(Canadian Press)

By Curtis Galbraith

Toews says “all options” being considered in Keystone XL fight

Feb 8, 2021 | 10:40 AM

Alberta’s finance minister says the government and TC Energy are looking at all options when it comes to the American decision to cancel permits for the Keystone XL pipeline.

According to Travis Toews, that includes litigation and trade agreement challenges.

In an email to constituents, Toews calls the response to the cancellation from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tepid, inadequate, and a double-standard.

“The energy industry is by far-and-away our largest export industry, generating in the neighbourhood of $120 billion of exports every year. We would have expected our federal government to raise this issue and defend it wholeheartedly.”

Toews says there are other pipelines like Enbridge’s Line 3 and Line 5 that are “under some attack in the U.S.” and the government is worried that the tepid response does not bode well for other projects. He adds Line 3 is still going ahead and should be done this year.

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He doesn’t think there is a high probability that U.S. President Joe Biden will change his mind about cancelling those permits.

The finance minister would tell those who think that more oilsands development means more climate change worries that there is not an energy industry in the world as environmentally-responsible as the Canadian one.

“Our oilsands participants, the businesses, companies that are involved in oilsands exploration and production, have been on a constant path of GHG reduction improvement over the last number of years and many of them have actually identified targets of being net-zero (emissions) by 2050.”

Toews says Line 3 and Trans Mountain are even more important now that Keystone XL has been cancelled.

He believes it is too early to say if Keystone is dead or can still be revived.

“Personally, I’m not optimistic that in the short term, the Biden administration will change their minds on this. But we will be doing all we can to defend Canada and Alberta’s interests in terms of pipeline infrastructure in the U.S.”

The government put up $1.5-billion for an equity stake in the pipeline. Toews says this was done to get the project going.

He says not all of the $1.5-billion had been spent by the time the permits were cancelled.

Toews reports that the province is “evaluating the details of our exposure” and it is too soon to say if Alberta will get some of its money back, adding that the government knew there was risk but the potential returns for the province were big enough to make this a risk worth taking.