Prime Minister Mark Carney on Thursday designated a pipeline carrying one million barrels of oil a day from Alberta to the British Columbia coast as the first project in the national interest, announcing the decision alongside the Alberta government in Fort McMurray, Alta.
Listing the line, now officially named the Pacific Link pipeline, on Schedule 1 of the Building Canada Act shifts Ottawa from weighing whether the project should be built to deciding how, by consolidating and fast-tracking the approval process, including environmental assessments. “For many builders, the risk was not worth it. So, Canada stopped building,” Mr. Carney said. “Now, the federal government is making its position clear at the beginning of the process, rather than at the end.”
A senior government official told reporters ahead of the announcement that the pipeline is expected to add as much as $30 billion a year to Canada’s gross domestic product, $20 billion of it from the pipeline itself. By sending exports beyond the United States, officials said, Canada could charge more for its oil, worth perhaps another $10 billion a year. The government said the project, once approved, would create up to 140,000 jobs.
The estimated cost is $35.2 billion to $43.7 billion, including a contingency. Dominic LeBlanc, the minister of one Canadian economy, must finish a document setting out the project’s conditions by Sept. 1, 2027, allowing construction to start with the pipeline running by 2032-33. Mr. Carney said the Major Projects Office and the Canada Energy Regulator will consult stakeholders on environmental protections, oversight, Indigenous ownership and local hiring.
The Alberta government and the federally owned Trans Mountain Corporation would each own 45 percent of the pipeline, with the Calgary-based Pembina Pipeline Corporation holding 10 percent through construction and an option to buy 10 percent more once oil is flowing. Indigenous communities will be offered at least a 10 percent stake. A senior official, speaking on background, said private investors are watching whether Canada can get the line built on schedule after the fraught, yearslong approval of the Trans Mountain expansion.
Premier Danielle Smith of Alberta told CBC’s Power & Politics she sees government ownership as a bridge to private leadership on future projects. “I think in order to give the industry confidence that we can get these kinds of major projects built, we have to walk every step of the way with them until it’s completed,” she told the host, David Cochrane.
The 1,200-kilometer line would carry bitumen from Bruderheim, Alta., to a deepwater port near Delta, B.C., where the Roberts Bank terminal would be expanded. Mr. Carney said the southern route spares “highly sensitive ecosystems, including the Great Bear Sea,” and that the $1.2 billion in ocean protection funding his government announced on Tuesday includes “a series of measures to protect the habitats of killer whales” during the Roberts Bank work.
A government explanatory note concedes the pipeline “does not directly contribute to Canada’s greenhouse gas emission reduction targets” and instead points to cutting emissions per barrel. That plan leans on the Pathways Project, a carbon capture and storage effort Mr. Carney said could absorb up to 16 million tonnes of emissions a year, and on an agreement in principle with Alberta to cut methane emissions 75 percent below 2014 levels by 2035. The Pembina Institute, an environmental group unaffiliated with the pipeline company, posted on X that “new oilsands and pipeline projects will drive emissions even higher.” Rick Smith, president of the Canadian Climate Institute, told Power & Politics that Canada is far off its targets and would need to “fix some of Canada’s broken climate change policies,” adding, “it’s a work in progress.”
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce welcomed the announcement. “Getting our resources to Asia-Pacific markets is a path to more production, prosperity and a brighter future for workers, their families and communities,” said the chamber’s Bryan Detchou in a statement. Environmental groups, including Greenpeace, said Canada should not be pulling more oil from the ground.
Avi Lewis, the N.D.P. leader, accused the government of rushing the project “while sweeping aside environmental protections,” calling it “a gift to an oil industry already on track to make $100 billion in wartime profits this year alone.” The Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, congratulated Ms. Smith while faulting the pace: “It has taken Mark Carney almost a year and a half to put one proposal on a national interest list. We need a pipeline in the ground, not just on a list.”