CALGARY — Federal NDP Leader Tom Mulcair said a new international energy report bolsters his call for more refining capacity in Canada and for oil to flow from the country’s west to the east.

Speaking in Calgary Tuesday evening in support of Calgary Centre byelection candidate Dan Meades, Mulcair referred to this week’s International Energy Agency (IEA) report, which pointed to increasing domestic oil supplies in the United States, Canada’s biggest energy customer.

The report has been heralded as another wake-up call that Canada needs to put more effort into finding new markets for its crude, or risk the future growth of the oil industry.

Mulcair told reporters the increasing supply of oil in the U.S., combined with soft demand, is already having an impact on the Canadian energy industry.

He said while Eastern consumers pay higher prices for oil, producers in Western Canada are hit by the price differential — the discounted price they must accept for their crude as a result of surging production and jam-packed pipeline capacity in the U.S.

“It’s in the interests of everyone to try to get the best possible price for our natural resources, to add the jobs here,” Mulcair said at an NDP rally at a nightclub on 17th Avenue S.W.

He said focusing on shipping oil from Western Canada to central and eastern provinces, and processing it domestically, could be a solution and a nation-building project on par with railroad construction in the 1800s. “It could be a win-win-win situation.”

The official Opposition leader opposes the Northern Gateway project, saying supertankers shouldn’t be allowed into the pristine ecosystem on B.C.’s Pacific coast where the pipeline would end.

However, Mulcair said as long as Canada’s own energy needs are taken care of first, “Canadian oil should be exported to as many markets as possible, (for) the best price we can.”

With the Calgary Centre byelection less than two weeks away, Mulcair said even with his party’s limited support in Alberta, he believes his message that Canadians need to think about future generations and energy security will resonate with voters in Calgary.

Canada is currently America’s largest oil supplier, providing about 2.4 million barrels per day, or 29 per cent of net oil imports, in 2011, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The next-biggest supplier on the list was Saudi Arabia.

But on Monday, the IEA said technological advances have helped unlock vast oil supplies from U.S. shale rock formations. The increased output, along with stepped-up fuel efficiency measures, mean U.S. oil imports will wane to the extent that North America will become a net exporter of oil around 2030.

The Harper government has said the new report calls attention to the importance of finding new markets for Canadian oil, as the U.S. isn’t going to need as much Canadian oil as before.

Federal Conservative candidate Joan Crockatt, who is running in the Calgary Centre byelection, said Tuesday the report underscores that Canada’s economic recovery is fragile.