Inside Alberta's plan to build its own diplomacy in the U.S.

New documents reveal details of a multimillion-dollar plan from the province of Alberta to promote itself in the United States and expand its international diplomacy in an era of tension over energy policy.

The plans are laid out in two sets of documents filed last month on an American federal website that tracks foreign political activity in the U.S.

Alberta plans to open offices in several U.S. cities, and these filings offer details on a pair of concurrent projects: a $1.7-million American advertising campaign on energy, and a more wide-ranging $2-million public-relations program.

Alberta's enhanced diplomatic presence comes amid impassioned debates over oil and the future of energy production, which have pit Alberta against the national governments of both Canada and the U.S.

Premier Jason Kenney told a U.S. podcast this week that too many Americans seem unaware of the role Alberta plays, and can play, in supplying the U.S. with energy. He shared an anecdote from his last trip to Washington to illustrate a point: that his province's story isn't being heard in the corridors of federal power.

"I'm schlepping around in a yellow cab, I can barely get a meeting with a janitor in the State Department. But the emir of Oman blows into town … in a 40-car motorcade. And every door is open to him," Kenney told the conservative podcast Ruthless in an episode aired Tuesday. 

"And Oman is responsible for less than five per cent of U.S. energy imports. It's a really strange situation."

He voiced exasperation with the federal governments in both the U.S. and Canada.

Kenney chided the Biden administration for cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada, then scrambling, amid a surge in oil prices, to get more imports from Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela. 

"Why didn't they give us a call? We're your closest friends and neighbours," Kenney said. "It just makes absolutely no sense." 

WATCH | Alberta Premier Jason Kenney says a Keystone XL successor project would benefit the province and Canada:

Kenney also offered details in the U.S. interview on his annoyance that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau failed to push back against President Joe Biden. Just before Biden's inauguration, last year, Kenney said he got wind of Biden's plan to cancel Keystone XL and pleaded with the prime minister to call the incoming president and lobby against it.

"[Trudeau] wouldn't do it. … They just rolled over. It was abject surrender," Kenney said.

Those comments from the premier add context to the province's planned advocacy efforts, spelled out in newly published documents.