The work on the Trans Mountain pipeline will resume in August 2018 to prepare a route for the expansion of the pipeline. Work was suspended by Kinder Morgan in April due to disputes between the Alberta and British Columbia governments
In late May, the federal government bought the $4.5 billion pipeline to ensure that it got built, but the Liberal Government doesn’t plan on being the long-term owners of the pipeline.
The project’s aim is to expand an existing Trans Mountain pipe line from Edmonton to the British Columbia coast to allow an increase of oil from Alberta to be shipped to foreign markets. Given the oil price discounts Alberta must swallow due to pipeline bottlenecks and the lack of access to markets outside the United States, the pipeline is critical.
But the British Columbian government, environmental activists and some Indigenous groups have been opposed to it, causing tension between Albert and British Columbia.
Ian Anderson, the head of Kinder Morgan Canada says that the company will secure, survey and prepare the right-of-way in the coming months, and First Nations will monitor the work in order to look for traditional artifacts and medicines.
This means that they anticipate laying physical pipe in a “prepared, surveyed, environmentally protected right-of-way”.
The completion date of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is said to be announced later.
Anderson says that the most important thing for him is to get started to demonstrate to Canadians and to his prospective new owners that this project can be executed in a manner that serves the interests of everybody.