Canada is endowed with the third-largest oil reserves in the world, but a lack of access to world markets means our oil is sold far below world prices. Each day, this “captive-market discount” hands a $40-million gift to Americans. Adding insult to injury, the discount also drives tens of billions of dollars in Canadian investments to American oilfields.
Now, after seven years and billions of dollars spent by proponents of three oil-export pipelines, hopes for revival of Canada’s oil industry has come down to one extremely troubled project: the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. How could this possibly have happened?
The answer lies in politically motivated decisions that progressively narrowed those three proposals to what was always the most fraught project. Here is a precis of what I’ll call “the saga of the three pipelines.”
Gwyn Morgan – National Post – April 17, 2018.