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Escalating trade tensions between Ottawa and Washington have exposed what analysts consider a vulnerability in domestic energy security: Eastern Canada’s heavy reliance on American natural gas.

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While Western Canada holds claim to an abundance of natural gas, millions of homes and industrial plants in Ontario and Quebec depend on short-haul imports from Pennsylvania and Ohio. It’s a trade dynamic that analysts warn leaves the country’s most populous region directly in the crosshairs of cross-border tariff disputes.

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According to the Canada Energy Regulator, U.S. natural gas exports into Canada average close to three billion cubic feet per day. Ninety percent of it enters Ontario and Quebec.

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“That represents about two thirds of the natural gas Ontario and Quebec currently uses,” said Dulles Wang, a Calgary-based director on global consultancy Wood Mackenzie’s natural gas and LNG research team.

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“And it didn’t use to be this way.”

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The change has turned what was once a routine, cost-saving trade partnership into what some view as a burgeoning energy security issue.

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“With President Trump waging an economic war against Canada, the status quo is no longer acceptable,” said Stephen Lecce, Ontario’s Minister of Energy and Mines, in a statement to the Financial Post.

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Alberta Premier Danielle Smith agrees. “[Alberta] used to sell almost one hundred per cent of the natural gas Eastern Canada used back in the early 2000s,” she said in a news conference last week.

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“And if they were able to get one hundred per cent of their gas from us before, they can do it again. Maybe it’s time for us to talk about how we might restore some of that production from Western Canada to get it out East.”

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Ideas on how Canada can achieve energy security abound. But first, policy makers have to define what they need by the term, Wang said.

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“Are we talking about energy flows coming through the U.S, and back into Canada?” Wang said. “Or are we talking about transporting the molecules only through Canadian territory?”

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Today, Canadian natural gas moving west-to-east takes a path that partly snakes its way through the states. “Therefore, we are not just talking about Alberta gas being sold into Ontario. We are also talking about what path it takes to get there,” said Wang.

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Beyond those questions, other, bigger ones remain: Is the current trade dispute a temporary blip on the geopolitical radar, or evidence of a more profound restructuring of trade relations between Canada and the U.S.?

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And if Canada decides energy security is in fact a top priority, what are the mechanics of achieving that end?

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The decision to boost American natural gas imports into Eastern Canada was driven almost entirely by cold, hard market economics. Natural gas from Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio’s Marcellus and Utica formations — collectively part of the Appalachian sedimentary basin — travels roughly 800 kilometres north into southern Ontario via a storage hub near Sarnia.