Canada exports more oil to the United States than does any other country, including Saudi Arabia. The Great White North is a net exporter of crude oil, natural gas, coal and electricity. It is the most significant source for US energy imports.

The US is the traditional–and natural, owing to the 5,525-mile long boundary, language and Mother Country we share–market for Canada’s energy exports.

According to the US Energy Information Administration–among the best uses of American tax dollars going, by the way–this relationship is under threat, as “Asian countries are seeking greater access to Canada’s natural resources to fuel Asia’s own long-term economic growth.”

(EIA receives funding for its activities with an annual appropriation from Congress. EIA’s budget request falls under the purview of the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on Energy and Water Development.

(The fiscal year 2012 budget provides USD105 million for EIA, an increase of USD9.6 million, or 10 percent, from the fiscal 2011 level. The increased fiscal 2012 funding level “improves EIA’s ability to provide comprehensive, relevant energy statistics, analyses, and forecasts, and enables the agency to deliver this information to its customers in the most efficient and effective means.”)

Although Oil and Gas Journal revised Canada’s proven reserves of crude oil downward by about 1.5 percent in 2010, Canada’s 175.2 billion barrels of proven reserves of crude oil places it third in the world, trailing only the well-known friends of America Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

Moreover, Canada is the only non-OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which is not a Middle East-only club) member among the top five reserve holders.

Approximately 170 billion barrels, or 97 percent, of Canada’s reserves are unconventional, mainly from bitumen deposits. These unconventional deposits place Canada as one of the central sources of non-OPEC production growth in the coming decades.

Total oil production in Canada amounted to 3.46 million barrels per day in 2010, of which 2.7 million barrels per day was crude. Canada consumes around 2.3 million barrels per day, with consumption rates forecast to be relatively flat over the long term, with a 0.1 percent expected average growth rate through 2035, according to the EIA.

This trend allows for any increase in production to be exported. Canada is clearly a major source of non-OPEC oil production growth for the next several decades.

Canadian oil production comes from three sources: the oil sands of Alberta, the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) and the offshore oil fields in the Atlantic. Additional reserves are known to be under the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic, off the Pacific coast and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Of the 2.7 million barrels per day of crude produced in Canada in 2010 about 1.35 million was pulled from Alberta’s oil sands. These volumes and growth from the oil sands will make them the largest single source of US crude imports, additional conventional Canadian exports notwithstanding.

Here’s the thing: We, the Average Working Joe the Plumber, My Wife Michelle the Public Schoolteacher, My Neighbor Volkmar the IT Admin, need this reliable oil because it helps keep our overall energy costs at the low levels to which we’ve become accustomed, perhaps uncomfortably, yes, but, whether we care to admit it nor not, habituated to nonetheless.

Projecting long-term energy demand is, in the words of energy and metals information and data provider Platts, as much art as science. As Danish physicist Niels Bohr said, “Prediction is a very difficult art, especially when it involves the future.”

This is a process that implicates many disciplines, including economic and political factors. But of one thing we can be reasonably sure: The inexorable trend toward urbanization sweeping China and other developing Asian economies and the concomitant competition for resources will only get hotter in decades to come.

By 2030, according to the Population Division of the Dept of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, 62 percent of 1.5 billion Chinese will live in big cities, up from 47 percent of 1.4 billion in 2010 and 27 percent of 1.1 billion in 1990. By 2050 urbanization will reach 73 percent.

India, meanwhile, which in 1990 posted an urbanization rate of 25 percent of its 900 million citizens, reached 30 percent of 1.2 billion in 2010. By 2030 it will be 40 percent of 1.5 billion, by 2050 54 percent of 1.6 billion.

A 2009 McKinsey Global Institute study forecast that by 2025 225 Chinese cities will have more than 1 million residents. For comparison’s sake Europe currently has 35 cities of a million or more people.

This has enormous implications for resource consumption. Five billion square meters of road will be paved, and 170 mass-transit systems could be built. Forty billion square meters of floor space will be built by then, in 5 million buildings. And 50,000 of these structures are likely to be skyscrapers.

China is on course to construct the equivalent of 10 New York Cities over the next decade and a half.

This is the transition of emerging economies from investment- to consumption-led growth. Though steel intensity is forecast to peak first as the construction cycle matures, copper use will plateau later in the industrialization cycle.

Energy and food demand will follow economic growth in a more linear fashion; China is already the leading car market in the world, and rising incomes historically translate to consumption more and higher-quality food, marked by rising corn and soybean production and raising of livestock to satisfy new demand for meat.

