I meant to flag this story yesterday:

If the American Clean Energy and Security Act passes through the Senate, it could be bad news for the Alberta oil sands.
In Alberta, Canada, there’s thought to be more oil buried underground than in the whole of Saudi Arabia. Alberta’s oil sands can be processed to yield billions of barrels of oil, and many believe that they could be key to providing North America with energy security and independence — the sands now are now the top provider of oil to U.S.
But the oil is dirty. Really dirty. And the House version of the climate bill calls for largely increased tariffs on environmentally-unfriendly goods and commodities, which this oil easily falls into. President Obama has warned against this sort of environmental protectionism, but it looks like the Senate may be facing a decision between environmental safety and energy security in the coming weeks.

Now Canada is announcing that it will take measures to avoid the tariffs. These measures are bound to make Canadian oil more expensive, which will increase the price Americans pay at the pump. It’s weird — when gas prices were at $4 a gallon, politicians in both parties were tripping over themselves to offer plans to reduce them. One year later, the Democrats are pushing through legislation that is explicitly designed to make gasoline more expensive. I guess they’d better hope that the analysts predicting a medium-term oil-price spike are mistaken.