It has been years since the prospect of a pipeline Transporting oil from west to east Canada has been before and in the center.
But new comments by the Federal Minister of Energy In the midst of American tariff threats, have asked a lot: could it finally happen?
Trump threatened a 10% tariff on Canada’s energy resources as well as a 25% rate on all goods. Its threat has leaders through industries and provinces, especially energy and even Quebec – long opposed to a new pipeline – asking how to attenuate the threat.
“Being so dependent on the United States for oil export is a vulnerability,” Jonathan Wilkinson’s natural resources and energy journalists said on Thursday.
The comments came one day before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau held an economic summit to discuss the means to diversify trade between the provinces and to remove internal obstacles to support each other.
During this summit, it was heard on a hot micro by telling business leaders The fact that Trump thinks that the absorption of Canada is the easiest way to benefit from his resources.
Could a West to East pipeline occur? Unlikely, say the experts
The Prime Minister of Alberta, Danielle Smith, said last month that she would like to see conversations resume about the Northern Gateway Pipeline and the Pipeline Energy East offered to help Alberta move its oil more easily to international markets and elsewhere in Canada.
Smith reiterated this call this week, telling Global News on Tuesday that she was eager to speak with her counterparts, in British Columbia and Quebec in particular, of the construction of additional access to the two coasts.
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“I hope it was an alarm clock in the West, in eastern Canada, that they depend 100% of oil from foreign sources and gas from foreign sources and that we are a solution,” Smith said.
Saskatchewan Prime Minister Scott Moe said he hoped for this.
“We would need a commitment, I think, at this stage of the federal government that they will really build and they will not only support this pipeline to create energy security for all Canadians with Canadian products,” He declared.
“But also supports energy infrastructure and all transport infrastructure so that a province like Saskatchewan is able to reliably access our ports.”
The Prime Minister of Quebec, François Legault, also suggested that Trump’s prices could change the opposition of Quebecers to a pipeline, affirming that if there was “social acceptability”, the government would be open to these projects, including a pipeline.
But although there is a renewed conversation of the idea, it could actually pose problems as it has done in the past.
The Northern Gateway Pipeline, which would connect Alberta to the Pacific Ocean, was initially approved by the federal government in 2014, but canceled two years later in a judicial challenge.
One year after the cancellation of this pipeline, TransCanada did the same with its plans for the Energy East Pipeline proposed, which would have connected Alberta to New Brunswick, partly due to the opposition of Quebec.
Andrew Leach, an economist at the University of Alberta, told Global News that petroleum and gas producers in the West had moved from an inter-Canada approach.
“If you are an exporter of Western Canada, what you want is the shortest route to a high-value market,” he said in an interview with Global News. “And for the moment, the high value market is Asia and if you build a pipeline in Edmonton in Saint John, it is by no means the shortest route to the market.”
Leach added that there was a lot of support for projects like Energy East during his proposal, the exporters always want to find the shortest possible route.
Pipeline manufacturers and operators also seem to support the idea.
“With the finished spin-off of South Bow, we are no longer in the oil oil sector and the Energy East project ended in 2017,” a spokesman for Tcenergy said in a statement.
The Trans Mountain pipeline, which was bought by the federal government in 2018 and extends from Alberta to Burnaby, British Columbia, is the only oil pipeline that can serve other markets.
Jason Balasch, vice-president of the firm, said on Thursday that he was considering expansion projects but did not try to add a third line.
Last month, Professor of McGill University, Amy Janzwood, told Global News Relive from the northern gateway Would not be logical and said that they were not large pipeline companies making Renaissance proposals but politicians.
Enbridge, the pipeline and energy company based in Alberta behind Northern Gateway, told Global News two weeks ago that he did not intend to relaunch it, rather focusing on their pipeline which is in the ground.
According to the Minister of Finance, Dominic Leblanc on Friday, there is no submission for a project yet to bring oil to the East Coast.
“It’s a hypothetical discussion,” he said. “If a large Canadian pipeline company with numerous private investments at a given time puts a project before the regulator, provincial and federal governments would assess the project.”
Almost all of Canada’s crude oil exports – around four million barrels a day – go to the United States
–With files from the Canadian press and Global News’ David Akin, Bryan Mullan, Karen Bartko and Morgan Black
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