Roy Amara’s observation that we overestimate a technology’s short-term effects and underestimate its long-term ones helps explain how shocks reshape systems over years rather than days. The same logic applies to geopolitical disruptions: the immediate damage is visible, but the lasting shifts in behavior and institutions matter far more.
Take a hypothetical US strike on Iran. In the short term the fallout is straightforward: broken supply chains for oil, petrochemicals and fertilizer; price spikes; and human suffering. Over time, however, deeper changes take root. Iran’s rulers might consolidate power or posture more aggressively; regional alliances could be rearranged for decades; and a new generation could come away with hardened attitudes toward the West. Physical flows of oil and gas will eventually resume, but the lesson that chokepoints can be weaponized will not be easily erased.
That lesson is consequential for energy-hungry Asian economies with limited domestic resources. Many of those countries rely on maritime routes that cross volatile regions. Few are willing to be repeatedly drawn into foreign conflicts to keep tankers moving. Strategic petroleum reserves offer a buffer but are expensive to maintain and intended for temporary shocks, not long-term structural security.
There is an alternative source that gets too little attention: western Canada. Alberta sits on the third-largest proven oil reserves in the world, behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. It produces roughly four million barrels per day of oil and also has substantial natural gas supplies and plentiful, cheap electricity that could support liquefaction and export infrastructure. The problem is not geology but market access and the investment needed to move more product to global customers.
Today almost 90 percent of Alberta’s oil heads south to the United States, primarily to Midwestern refineries. With few other buyers, Canada effectively sells into a near-monopsony and often receives a persistent discount versus global benchmarks. Two main forces have reinforced that dynamic: federal policies in recent years that constrained resource development in the name of climate goals, and a widely held assumption that Canada’s long, peaceful trade relationship with the US made Pacific access less urgent.
Those assumptions are shifting. Canada is reassessing fiscal strains and political risk, and there is renewed interest in diversifying export markets. At the same time, more pragmatic policy voices argue that responsibly developed resources can provide jobs, revenues and financial resilience while meeting environmental commitments through technology and regulation.
The principal barrier to turning Alberta into a stable Pacific supplier is tidewater access. Canada has one major pipeline to the Pacific—the Trans Mountain Pipeline—which was expanded from roughly 350,000 barrels per day to just under one million. That expansion cost about US$30 billion and required federal involvement to finish. Plans for more capacity exist, but substantial further investment in pipelines, terminal capacity and upstream development would be needed to make a material dent in global markets.
If foreign and domestic investors financed a meaningful build-out of West Coast export infrastructure, North America could offer Asian buyers a reliable, politically predictable source of hydrocarbons for decades. Supply from Canada would likely trade at a discount to some global benchmarks, though that gap might narrow as market access improves. Greater production and diversified outlets would also raise royalties and reduce the persistent southbound discount over time.
The rockets and blockades that briefly roil shipping lanes will pass, but the recognition that chokepoints are a strategic vulnerability will endure. The ingredients for a durable shift in supply chains are present: Canada has the resources and institutional stability, Asia has growing demand and the political will to diversify, and the strategic case for new routes is clear. Building the infrastructure to link Alberta’s energy to Pacific markets would ease Asian energy anxiety while strengthening Canada’s economy and fiscal position.
Charlie Grahn is a supply chain veteran and business instructor at Langara College in Vancouver, Canada.
