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If anger, outrage and patronizing rhetoric could build energy pipelines, Alberta would be drained dry of oil.

We’d have so many energy pipelines pumping our oil and bitumen to tidewater by now that Canada would need more ports.

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But indignation and finger wagging by Alberta politicians in recent years have resulted in precisely no new pipelines being built.

In 2011, then-prime minister Stephen Harper famously told the U.S. media that the Keystone XL pipeline to ship Alberta bitumen to the American Gulf Coast was a “no-brainer.”

“It’s hard for me to imagine that the eventual decision would be not to build that, ”Harper said at the time. “The economic case is so overwhelming. The number of jobs that would be created on both sides of the border is simply enormous.”

Except that President Obama eventually rejected Keystone. And Obama called Alberta’s oil “dirty” while he was at it.

You could call Obama’s reasoning flawed and unfair, and driven by politics.