Liberals, Conservatives bicker over who is pipeline champion

Projects a contentious issue as parties enter campaign mode for 2019

OTTAWA— Who’s better at building pipelines?

That question has become a major point of contention for federal Liberals and Conservatives, as the expansion of the government-owned Trans Mountain pipeline is stalled and the political parties enter prolonged campaign mode ahead of next year’s general election.

Team Trudeau points to the record of pipeline construction when Stephen Harper was prime minister. They say the Conservatives failed to pave the way for new pipelines to allimportant markets overseas, where higher prices are available for Canadian oil. The Tories fire back that the Liberals are botching the approval of new resource projects and contend the climate for construction was better when they were in charge.

Witness this statement from the office of Natural Resources Minister Amarjeet Sohi this week: “The previous government cut corners at every turn. They disregarded environmental concerns and they ignored Indigenous peoples. The result — not a single kilometre of pipeline built to overseas markets.”

Now listen to Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, who spoke to reporters that very same day: “The facts speak for themselves,” he said. “Our previous government completed four major pipeline projects during our nine years in office, including two that included access to tidewater.” OK, then. What should we make of that?

Martin King is an analyst in Calgary with the firm GMP Fir- stEnergy. He brushed both claims off as arguably correct, though ultimately misguided.

“Both right, both wrong — and they’re arguing about the wrong thing,” King said.

First off, it’s true that four pipelines were built when Harper was prime minister. The two with “access to tidewater” are the Trans Canada Keystone line and Anchor Loop expansion.

King said it’s technically true that oil flowing through the Keystone line may ultimately end up at an ocean. That pipeline, which began pumping oil in 2010, runs from Hardisty, Alta. to Steele City in Nebraska. From there, oil can be shipped through a connecting line to Oklahoma, and then into a third pipeline to the Gulf Coast.

“In the truest sense, there is access to tidewater,” King said, although it is by no means a direct connection.

A similar case can be made for the Anchor Loop. That line was built in 2008 as a way to pump more Alberta oil through the Trans Mountain pipeline, the decades-old transmitter that runs from outside Edmonton to Burnaby, B.C. The Anchor Loop is a second pipeline installed next to the old one, which runs158 kilometres from Hinton, Alta. to just west of Mount Robson in the Rockies.

So, while the Anchor Loop itself doesn’t go to the coast, it allows the broader Trans Mountain system to carry more oil to tidewater, bumping its capacity from 260,000 barrels of oil per day to the current 300,000.

But King said the Liberal case — that no pipelines were built to overseas markets — is buttressed by the fact that no major direct link from the oilsands to the ocean was constructed when Harper was in office.

“A direct Canadian link of large capacity to tidewater? No that is not the case,” he said.

That said, King and others dismiss this discussion as little more than a partisan squabble.

They say the real issue is that Canada doesn’t have enough pipeline capacity for the amount of oil it produces. That forces companies that dredge oil in Alberta to sell it to receivers on the other end of pipelines at a discount. They essentially have to bid on limited transit space by lowering their prices, King said.

Todd Crawford, associate director of industrial economic trends at the Conference Board of Canada, said Canadian crude is currently sold at roughly $40 per barrel cheaper than in U.S. jurisdictions that don’t have the same capacity problems.

He said the new pipelines that Scheer boasts about had a “positive impact” on this problem, but the progress was marginal considering that major Canadian pipeline proposals in recent years — Energy East, Northern Gateway and the Trans Mountain expansion project — have been abandoned or stalled.

“There’s no other honest way to characterize it: both major parties wear this,” he said.

So who’s better at building pipelines?

It seems neither party’s record is very good — at least on the major pipeline projects.

But they sure want you to think their opponent is worse.