There are some 840,000 kilometres of oil and gas pipelines in Canada. The future of new pipelines is now doubt with the pullout of Kinder Morgan who sold their partially completed Trans-Mountain line to the Canadian government due to legal challenges and protests.
Brian Lee Crowley is managing Director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a non-partisan public policy think tank based in the national capital, Ottawa.
ListenThe Kinder Morgan company of the U.S wanted to triple it’s current oil carrying capacity from the Alberta oil sands to a terminal near Vancouver.
Brian Lee Crowley, Managing-Director, Macdonald-Laurier Institute (supplied)
The idea was to build a second pipeline along almost the same route as an existing line. However that original pipeline was built in the early 1950’s. Since then, many areas along the route have been built up with housing and other urban development, and environmental concerns about the devastation of oil spills and forest cutting for the route has increased exponentially.
- MLI- What’s Next for Trans-Mountain- analysis report
- RCI-Dec 2017: KM cleared to start work
- RCI: Apr 9/18: KM to stop development of Trans-Mountain
- RCI-May 29/18: Govt to buy pipeline
The pipeline route for the doubling of the Trans-Mountain line. (NEB Hearing Apr 2, 2014)
The new line faced extremely stiff opposition and KM Canada decided it would stop construction on the line. Original cost estimates for completion were over $7-billion, and the company had already invested several billion dollars to that point.
The federal Liberal government, elected in part for its stance on the environment, now decided that it was in the national interest to complete the line and spent over $4-billion to purchase the line.
There has been much opposition to that policy and the opposition to the line itself remains.
2016: One of many still ongoing protests against the Trans-Mountain project. (CBC)
This means the project remains in doubt, and indeed has put a chill on other developments. With two of four major pipeline projects in Canada cancelled, and the Trans-Mountain project in limbo, the question now arises, does this mean an end to any future pipeline projects, and further expansion of oil-sands development in Canada?
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