Pipeline won’t face multi-year delays, says executive
CALGARY The Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project will not face the same multi-year delays that have hurt the Northern Gateway pipeline, Kinder Morgan Canada president Ian Anderson said Thursday.
Enbridge Inc. is seeking a three-year extension for its $6.5-billion Northern Gateway project through northern British Columbia, conditionally approved by federal regulators in 2014. But Anderson said his company would begin construction work on Trans Mountain next summer, assuming it receives final federal approval in December.
In a wide-ranging interview at Kinder Morgan’s Calgary offices in a meeting room decorated with coastal First Nations art, Anderson touched on the $6.8-billion project’s costs, opposition and next steps. He said he would reach out to aboriginal groups still fighting the project “very soon,” but added “we never expected unanimity. We will proceed according to federal jurisdiction and decision that we get.”
Anderson’s comments come a week after the National Energy Board recommended Ottawa approve the pipeline expansion project, subject to 157 conditions. The NEB said this week it is also asking the public to weigh on Enbridge’s request for a threeyear deadline extension. The Calgary-based company had until the end of 2016 to begin building the pipeline as part of more than 200 conditions outlined in the project’s environmental certificate.
Anderson said he doesn’t expect Trans Mountain will face such a lengthy delay, in part because the legal challenges against his company’s project were launched earlier in the regulatory process than in the Northern Gateway process.
“The challenges of parties like Burnaby, (B.C.) and Tsleil-Waututh (First Nation) have been undertaken while we were in the (regulatory) process. Northern Gateway saw their legal challenges all occur at the end of the process, so they didn’t have the certainty of outcome that we believe we have at this stage,” Anderson said.
By December, the courts should have made decisions on jurisdictional issues and legal challenges facing the Trans Mountain project, Anderson said, adding that “time has worked in our favour.” Anderson acknowledged there was still entrenched opposition to his company’s project in metro Vancouver, but said those people in favour of Trans Mountain “don’t get heard.”
There is still significant opposition in B.C.’s Lower Mainland to the project. Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan said last week that there are no benefits Kinder Morgan could offer that would cause them to support the project.
“Derek and Gregor get the headlines in part because of the extreme positions that they are prepared to take,” Anderson said.
Recent data from the Angus Reid Institute shows that 60 per cent of British Columbians oppose the pipeline with 40 per cent strongly against it.
A poll from Ottawa-based Abacus Data, however, suggests their support would increase, if the conditions imposed by the NEB are met.
“The conditions that people were looking for was evidence that companies were going to be diligent and evidence that there was a parallel agenda to promote an evolving energy mix for the country and emissions reduction and evidence that there were appropriate safeguards on the part of the government,” Abacus chairman Bruce Anderson said.
His company’s poll, released this week, suggests that 31 per cent of B.C. residents support Kinder Morgan’s project and a further 31 per cent can support it “under certain conditions.”
The poll was conducted online of 2,000 people across Canada and polls of that size are considered accurate within a 2.2 per cent margin of error, 19 times out of 20.
Abacus’ Anderson said the poll results show polarization on pipeline projects has been reduced, partly as a result of the federal government’s additional reviews for the Trans Mountain and other projects.
Kinder Morgan’s Anderson said he was confident the company could meet the NEB’s 157 conditions, including a requirement that the company offset the greenhouse gases it will emit during the construction process.
He said the company expects it will emit one million tonnes of GHGs during the project’s construction and there will be a cost to offset those emissions, which will push the project’s total cost above $6.8 billion, though he didn’t know what the final tally would be at this point.
“You could see a mine site, you could see a timber operation, you could see other infrastructure similarly affected by that kind of condition. I think it’s a sign of the times,” Andersons said of GHG offsets, which he thinks will become more common for future project approvals.