Worse, the first of many Saudi supertankers carrying two million barrels of dirt cheap oil is now bound for a U.S. Gulf of Mexico refinery that Canada now partially supplies. It is the largest on the continent. It is owned by the Saudi state oil company. The Saudis have also hired a fleet of oil tankers to store at sea their growing stocks of surplus oil.

These are brutal realities, particularly for Alberta, because it has dug itself a very deep hole by gambling that its tar sands/oil sands would be a chief source of capital investment, jobs, and royalty payments for decades to come. What Premier Jason Kenney proudly proclaimed as the “economic engine of Canada” (and un-claimed as the biggest source of national greenhouse gas emissions) now has clanking pistons and a crankshaft about to seize.