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Alberta premier skips summit as deadline approaches for Kinder Morgan pipeline

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Alberta premier skips summit as deadline approaches for Kinder Morgan pipeline

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley opted not to attend a summit of her western counterparts as the clock winds down on a Kinder Morgan Inc.-imposed deadline for Canadian governments to resolve their regulatory differences over the C$7.4 billion Trans Mountain oil sands pipeline project.

Issues on the agenda at the meeting in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, are less relevant than the possible loss of more than C$15 billion to Canada's economy from scuttling the Alberta-to-British Columbia project, Notley said at a May 22 news conference.

British Columbia Premier John Horgan, who has vowed to stop the pipeline project, is attending the conference, which started May 23. His government filed a suit in Alberta Court of Queen's Bench on May 22 aimed at stopping implementation of a law passed by Alberta that would allow the government to limit shipments of petroleum products to British Columbia.

Notley took a jab at Horgan and her fellow premiers May 23 without naming her rival. Discussing items such as universal pharmacy coverage and marijuana legalization "would be surreal and exceptionally tone deaf," Notley said on her official Twitter feed. "We're fighting for the pipeline so our country can afford things like pharmacare," she said. "So while they are at the premiers' meeting, talking about how to spend that kind of money, I'll be here, figuring out how we earn that money."

Kinder Morgan Canada Ltd., the Canadian subsidiary of the Houston-based pipeline giant, said it needs certainty by May 31 that it can proceed with the project to boost the capacity of Trans Mountain to 890,000 barrels per day from 300,000 bbl/d. Although the expansion has been approved by Canada's government and a previous British Columbia government, Horgan's recently elected left-leaning coalition has proposed regulations and mounted court challenges to the project. Horgan's New Democratic Party and its governing partner, the Green Party, are opposed to increased shipments of diluted oil sands bitumen through a port in the populous Lower Mainland. Kinder Morgan wants to start construction this summer so it can finish the project in time to meet contractual commitments to shippers.

SNL Image

Kilometer 0, the start of Kinder Morgan Canada's Trans Mountain crude oil pipeline network. An expansion project would boost the system's capacity from 300,000 barrels per day to 890,000 bbl/d.

Source: Kinder Morgan Canada Ltd.

The Alberta lawsuit, which had not been assigned a case number at the time of the British Columbia news release, names the attorney general of British Columbia as the plaintiff and the attorney general of Alberta as the defendant. British Columbia Attorney General David Eby said the province filed a suit in Alberta asking the province's top court to rule that the law to limit shipments of petroleum is unconstitutional.

According to a government draft of the claim that had yet to be filed, British Columbia seeks "a declaration that the act is inconsistent, in whole or in part, with the Constitution of Canada and is of no force and effect." The filing cites a section of Canada's 1867 Constitution Act that says "all articles of the growth, produce, or manufacture of any one of the provinces shall, from and after the union, be admitted free into each of the other provinces."

In a separate action in its home province, British Columbia asked its highest court to allow it to limit the amount of diluted bitumen that can flow across its border.