It is politically uncertain when the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion will be completed and how much it will cost – in dollars and constitutional and political damages.
A seasoned pipeline executive once told me in an interview, “Pipeline projects are 10 per cent planning and 90 per cent politics.”
Six Canadian Arctic pipeline projects proposed in the 1970s were never built because approval processes did not keep pace with economic and political changes.
Three of those proposed projects – competing natural gas lines from Prudhoe Bay in Alaska to Alberta and a gas line from the Arctic Islands to Ontario – were economically fragile. The eastern Arctic gas line was precarious from the start because it involved 240 kilometres (km) of water-crossings from the islands to the mainland using underwater permafrost technology never satisfactorily tested.
A gas line and an oil line from Alaska and the Canadian Beaufort up the Mackenzie River to Alberta were viable enough to remain on the table for the better part of 40 years until 2010.
The toughest pipeline to build in petroleum history was from Iraq to the Mediterranean Sea.
In 1927, the Iraq Petroleum Company discovered oil at Kirkuk.
The Kirkuk field needed access to ocean tankers.
A 77,000 barrels-per-day line was constructed across the Euphrates River, then split, with the south line running 1,000 km to Haifa, Palestine, and the north line running 850 km to Tripoli.
It crossed pitiless desert terrain where daytime temperatures reached over 46 C and at night dropped to below freezing for the workforce of 10,000.
The desert lacked food, water, shelter and infrastructure so everything had to be labouriously transported up to 650 km to the crews.
Nomadic Bedouins frequently raided the work camps -- looting at rifle-point -- and armed escorts were required for the crews.
Construction was complete in 1935 and the pipeline served the oilfield until May 1948 when five Arab nations invaded the newly-independent Jewish state. They were defeated, and Haifa, including the pipeline terminal was turned over to Israel.
That ended the shipments.
When Petro-Canada was formed in 1975, one of the reasons for having a crown corporation in oil and gas production was to give the federal government a window on oil.
Now another Crown corporation will own Kinder Morgan Canada and the government has a window into the pipeline industry.
The company may be invited to join the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association and get an insider’s look at why CEPA says changes to environmental assessments of natural resource projects creates barriers to investment in pipelines.
The federal government wants to flip the Trans Mountain pipeline back into private hands quickly.
That is a pipe dream.
No responsible private-sector company will buy it until the expansion is done.
Frank Dabbs is a veteran business and political journalist and author.