On one hand you have an environmental apocalypse, the likes of which we’ve never known. On the other you have a breakdown of social order brought on by rapidly rising fuel costs.

A quick and easy solution to the problem of renewable energy storage isn’t walking through that door anytime soon. We have the resources we have, here in the US and Canada as well as in the Middle East.

Personally, I’d rather deal with Stephen Harper.

Here are when Canadian Edge Portfolio Holdings have reported or will report numbers. Click on links to review analysis of already posted results. Note that several still have not set firm dates; we have provided an “estimate” for these companies based on their respective reporting histories.

Conservative Holdings

• AltaGas Ltd (TSX: ALA, OTC: ATGFF)–Apr. 26 Flash Alert
• Artis REIT (TSX: AX-U, OTC: ARESF)–May 9 (confirmed)
• Atlantic Power Corp (TSX: ATP, NYSE: AT)–May 8 Flash Alert
• Bird Construction Inc (TSX: BDT, OTC: BIRDF)–Jun. 1 (estimate)
• Brookfield Renewable Energy Partners LP (TSX: BEP-U, OTC: BRPUF)–May 8 Flash Alert
• Canadian Apartment Properties REIT (TSX: CAR-U, OTC: CDPYF)–May 9 (confirmed)
• Cineplex Inc (TSX: CGX, OTC: CPXGF)–May 10 (confirmed)
• Davis + Henderson Income Corp (TSX: DH, OTC: DHIFF)–May 8 (confirmed)
• Dundee REIT (TSX: D-U, OTC: DRETF)–May 8 Flash Alert
• EnerCare Inc (TSX: ECI, OTC: CSUWF)–May 9 (estimate)
• IBI Group Inc (TSX: IBG, OTC: IBIBF)–May 11 (confirmed)
• Innergex Renewable Energy Inc (TSX: INE, OTC: INGXF)–May 14 (confirmed)
• Just Energy Group Inc (TSX: JE, OTC: JUSTF)–May 18 (estimate)
• Keyera Corp (TSX: KEY, OTC: KEYUF)–May 8 (confirmed)
• Northern Property REIT (TSX: NPR-U, OTC: NPRUF)–May 9 (confirmed)
• Pembina Pipeline Corp (TSX: PPL, OTC: PBNPF)–May 8 Flash Alert
• RioCan REIT (TSX: REI-U, OTC: RIOCF)–May Portfolio Update
• Shaw Communications Inc (TSX: SJR/B, NYSE: SJR)–Apr. 26 Flash Alert
• Student Transportation Inc (TSX: STB, OTC: STUXF)–May 11 (estimate)
• TransForce Inc (TSX: TFI, OTC: TFIFF)–Apr. 26 Flash Alert

Aggressive Holdings

• Acadian Timber Corp (TSX: ADN, OTC: ACAZF)–May High Yield of the Month
  
• Ag Growth International Inc (TSX: AFN, OTC: AGGZF)–May 11 (confirmed)
• ARC Resources Ltd (TSX: ARX, OTC: AETUF)–May Portfolio Update
• Chemtrade Logistics Income Fund (TSX: CHE-U, OTC: CGIFF)–May 9 (confirmed)
• Colabor Group Inc (TSX: GCL, OTC: COLFF)–May Portfolio Update
• Crescent Point Energy Corp (TSX: CPG, OTC: CSCTF)–May 11 (estimate)
• Extendicare REIT (TSX: EXE-U, OTC: EXETF)–May 8 (confirmed)
• Newalta Corp (TSX: NAL, OTC: NWLTF)–May 8 (confirmed)
• Noranda Income Fund (TSX: NIF-U, OTC: NNDIF)–Jun. 14 (estimate)
• Parkland Fuel Corp (TSX: PKI, OTC: PKIUF)–May 8 Flash Alert
• Pengrowth Energy Corp (TSX: PGF, NYSE: PGH)–May Portfolio Update
• PetroBakken Energy Ltd (TSX: PBN, OTC: PBKEF)–May Portfolio Update
• Peyto Exploration & Development Corp (TSX: PEY, OTC: PEYUF)–May 11 (estimate)
• PHX Energy Services Corp (TSX: PHX, OTC: PHXHF)–May Portfolio Update
• Vermilion Energy Inc (TSX: VET, OTC: VEMTF)–May 8 Flash Alert