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Pipelines

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The People's Pipeline is over budget... quel suprise ;)


The overbudget Trans Mountain pipeline project is carrying $23B in debt — and needs to borrow more​

Pipeline watchers say Ottawa may need to take a haircut if it wants to find a buyer​



The overbudget Trans Mountain expansion project owes its lenders at least $23 billion and is looking to take on more private debt as the federal government shuts its wallet and construction costs skyrocket.

CBC has reviewed newly released documents from Trans Mountain and another federal government entity. They show the expansion project is burning through cash and needs to borrow billions of dollars more to finish the work, which the company says was almost 80 per cent complete as of March.

"The business is significantly leveraged with debt," Trans Mountain's updated corporate plan says.

That same plan says Trans Mountain will need to borrow more to cover anticipated work in 2023 on pipeline sections and terminals.

The expansion project will twin the existing pipeline, raising daily output to 890,000 barrels.

Financial statements from the Canadian Development Investment Corporation (CDEV), the federal Crown corporation that owns the pipeline project, flag Trans Mountain's growing liabilities as a financial risk — especially since the pipeline now must turn to private lenders.

When Trans Mountain's costs surged again in February 2022, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said the government was committed to completing the project but would commit no more public money to it.

The documents show Trans Mountain had secured at least $10 billion in credit from Canada's big private banks as of December 2022. Trans Mountain says it still needs to borrow billions more. The rest of its debt is held by the Government of Canada.

CDEV warns Trans Mountain has "no assurance" of receiving more private financing and there is "material uncertainty" about Trans Mountain having "sufficient" financial resources to meet its obligation in 2023.

Trans Mountain warns in its corporate plan that if new funding is not secured, "construction of TMEP (Trans Mountain Expansion Project) will need to be stopped, workers laid-off, contractors demobilized and the in-service date of TMEP would be delayed."

 
Not sure if they had a plan. The pipeline has reached the more urban areas and that means more expense. Plus the legal fees, police costs, security all add up. The existing line is getting old and they need the new line in. Once operational, they need to rebuild the old line.
 
Nobody in their right mind would invest in Canadian energy infrastructure as long as the insane clown posse is running the institution.
Energy companies think in 30 year periods based on what I have been told, that's covers the cost of exploration, construction and operations.
 
Why headlines are a problem....

Why one of Britain’s biggest energy ports is turning to hydrogen​

The South Wales port that defied Putin's energy war is leading a green revolution

in the coming decades, its role will change

If local business leaders get their way,


So, sometime in the coming decades, if things work out right, Trudeau may have a market for hydrogen.

In the meantime it gets cold in the northern hemisphere.
 
Part of this problem is because planning rules in the UK are also more powerful than those on the continent, says Stephen Glaister, a professor at Imperial College London’s Centre for Transport Studies.

“We have in this country common law, which means that individuals have the right to property, and the state has to obtain those rights through due process to get things done,” Glaister says.

“That’s what these planning requirements are all about. In Europe, they have Napoleonic law, which means the state starts with the rights and individuals operate on licence from the state.

“If the French state or another European state wants to build a railway, the starting position is they have the right to do that.”

This means projects do not get so delayed by public consultations. When the French government launched a major programme of pressurised water reactors, one minister, who was asked how he approached public consultations, put it bluntly: “We have a saying: when you are draining the swamp, you do not consult the frogs.”

The UK has been trying to build a railway line from London to Manchester and Leeds by way of Birmingham for about 15 years now. Its efforts have mirrored those of the Trans Mountain Pipe Line. Over budget and over due.





In Canada we share the common law tradition with the UK. But property issues generally are provincial issues and not all provinces follow the common law tradition. Quebec uses the continental system variously known as the Code Civile, the Napoleonic Code or the Roman Code.
In the Roman Code tradition judgements are made by experts - judges. In the common law tradition judgements are made by peers - juries and justices of the peace. Common law judges can act as final authorities in their own right, like their continental counterparts but they can also act as moderators, in which case they allow the aggressor and the aggrieved to argue their case to the jury who are the actual judges in the case.

I prefer the jury system and the common law tradition but having said that there is a lot of truth in the observations above about the inefficiencies associated with the common law system. Those inefficiencies are reflected in Justin's appreciation of the Chinese system's dictatorship. The French and other Europeans can get things done almost as fast as the Chinese if they want to. On their other hand their grasp on the concept of democracy is suspect.

The James Bay hydro project was done in the Code Civile jurisdiction of Quebec. The opportunities for protesters to go to court in Quebec are fewer than they are in the rest of Canada. Quebec style governance has a stronger hand than common law governance. It is easier to govern by fiat under the civil code system and that is tempting but government by fiat is efficient only until the governors discover that they can't ignore the demos for ever. And the frequency with which the ignored demos takes to the streets in Europe reflects that.


Trans Mountain, like most of the British rail line, is going through a densely populated area where common law is the standard. It has to deal with every suburban householder, every university, church, First Nation, business and local government along its route. Any one of them has the right to ask for an injunction on any matter at any time. That tends to increase delays and also uncertainty.



However that doesn't explain all our delays and over runs here in Canada. There are lots of the country where there are few people on the land with the right to contest government actions. Even if every first nations land claim were accepted, and every first nation treated as a corporation with title to the land then we would be considering hundreds of potential intervenors in the country as opposed to millions. On any given project there is likely to be fewer than 100 intervenors with legitimate title based rights to contest infrastructure projects. Sorting out land claims should make infrastructure projects easier. And I think it has, and is. This is shown on all the pipeline projects that are now being subscribed by First Nations investors. The First Nations finally see an opportunity to convert their real assets into a revenue stream. We should be seeing infrastructure projects moving forwards rapidly.

