On February 1 — that is, three days from now — President Donald Trump has promised to apply a tariff of 25% to all U.S. imports from Canada and Mexico, crude oil very much not excepted. Canada has been the largest source of American crude imports for more than 20 years. More than that, the U.S. oil industry has come to depend on Canada’s thick, sulfurous oil to blend with America’s light, sweet domestic product to suit its highly specialized refineries. If that heavy, gunky stuff suddenly becomes a lot more expensive, so will U.S. oil refining.

Rory Johnston is an oil markets analyst in Toronto. He writes the Commodity Context newsletter, a data-driven look at oil markets and commodity flows. He’s also a lecturer at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and a fellow with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines. He previously led commodities market research at Scotiabank. (And he’s Canadian.)

On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Jesse and Jillian attempt to untangle the pile of spaghetti that is the U.S.-Canadian oil trade. Shift Key is hosted by Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University, and Jillian Goodman, Heatmap’s deputy editor. Robinson Meyer is off this week.

Mentioned:

How the U.S. and Canadian oil industries evolved together

Johnston on how tariffs could disrupt a finely calibrated relationship

Jesse’s upshift; Jillian’s upshift.

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This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …

Intersolar & Energy Storage North America is the premier U.S.-based conference and trade show focused on solar, energy storage, and EV charging infrastructure. To learn more, visit intersolar.us.

Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.

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