A decade ago, Canada was on a trajectory to join the ranks of top-tier energy producers like Russia and Saudi Arabia, as its oil and gas output swelled and hungry markets south of the border seemed inexhaustible. In a recent Energy Intelligence World Energy Opinion, Vincent Lauerman, president of Calgary-based energy consultancy Geopolitics Central, recalls that heady epoch, capsulized in 2006 by then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who touted his nation as a "new energy superpower" (WEO May 17' 18). But who then could have foreseen that this was simply hubris, Lauerman said, "before the global economic downturn and a mix of other difficulties, some self-inflicted?"
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