But just as the First Nations are seeing opportunities to earn some real money that can build houses and supply clean water the government is depriving them of that stream of revenue through its environmental policies.

Thus the Tanker Moratorium and the failure to approve pipelines and extraction projects is doing to First Nations the same thing that was done when the government killed the fur trade.
 
The Haisla have pegged their future for the next 30 years both in jobs and education to LNGCanada and they utterly despise the groups protesting the CGL pipeline.
 
@Colin Parkinson

You are very tuned into the situation out there.

How would the locals feel about shipping oilsands out of Rupert? Not bitumen, crude or refined oils but oilsands? One idea that was floated was bitumen pucks.


Why not just ship the oilsands as oilsands. Extract it like opencast coal and dump it into rail cars.

Why?

Because the sand itself may have value.


As for destroying the world....

It seems to me that a hole in the ground is a hole in the ground. It doesn't matter if it was created to dig out lithium, copper, cobalt, marble, granite, coal or sand.

The receiving end could separate the oil from the sand.
 
I was working when this idea was actually tested. A couple of railcars were loaded up and brought through PR to trial the idea. It certainly has merit and another option in the toolbox. I think the big issue now is finding a client that is willing to buy enough to justify the expense of building the storage yard and ship loader. The usual suspects will cry out the usual horrors of such a move. PR is also looking at "boutique" shipping of products including grain by container, bypassing the cartels that control the global grain trade. So a restaurant owner in India can go online to find that a farmer in Saskatchewan has a particular type of grain such as Lentils coming due. They agree on a price and the farmer loads it into a container that is shipped to PR, goes to Singapore and then India. Apparently there is a website setup to facilitate such mico-transactions. PR is also benefiting from a minor Propane boom (not that type of BOOM). PR can't compete directly against Vancouver/Seattle/LA. So they look to smaller scale opportunities. The big challenge for PR is land to handle the goods and containers. As well as the capacity of the rail line into/out of the Port. Stewart also built a new dock doubling their abilty to move goods. Still limited to no more that 3 ships at once. Stewart World Port
 
I can't find anything current about CanaPux. I think the idea was dropped a few years ago. It would likely work fine and have the added advantage of not requiring diluent but I think there is enough pipeline capacity out there now. Enbridge said they could increase their Mainline by a couple of hundred thousand barrels a day if required and one day, possibly this decade, the TMX expansion will come online. Given that our current federal government has stated that they will impose an emissions cap on AB by the end of the year I doubt we will need to find anymore ways to transport oil.
 
A well deserved poke in the eye for the Trudidiots ;)

Supreme Court rules against federal environmental impact assessment law​


Canada's top court has ruled the federal Impact Assessment Act (IAA), also known as Bill C-69, is on balance unconstitutional.

On Friday, five out of seven judges ruled the environmental scheme as too broad in its assessment of environmental impacts.

"Environmental protection remains one of today's most pressing challenges," said Chief Justice Richard Wagner. "To meet this challenge, Parliament has the power to enact a scheme of environmental assessment. Parliament also has the duty however, to act within the enduring division of powers framework laid out in the Constitution."

The bill, enacted by Parliament in 2019, provides a process for assessing the environmental impacts of designated energy projects. It also allows for more public consultation and participation in the assessment of any future energy projects.

The legislation's critics have called it the "No More Pipelines" bill. The province of Alberta sent it to the Alberta Court of Appeal, which ruled the legislation unconstitutional in 2022. Ottawa appealed the decision to the Supreme Court and arguments were heard last spring. Nine out of the 10 provinces oppose the scheme.

 
I can see a early rewrite for the EA Act, Fisheries Act and Navigable Waters Act come a CPC win. As much as each side bitches about the other, they keep some of the stuff that the other did. One thing Harper did was to give the Federal Environmental Agency real teeth with legally enforceable provisions and and fulltime Inspection and Investigation arm. Never met any eco type willing to give credit for that move. Despite bitching heavily about it, the Libs did not remove the "Scheduled Waters" component of the Navigable Waters Act (CNWA) just expanded it a bit.
 
A well deserved poke in the eye for the Trudidiots ;)

Supreme Court rules against federal environmental impact assessment law​


Canada's top court has ruled the federal Impact Assessment Act (IAA), also known as Bill C-69, is on balance unconstitutional.

On Friday, five out of seven judges ruled the environmental scheme as too broad in its assessment of environmental impacts.

"Environmental protection remains one of today's most pressing challenges," said Chief Justice Richard Wagner. "To meet this challenge, Parliament has the power to enact a scheme of environmental assessment. Parliament also has the duty however, to act within the enduring division of powers framework laid out in the Constitution."

The bill, enacted by Parliament in 2019, provides a process for assessing the environmental impacts of designated energy projects. It also allows for more public consultation and participation in the assessment of any future energy projects.

The legislation's critics have called it the "No More Pipelines" bill. The province of Alberta sent it to the Alberta Court of Appeal, which ruled the legislation unconstitutional in 2022. Ottawa appealed the decision to the Supreme Court and arguments were heard last spring. Nine out of the 10 provinces oppose the scheme.

there will be no change regardless of the ruling. The Feds have already stated that they will re-write the bill to accomplish the same end goal so there will still be no more pipelines
 
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