A positive ending to the Trans Mountain saga

Pipeline boosts Canada’s oil industry by widening its export options, making it less reliant on US market and bringing Asia into the mix

The expansion of the Trans Mountain oil pipeline (TMX) from 300,000b/d to 890,000b/d has been a fiasco. Since Kinder Morgan first proposed TMX in 2013, its in-service date has been delayed by several years and the capital cost of the project has ballooned multiple times, from C$5.4b to a reported C$34b. Reasons for the increase include the coronavirus pandemic; natural disasters such as wildfires and massive floods; and regulatory delays, including the Canadian federal court tossing out the project’s original approval in 2018, leading Kinder Morgan to drop the project and the Canadian government buying the Trans Mountain system to keep TMX alive. As a result, the federal government is now ex