The Senior Petroleum Analyst for Gasbuddy.com has responded to the Federal Government`s announcement to buy Kinder Morgan`s Trans Mountain Pipeline for $4.5 billion dollars this morning.
Kinder Morgan gave a May 31st deadline on the project due to the recent frustration with the BC Government.
Dan McTeague says the decision isn`t surprising.
“I had said back in March when Kinder Morgan made it very clear that they weren’t going to tolerate this and it looks like taxpayers are going to be on the hook at least and the building as well – for how long I don’t know as a lot of these questions have yet to be answered.”
For now, gas prices are expected to remain high until more gasoline flows into the province.
“Until more gas finds its way into BC via the line one with the building of line two we’re going to continue to see higher gas prices.”
A good chunk of residents can breathe a sigh of relief that Ottawa is committed to seeing the project through.
While the price is steep, the project is crucial to our area.
“This is important that it got done because otherwise, the Canadian energy industry would suffer immensely including Prince George, which would see the winding down of the oil sector and even the refinery sector.”
“I suspect while the Federal government made good on its promise to get this built it kind of leaves a lot of head scratching as to why they tolerated so much blowback as it did from environmentalists who were successful in trying to dissuading the company from building it in the first place.”
McTeague says while he is not happy with the method to get this done, he does believe this is good for Canada.
However, if a change in government does a occur in Ottawa over the next two years, say an NDP or Green scenario this pipeline project could get shut down.
The total cost of the pipeline is estimated at $7.4 billion dollars.
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