When the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline opened its doors on May 1, 2024, carrying oil from Alberta to the British Columbia coast, there was no large opening ceremony. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s federal government, who bought the project and spent more than $ 34 billion – Pipeline one of the biggest infrastructure projects in Canada – has said nothing about it.
“It was something that the liberal government did well for the petroleum sector … and they did not celebrate it at all. There was no ribbon cup ceremony,” said Rory Johnston, founder of Basic contextA petroleum market study service.
Even the Prime Minister of Alberta, Danielle Smith, an adult antagonist of Trudeau, thanked the federal liberals for having finished the pipeline, say that It would be a “change of game” for the Alberta petroleum industry and greet it as an example of federal-provincial cooperation.
But the Liberals were strongly criticized for the climate defenders pipeline, which saw it as the government betraying its targets to reduce emissions and giving the oil and gas industry – the largest emitter in greenhouse gas with the planet – a massive boost.
All of this seemed to be a distant memory during the leadership debates of the Liberal Party this week. In the debates in French and English, candidates for the leadership management expressed warmer feelings towards pipelines.
“A project like Energy East is possible. It is a fact that it is possible to build a pipeline in Quebec, to the Maritimes of Alberta.
“I am very proud to be the minister who had access to our energy to the Pacific. This diversification is so precious today. It gives us an alternative to the United States. We need that more than ever,” former finance minister Chrystia Freeland said on Tuesday during the English debate.
All this comes when Canada faces the threats of the American president Donald Trump to make Canada the 51st state and to slap the prices on Canadian exports – which could lower the economy dependent on the exports of Canada – have aroused new interest in strengthening the economic and energy independence of Canada, pipelines included.
But even if the political climate becomes more favorable to new pipeline projects, they are always faced with the continuous transition of fossil fuels with clean energy.
This means that the construction of new pipelines could be logical for Canada’s energy security and politicians looking for a lever effect on Trump, but it may not be very attractive for private companies trying to make a profit.
What do Canadians think of new pipelines?
An Angus Reid online survey Out of 2,012 Canadians at the end of January suggests an increase in pipeline support.
Energy East, the Pipeline West to the East Pipeline proposal which was canceled in 2017, saw its support going from 58 to 65% since 2019, suggests the survey. Support for pipeline reached 47% even in Quebec, where there was a mass movement against the project when proposed on environmental concerns.
A little more than half of Canadians also seem to support Northern Gateway, a proposed pipeline that would bring Alberta oil on the British Columbia coast but was canceled by the Trudeau government in 2016.
In British Columbia, the survey revealed that 55% of those questioned support Northern Gateway, which was originally opposed by many indigenous and environmental groups for potential spills along its route through the province, and in northern columbia northern waters
“People somehow throw away at the moment for alternatives. You know, how to decouple our economy in the United States?” said Hayden Mertins-Kirkwood, principal researcher at the Canadian Center for Political Alternatives.
He said that this return to pipelines shows a lack of political imagination, and that Canada should use the time to stimulate other industries – such as clean electricity or manufacturing with a more certain future in a world turning away from fossil fuels.
“There is this enormous risk of assets blocked here on which we continue to double, the infrastructure that we will not need in the coming decades,” he said.
“Instead of building new infrastructure that will last us for 100 years.”
Matto Mildenberg, professor of political science at the University of California Santa Barbara, who studies the policy and policy of climate change in North America, said that if political tensions with the United States had opened a space to talk about pipelines, he still expected a future liberal government to remain focused on the energy transition, which was key to the party for almost a decade.
“I do not consider any of the messages we hear from Freeland and Carney campaigns as indicating a climate de-print as a problem,” he said.
What lessons have been learned from Trans Mountain?
The Trans Mountain project and its attractive cost exceeding are looming on all future Canadian pipeline proposals.
Kinder Morgan, based in Texas, first proposed to develop the pipeline in 2012. The pipeline transports oil from Alberta to ports and refineries on the west coast, and the company wanted to double its capacity and bring opportunities for the oil companies of Alberta to export to markets in Asia and elsewhere.
But the project was confronted with important demonstrations and legal challenges of environmental groups, First Nations along the road and the Government of British Columbia itself. In 2018, Kinder Morgan suspended the project and said that it might have to abandon it completely because of the whole opposition.
The Trudeau government then intervened to finish it, buying the pipeline for $ 4.5 billion and spending billions more to build expansion.
“Even if it was seriously on the budget, and even if the pipeline itself never breaks even as an autonomous project, the benefit of the crown being that to be built is that the federal government can take a much wider economic image to find out whether it is worth it or not,” said Johnston.
He said it means that the government can take into account the long-term advantages of Alberta, for oil industry workers, and now to have a way to export oil without being completely dependent on the United States-even if the pipeline itself does not succeed as a business according to the cost of construction.
As part of the process to set tolls for companies using pipeline, the federal energy regulator will examine why the project has ended up costing so much.
“I think that if we are serious about this kind of nation construction project, we must understand what went wrong with Trans Mountain,” said Johnston, stressing that some of the costs were likely to dril through the mountains, or bad luck, such as floods. Other pipelines cannot necessarily have such expensive obstacles, he said.
After more than a decade of delays and division, oil now passes through the trans Mountain pipeline of $ 34 billion in Canada. Journalist Erin Collins and a team of CBC news went through the whole road to discover how the pipeline changes lives in the communities it crosses.
What about the clean energy transition?
From 2021The International Energy Agency, which advises industrialized countries on the energy markets and projections, has been clear: to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, which are already more frequent and serious, the world must work on net emissions by 2050.
That, says the IEA, means No new long -term oil and gas projects should be built.
Last June, that predict that The global demand for oil will reach culmination by 2029 while electricity production moves to renewable sources and electric cars are becoming more popular.
“If the world succeeds in lowering fossil demand quickly enough to reach zero net emissions by 2050, new projects would risk major commercial risks,” warns the agency, because the world would have evolved towards renewable energies and there would not be enough request for fossil fuels.
“I think Canadians will have to tackle the role probably declining fossil fuels in the world economy as the energy transition takes place.
“I think that a better approach to reflection on the disturbance that the current American administration creates is to think of other ways in which Canada can become independent of energy in a way that also meets climate needs.”
