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Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee
Yep all fair comments. I don’t think the building of a pipeline is all that Herculean though.
Of course oil CEOs aren’t planning for it- it’s a god awful investment when layering in even the most basic level of risk. From a regulatory, land acquisition, construction, and red tape standpoint this country has made a relatively straightforward task an insanely risky proposition so yeah as I have already said the government of Canada needs to build it. Also we make steel in Quebec, don’t we? Sounds like pipe material.
Moreover, it’s more likely the public threat and early stages of building a line give you a huge amount of leverage in trade negotiations. The American refineries that rely on our oil will freak out. In fact we have already seen that they’re making plans to transition their refineries off Canadian crude so who knows how serious or long that takes- but if it is serious we are absolutely ####ed. Again +60 trade surplus with Canada but when you layer in oil and gas it drops to -200 so it literally is the swing here. Which means it’s by far our biggest piece of leverage in negotiations.
Lastly, the government literally just finished building a pipeline. So, I’m pretty sure we can borrow a lot of the same learnings, procurement, plans, follow the same building guidelines etc etc etc for a new line. Plan it to the open space on the south part of the inlet of Prince Rupert, twin the existing cross provincial lines that run from basically Dawson out to that point and start building trenches.
Surveying could take a couple months, mobilize a #### load of crews, like get aggressively after it. Again it’s all these actions (that you can be public about) to leverage trade negotiations or protect Canadian sovereignty. Nobody is coming to Canadas defence unless we’re willing to trade them the resources they’ve been asking for now for over a decade or more.
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There is no “easy button” to push to build a pipeline. However, the Northern Gateway Pipeline Project has had quite a bit of time and resources poured into to it to get to the point that it got to.
There would be a general route, with the main dots to connect. The size of the line would have been established, at least the size / volume that was being proposed under the Harper government.
So while I understand that there is much, much more work and consultation with many groups, including First Nations (some who have been opposed to the project in the past have since changed their stance towards the project) to do, we could be starting the project right away. Even if it doesn’t mean shovels in the ground on day one.
I am not certain that the Liberal government would like to proceed with that project, since they were opposed to that project the first time. But if that project was completed and was operational right now, Canada would be in a much stronger trading position globally and would be in a much stronger position economically.