SAY NO TO PIPELINE PATRIOTISM. CORCORAN, FP7

Of all the oil pipelines dancing in the heads of Canadians, either as dreams or nightmares, the one with the greatest potential to generate a national political storm is TransCanada’s Energy East project.

By comparison, the ongoing conflicts over Trans Mountain and Northern Gateway pipelines to ship fossil fuels to the West Coast will look like minor regional problems. Nobody seems to care about Line 3 from Alberta through the American Midwest.

Energy East is Canada’s Keystone XL, only more contentious and more divisive. Some day Energy East — a $15.7-billion plan to move Alberta oil over 4,500 kilometres to Quebec with an add- on line to New Brunswick — might get built. More likely it will not.

Just as TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline triggered a wildfire of conflict across the United States, Energy East will do the same for Canada, with a debate that will sprawl across seven or eight provinces and drag on for years.

For a moment last week it looked like Energy East might be dead after President Donald Trump gave a tentative flashing yellow light to Keystone XL. If TransCanada can negotiate a new deal with Trump over Keystone, there will theoretically be less need for Energy East. Only so much oil can be shipped out of Alberta. If the Keystone project collapses under the heavy gun of Trump the Negotiator, only then will Canadian oil have to move to markets through Energy East.

Or so the story goes. But TransCanada has not given up. Earlier this week its executives appeared before the Senate transportation committee in Ottawa to review the company’s ongoing commitment to Energy East.

At a CIBC investment seminar in Whistler, B. C. last week, TransCanada CEO Russ Girling said the company had learned a few lessons from its tumultuous Keystone experience “and we have taken those learnings to other projects, including Energy East.” Among the lessons: Be on the ground earlier, listening harder, and understanding what people’s concerns are.

Energy East, however, did not play a big role in Girling’s presentation. The company has $ 26- billion worth of shortterm oil and gas projects underway, and another $45 billion in what Girling called “commercially secured long- term projects.” Energy East was only one on the long-term list.

Meanwhile, back on the regulatory track, the National Energy Board announced it had assigned a new Energy East hearing panel to replace the original panel that was disbanded following an alleged conflict of interest scandal.

The NEB said that it has “voided all decisions made by the previous hearing panel” and that all such decisions have “been removed from the official hearing record.”

Energy East, back at square one with the regulator, is therefore back at square one with Canadians.

With all the past effort wiped out, and with Keystone now considered to have a 50-50 chance, how will TransCanada renew its Energy East campaign? If the past is any indication, it will continue to sell Energy East as a great Canadian national dream.

Whether that’s the best option depends on how Canadians feel about great national projects — and whether long-term energy market trends provide the economic support for a project that attempts to portray an oil pipeline as a grand visionary Canadian enterprise.

TransCanada and its political backers play on the idea that Energy East is vital to Canada’s national interest, to energy independence, to reduce reliance on foreign oil. A corporate website, the Energy East Action Network, reads like a Trump campaign pamphlet on the evils of imported oil. “Canada spends $ 20 billion on foreign oil imports each year,” it claims.

Then, in defiance of sound trade economics, it says the “the money Canada spends on oil imports each year could pay for Ontario’s entire post- secondary education budget three times over.” Or, it “could pay for New Brunswick’s yearly healthcare budget eight times over.”

Promoting Energy East as a vital piece of national infrastructure may help politically, but such nationalist arguments become troublesome if they fly up against economic and business realities.

In the end, Energy East should stand on its own as a sound business project. Its viability will ultimately depend on the price of oil available in Eastern Canada from all sources.

If oil is cheaper arriving by tanker from the Middle East or via other transport methods from the United States, then the merits of Energy East cease to exist.

The greatest risk in Energy East, aside from those assumed by TransCanada, is that Canadians will be asked to support the pipeline as a protectionist national dream when cheaper oil and other energy sources are readily available. TransCanada is a successful Canadian energy giant with a great investment record that pays big dividends and has big plans to become what Girling calls “the leading energy infrastructure company in North America.”

Great plan, so long as nobody in Canada is forced into fulfilling that objective.

THE ENERGY EAST WEBSITE READS LIKE A TRUMP CAMPAIGN PAMPHLET ON THE EVILS OF IMPORTED OIL.