(Oil Price)– A new oil pipeline to Canada’s Pacific coast is highly likely to make it to the federal government’s list of projects of national interest, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told Calgary Herald in an interview published this weekend.
“I would think, given the scale of the economic opportunity, the resources we have, the expertise we have, that it is highly, highly likely that we will have an oil pipeline that is a proposal for one of these projects of national interest,” Carney told the publication.
A new pipeline out of the top oil-producing province of Alberta to the British Columbia coast and Pathways Alliance, a carbon capture and storage (CCS) project proposed by oil sands producers, are very likely to make it to Canada’s federal list of major energy projects, according to the prime minister.
The private sector is going to drive a proposal of a new pipeline, Carney said.
The PM has pledged that the federal government would work to fast-track major projects to make Canada an energy superpower.
Additional takeaway capacity for Canadian oil “basically gives a signal to international investors that this is a place they can continue to invest,” Tristan Goodman, President of the Explorers and Producers Association of Canada (EPAC), told Calgary Herald.
For its part, Alberta could receive within weeks a proposal from a private company for a new pipeline from the oil-rich province to British Columbia’s northwest coast, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said last month.
A new pipeline to Canada’s northwest Pacific coast “is the most credible and the most economic of all of the pipeline proposals the private sector would consider,” Smith told Bloomberg News in June, declining to name any companies potentially involved in the project.
Earlier in June, Smith said that Alberta is working to engage private backers for a new pipeline to ship about 1 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude to British Columbia’s northwest coast.
The expanded Trans Mountain route is currently the only pipeline shipping Alberta’s landlocked crude for exports on tankers from the West Coast.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
