mobanmarketOttawa: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday approved a controversial expansion of a pipeline to move crude oil to the Pacific coast for shipping overseas.
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“Today, I am announcing that our government has approved the Trans Mountain expansion project going forward,” he told a press conference in Ottawa, adding: “The company plans to have shovels in the ground this construction season.”
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Officials at an earlier briefing said construction might resume within months, but could not say when the first shipments of oil would go through it.
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The project will expand an existing pipeline to move 890,000 barrels of oil a day from landlocked Alberta more than 1,150 kilometres to the Pacific coast, replacing a smaller crumbling conduit built in 1953.
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Trudeau’s government had approved it in 2016, saying it was in the “national interest” to ease Canada’s reliance on the US market, boost local production and get a better price for its crude oil.
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But its construction was delayed by protests and legal challenges. Environmentalists and indigenous tribes worry that increased shipping from a marine terminal in Vancouver could impede the recovery of local killer whale populations.
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Last August, the Trudeau government purchased the pipeline for 4.4 billion Canadian dollars (Dh12 billion) from Kinder Morgan to salvage the troubled expansion project.
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On the same day, a federal court ordered Ottawa to take a second look at the project, taking greater care to consult with coastal indigenous tribes and consider marine traffic impacts.
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Finance Minister Bill Morneau said the pipeline would eventually be sold once it becomes commercially viable, and all profits would be rolled into renewable energy projects.