley [00:14:43] You doubled the number of tanks and bought two more
Terry Etam [00:14:47] It is a joke. It’s sad. I feel bad for our military. We do have good people in the military. There’s just not very many of them. You fit them in this room.
Stuart Turley [00:14:54] Oh no, and I am teasing, I just, I absolutely, you’re not-
Terry Etam [00:14:59] No, it really is. When you read the statistics, Sweden has a bigger military than Canada, and they’re like, they’re one-tenth the size of Canada, and it makes no sense. We have no hope of defending our North.
Stuart Turley [00:15:11] And I’m going to be honest here, the gun laws just drive me nuts in Canada. I am hopeful for Canada becoming the 51st state, but I want all libs. Left-leaning liberal boneheads to be had their voter card pulled. But you have the Exodus It seems like I really want people to move to Texas but leave your voting policies alone The state is California. I love Mike bro. Mike bro is just a cool He’s just like you a very cool cat and he is a great friend of the show But holy smokes, I am, I would lose my patience there. Oh, he believes in California.
Terry Etam [00:15:54] Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, he’s he’s very patient guy and he’s full full hats off to him I mean to wage the fight that he is in california like to like what a what a lonely job
Stuart Turley [00:16:05] I have to give him kudos, Terry, because I’m not smart enough to figure this out. You and I, we’d be in trouble. But he definitely got it by CO2 injections and being able to inject into the wells, a byproduct is he can now produce oil. Oh, wait a minute. So he’s doing geothermal injections to capture carbon and then inject that in. And it’s like all of a sudden he can get all of his permits because it’s.
Terry Etam [00:16:34] Green. Yeah. Yeah, green. I love what he’s doing. I follow his business and he’s like, wish him nothing but success. It’s be great. It makes sense. It’s actually brilliant. Yeah it is. It is. Well we have, we have these resources that we require for our survival and no one can live without them. Oil and natural gas. You just can’t, you can pretend but you can’t. So let’s do it the best way we can. And it seems like the natural progression.
Stuart Turley [00:16:58] So what do you, what do you see coming around the corner for the energy market? Because Canada does not have a Chris Wright. Chris Wright has been on the podcast, I think three or four times. And he is one cool cat. Yeah. He is a great energy leader and he does not want us put money into any form of energy that costs more to produce than it does, than you get out of it. And that’s ethanol. But he’s got to get past the farmer subsidies. So that’s also hydrogen, hydrogen. There’s only one form of hydrogen that we can use and that’s white. And there’s only 40 companies in the world that are looking for the white natural hydrogen. I didn’t even know this was a thing until a little while ago.
Terry Etam [00:17:46] We call it every week.
Stuart Turley [00:17:47] Yeah, it’s like, you know, we’ll leave those jokes alone, the rainbow jokes. But well, but when you take a look at green hydrogen and blue and gray hydrogen, it takes more energy than you get out of it in order to make it. So why look at it as a source?
Terry Etam [00:18:04] Right and I think that that was ingrained for a decade or more with these governments like you had and like we had It’s like well, this is coming. It’s inevitable and we’re just going to make it happen We just need to write enough checks and and then the people that are actually trying to implement this are finding out Well, it’s not that easy and and even with huge subsidies. It still doesn’t work. Like it’s like you say it’s Not competitive. So there there will be over time There will be energy transitions when something becomes better and we’ll just move to that and cheaper And that’s who knows what that could be. There’s all sorts of things on the horizon Maybe somebody does develop a great new battery that really replaces everything and and and I the energy people I know Would applaud these kind of things. Nobody’s really dead set against new technology It’s kind of crazy thing to talk about but to try and force something that just doesn’t fit and like the one of the key Themes in my book is like the infrastructure that’s built that keeps us all alive. Like that’s you can’t really tinker with that It’s like your it’s like you’re your arteries in your veins in your body You can’t just redo that, right? It works to perfection or near perfection, but it’s developed that way over a long period of time. And you just don’t rearrange those things on a massive global scale in any short period of times, certainly not by government intervention, because we know how that works.
