This article was originally published by the CCPA Monitor and has been republished here with permission from the author and the Monitor.

Two years ago, when Gordon Laxer and I wrote Over a Barrel: Exiting from NAFTA’s Proportionality Clause  , we explored the possibility that NAFTA Article 605 could actually result in a shortfall in the petroleum supplies needed to keep Canadians from freezing in the dark. We tested various scenarios under which NAFTA’s proportional sharing clause might be invoked to force Canada to go on exporting oil and natural gas to the United States in the same proportion of total supply as was exported over the previous three years. Now, based on more recent data from Statistics Canada, I have concluded that the threat of domestic shortfalls is even more dire. For Over a Barrel, I calculated that, if NAFTA’s energy sharing rules were invoked in 2007, the U.S. would be entitled to import 64.2% of Canadian oil production. Two years later, that ratio rose to 66.3%

An increase in the export-to production ratio of around two percentage points may not sound like much, but the consequences are serious when one looks at how the NAFTA clause would actually work in practice. According to NAFTA rules, what counts is exports to the U.S. as a proportion of “total supply” (defined as production plus imports and inventory drawdowns) rather than production alone.

Over the years 2004 through 2006, Canada exported to the U.S. 47.5% of our total supply of oil. More recent data from Statistics Canada reveal that, by 2008, the proportion of total supply exported over the previous three years had grown to 48.6%, and in 2009 it stood at 50.5%. Thus the proportion of total supply we would be obliged to make available to the U.S. grew, not by two percentage points, but by three.

Over a Barrel used the hypothetical example of an attempt to reduce Canadian oil production by one-tenth as a conservation measure. Had this step been taken in 2007, application of the proportionality clause would have led to a modest shortfall in the supply available to meet Canadian needs equivalent to one-and-a-half days of domestic demand. If such a measure had been attempted in 2008, the domestic shortfall would have amounted to 18 days of Canadian demand. By 2009, the potential shortfall had risen to 32 days.

Our second scenario involves conserving 10% of natural gas production as feedstock for our petrochemical industries that employ 24,000 workers. The latest Statscan data indicate that the proportion of gas production we would be obliged to make available rose from 61.5% for the period 2004-2006 to 63.4% for the last three years — again at about one percentage point per year, just as had happened for oil. When I calculated the potential domestic shortfall from a decision to keep in reserve 10% of natural gas production, I discovered that the potential domestic shortfall also grew larger with each passing year — from 66 days of domestic demand for the first period to 97 days for the latest period.

A third scenario explored in Over a Barrel involved using more of the oil produced in Western Canada and offshore Newfoundland to reduce our reliance on imports. As Gordon Laxer has pointed out, Canada is the only OECD country with no strategic petroleum reserves, even though Quebec and the Atlantic provinces are dangerously dependent on imports from insecure suppliers.

In our initial study, we looked at the effects of reversing the pipeline that now carries imported crude west from Montreal to Sarnia, Ontario, to instead take Western oil to Quebec, as was the case when the pipeline was originally built in the 1970s, and of diverting exports from Newfoundland and Labrador to domestic markets. Once again we found that NAFTA’s proportionality clause would block such import substitution measures.

In our original study, based on 2004-2006 data, I calculated that fulfilling the requirement to supply the U.S. market over Canadian needs would leave a shortfall equivalent to 17 days’ worth of domestic demand. When I re-calculated the numbers for the period 2006-2008, there was a larger shortfall — 48 days of domestic needs.

The conclusion is clear. The longer we remain subject to NAFTA’s proportional sharing clause, the more vulnerable we become. It is well past time for Canadians to stand up and demand that the proportional sharing obligations imposed by NAFTA be eliminated once and for all.

(John Dillon is the Global Economic Justice Coordinator for KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives .)