Why is Canada building an oil pipeline?
The government seems to have forgotten about ecology.
The Trans Mountain oil pipeline project linking Alberta to the coast of British Columbia was acquired by the federal government in 2018 after Kinder Morgan threatened to abandon the project.
At the time, the price for Canadian government was CAD 5 billion, not the most incredible amount for such an ambitious goal. But five years have passed and it's still there: the pipeline is not finished. And now the completion of the project is already estimated at CAD 30 billion.
Who is going to sponsor this? That's right: the taxpayers. Now the need for the pipe is seriously debatable.
The former head of ICBC, the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, and economist Robyn Allan made it clear that the government, that also professes to be environmentally conscious, is responsible.
“On the one hand we’re told that we’re going to tackle our dependency on fossil fuels, and then they overspend to buy a heavy oil pipeline, the worst among the fossil fuels in the world. They overspend to buy it, and then they mismanage to build it, so Canadian taxpayers are going to be on the hook for something like 25 to 30 billion dollars,” Allan said.
Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland, who not long ago found herself in a scandal, refused to make any personal statements.
However, in a statement to Global News Ministry of Finance acknowledged that the government acquired the project because it was a "serious and necessary investment."
Allan said that by tallying the numbers, the pipeline project will probably end up being the largest subsidy to the oil industry in Canadian history.
“Every barrel of diluted bitumen that goes through that pipeline, to be burned into the atmosphere, Canadian taxpayers who are struggling with climate change are on the hook for around half the cost of shipment because Ottawa has not managed this project properly and ensured that the big oil companies that said they wanted this project so badly actually pay for it,” she added.
Its expansion will increase the pipeline's capacity from 300,000 bpd to a total of 890,000 bpd, supporting growth in Canadian crude oil production and providing access to global energy markets.