Stuart Turley [00:19:22] You know, one of the things Doug Sandridge is another cool cat and friend of the show. And he is the he’s not only a landman and a great oil and gas guy. But he also started the oil and gas executives for nuclear. And I’m gonna shoot you an intro note to him so that you can sign his petition because even Chris Wright signed the petition and he’s been all over the world. I’ve interviewed him in Norway when he was at conferences and things. And so oil and grass folks are for all types of energy. There are.
Terry Etam [00:19:59] And in theory we would just loathe nuclear energy because it could wipe out demand for a lot of hydrocarbons But I don’t know anyone that’s against nuclear energy in the oil and gas sector. We’re just energy fans
Stuart Turley [00:20:12] Well, you can’t make plastic or you can make your Coke bottle out of a nuclear facility yet.
Terry Etam [00:20:18] No, that’s they’re just not enough around and then then there’s another war there too, right? The people that were anti-nuclear and they’re still out there. There’s a lot of folks that are still derailing progress on nuclear It’s just a very challenging thing to do it at a large scale And even nuclear if you like any any rewiring of the system to a significant degree Like if we want to have a nuclear power plants everywhere, let’s say someone wanted to replace all the natural gas plants with nuclear Well, that that’s easier said than done too, not just building them, but where are they sited? Do they meet the demand requirements? How do you integrate this new infrastructure? It’s just everything takes a lot of work. It takes a lots of work to build a single power line somewhere.
Stuart Turley [00:20:58] How do we get the Keystone pipeline back online? It was what, $4 billion that Canada lost somewhere in that number. I mean, it was a lot of money.
Terry Etam [00:21:09] It is. The company that TC Energy, they were called Transcanon at the time. I think they were suing the US government, the Biden administration, to recoup their losses. I don’t know where that is at now. And they’ve said that they’re not interested in restarting it, but that doesn’t mean somebody wouldn’t be. So it makes sense. It should happen. And I don’ t know what it would take. There’s a lot of work to be done. All of the right-of-ways have to be re-obtained and whatnot. But that’s where, if governments decide that They’re going to really clean house on, in terms of making things happen quicker, like slashing regulations, slashing red tape. Which i’ve seen a lot of action come out of the white house their proclamations like okay And we need to see that on our side too in canada Then you could actually get something done these there are these things that are in the national interest, right? Or international interest that at some point we’ll have leadership that will say we have to make these things happen So yeah, yeah
Stuart Turley [00:22:05] I think that, again, people need to understand that we are importing in a good chunk of our Canadian oil on rail cars. Why? Rail cars are bad.
Terry Etam [00:22:18] Very bad. Yeah. Yeah, you want to talk about people don’t people accuse pipelines of being unsafe Which isn’t true, but at rail cars ten times worse Exactly, and they go through towns and they goes along rivers and they’re yeah
Stuart Turley [00:22:32] I worked on a pipeline and you can go over at certain junctions, you can always shut the pipeline off if there’s an accident, clink, okay, now clean this part up. But a rail car, those take out towns. They do.
Terry Etam [00:22:47] Yeah, well there was that incident in quebec where I think 50 people were killed by Rail cars that ran ran into town and exploded It’s it’s it it’s absolute craziness to be moving oil on rail cars when you could have pipelines. It really is so Oh my goodness
Stuart Turley [00:23:01] Well terry, thank you for stopping by the podcast today. How do people get in touch with you?
Terry Etam [00:23:06] Oh, they can find me at the BOE report. That’s where I do most of my writing these days. And I usually have something up there every week or so. And my email address is at the bottom of every article on the BOe report. And my book is on Barnes& Noble and Amazon.
Stuart Turley [00:23:19] I’ll tell you what, I really appreciate you and I cannot wait and look forward to throwing biscuits at people passing by in Houston and or in Calgary when I can get up there. We’ll do both. Look forward to seeing you next time, Terry.
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