Energy

Joe Oliver, Canada's minister of natural resources, describes the strategic benefits of the Keystone XL pipeline in providing the U.S. with long-term access to a secure oil supply. If approved, the pipeline would run from Alberta to Texas.

Canada ranks third in proven oil reserves behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, and the U.S. is its biggest - and virtually only - customer. That relationship will become even more co-dependent if a proposed $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline is built from Canada through the American heartland.

At this breakfast for Milken Institute Associates, this important decision-maker gave his take on:

• What the U.S. and Canada are doing right when it comes to energy security, and how North America can further distance itself from hostile oil-producing nations.
  
• The risks and rewards of the 1,700-mile Keystone pipeline that, if approved, would carry Canadian oil sands from Alberta to Texas through six U.S. states. (The risks are environmental, and the rewards involve as many as 20,000 U.S. jobs and almost $100 million in state and local tax revenues for each of the six states.)
  The pros and cons of oil sand - the source of roughly half Canada's oil production.
  
• The debate among our neighbors to the north over whether the almost exclusive trading relationship with the United States is really in Canada's best interests.

Oliver, who was elected to the House of Commons in May and named natural resources minister that same month, was an investment banker prior to this election. Previously, he served as executive director of the Ontario Securities Commission and president and CEO of the Investment Dealers Association of Canada. A graduate of the Directors Education Program at the Rotman School of Management, he was also a member of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Business Valuators and a board member of the Canadian Securities Institute Research Foundation.

Oliver is active in several charities and serves as chair of the Prostate Cancer Research Foundation of Canada. A member of the Quebec Bar, he received a B.A. and Bachelor of Civil Law from McGill University and an MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business.

This event was open only to Milken Institute Associates. To join the Associates or learn more about the program, please contact Mindy Silverstein, director of the Associates, at (310) 570-4634 or msilverstein@milkeninstitute.org.

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