Carney offered to double oil exports to U.S. as part of potential deal, Hoekstra says

The U.S. ambassador to Canada says that Prime Minister Mark Carney offered to double exports of Canadian oil to the United States as part of a prospective trade deal last year.

Pete Hoekstra, speaking at a conference in Edmonton on Monday, said that Mr. Carney made the pitch during an Oct. 7, 2025, meeting at the White House. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright were eager to take the deal, Mr. Hoekstra said, but President Donald Trump held them back.

At the time, Mr. Carney was trying to reach a deal to get Mr. Trump to drop or reduce his tariffs on Canadian steel, aluminum, autos and other goods. No deal was ever reached, as Mr. Trump walked away from talks later that month over an anti-tariff advertisement from the Ontario government.

Mr. Hoekstra said that Mr. Carney’s offer was for Canada to supply between three and four million more barrels of oil per day, which would roughly double current levels.

“The Prime Minister proposed, as part of a preliminary trade agreement, that Canada would be willing to ship three to four million barrels of oil to the United States, additional barrels of oil to the United States,” Mr. Hoekstra said in an on-stage interview with former Alberta cabinet minister Gary Mar at the Pacific Northwest Economic Region conference. “Doug Burgum and Secretary Wright had to be restrained by the President because they were so eager for getting more oil and getting it from Canada.”

Mr. Hoekstra said Mr. Trump “had to advise them that crawling across the table and shaking Carney’s hand” was “not necessarily the best negotiating strategy” and to “show a little bit more restraint, that we do have options.”

The Prime Minister’s Office did not immediately provide a response to Mr. Hoekstra’s comments.

Canada is by far the largest supplier of crude oil to the U.S., accounting for nearly two-thirds of American imports. Its reliance on Canadian oil is the main reason for Washington’s goods trade deficit with Ottawa, about which Mr. Trump frequently complains.

But Mr. Hoekstra said it would be a good idea for the U.S. to import more oil from Canada.

“We want oil, we need oil and we have found over the last couple of decades that one of the best places in the world to get oil from is Canada. It’s close by, the people that we have to work with in Alberta are great business partners, they’re good businesspeople,” he said, adding that the U.S. wants to import more oil and “probably the region that can make the most compelling case for supplying more oil to the United States would be Saskatchewan and Alberta.”

He also said that he believed a proposed cross-border pipeline by Canada’s South Bow and the U.S.’s Bridger would move ahead, creating a new connection for sending Canadian crude to the U.S.

“I’m optimistic that the pipe coming down south, the pipe going north, that they’re going to meet at the border, that they’re going to be at the same place,” he said.

Mr. Trump in April signed a permit for the project, which must still receive state-level regulatory approvals.

Calgary-based South Bow has said it received support from oil shippers for a proposed 550,000 barrel a day pipeline across the U.S. border, where it would feed a pipeline planned by Bridger Pipeline LLC. South Bow expects to make a final investment decision on the project around the middle of 2027.

Mr. Carney spent much of last year trying unsuccessfully to reach a deal with Mr. Trump to mitigate the worst of the U.S. President’s trade war. Ultimately, Mr. Trump terminated the negotiations. The two countries resumed talks this spring but there has been little indication of progress.

Mr. Hoekstra has been one of Mr. Trump’s most bombastic representatives on the world stage. Shortly after Ontario’s anti-tariff ad, The Globe and Mail reported, Mr. Hoesktra screamed and swore at David Paterson, the province’s representative in Washington, at a dinner in Ottawa.

With reports from Jeff Jones and Reuters