[transplant99]

So...yeah...this seems reasonable.

The Jan. 31 report states that a one-year delay in completing the Trans Mountain Expansion Project (TMEP) — which the federal government purchased for $4.4 billion in August 2018, along with the existing Trans Mountain Pipeline — “would reduce the value of the TMEP by $693 million.”

You’d think, therefore, that the feds would giddy up when it comes to reducing red tape for every large infrastructure project from proceeding. But that’s not the case.

The president and CEO of Prosper Petroleum, Brad Gardiner, says he very nearly choked on his coffee when he read a recent political advertisement from Notley Tuesday morning.

“She actually wrote, ‘(Jason) Kenney’s plan leaves our oil in the ground.’ I mean, it’s galling,” he said of Notley’s statement.

It’s no wonder Gardiner feels this way. His firm — a 97-per-cent Alberta-owned company — has been waiting 5½ years to have its oilsands project go through the regulatory process to start its 10,000 barrel-per-day SAG-D project. A 2013 provincial government report said: “Construction is scheduled to begin in late-2015, with first oil in early 2017.”

But then the NDP came to power. Gardiner, a civil engineer, says if he believed in conspiracy theories, he would assume the Alberta Energy Regulator “was doing everything it could to slow this down.”

For instance, on April 28, 2017, after the AER had initiated an improper six-month delay, a hearing was scheduled for July 18. That hearing was delayed because the Fort McKay First Nation — which is trying to stop the project in the courts — had asked for the July date. Then, the nation of 700 people — which is more than 100 kilometres away from the project site — asked that the hearing be adjourned until September 2017, which was initially granted. But that date too was delayed again, until Oct. 17, “because one of the AER commissioners was on holidays for six weeks starting the last week of August.”

Now the oil company has been waiting for more than 10 months for Energy Minister Marg McCuaig-Boyd to sign an order in council (OIC) for a process that ordinarily takes just 20 to 30 days.

https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/co...r-the-election