Pipeline Hopes Spring Eternal

by

Dave Harbour

CBC News.  Premier Brian Gallant will use a four-day trip to Alberta to meet with business and political leaders to show his new government’s support for the Energy East pipeline.

Gallant and Energy Minister Donald Arseneault will leave for Alberta on Sunday and he will meet with Premier Jim Prentice, TransCanada Corp. officials and spend time drumming up possible investment opportunities

​The Calgary Herald provides a report by the Canadian Press' Ross Marowitz this morning describing opposition in Quebec originating from the province's largest gas distributor, Gaz Metro to TransCanada's Energy East pipeline project. 

U.S. and Canadian energy companies employ best practices in the world for exploration, development transportation and distribution, refining and marketing of oil and gas.  Complex as it is, our companies can easily design, build and operate state-of-art facilities.  Those facilities produce wealth for our countries, our companies, our citizens and an economic platform for the coming generations.

No, building facilities is easy compared with the political and regulatory challenges.  

In the U.S., politics almost 4 decades ago caused the two governments to choose an Alaska Highway route for moving Alaskan and Mackenzie Delta gas to market.  The less politically popular Arctic Gas project, a 27-member consortium at its zenith, would have done the job more efficiently.  TransCanada was one of its principle members.  The politically chosen project was never built.

In mid-1973, Vice President Spiro Agnew provided the final, tie-breaking U.S. Senate vote that allowed construction of the trans Alaska oil pipeline to begin.  Imagine how history would have changed had the politicians erred by one vote–sending that project to the scrap heap.

Now, one witnesses support from the American people, from affected states and even from the U.S. State Department for building TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline, creating thousands of jobs and increasing the North American supply of crude oil.  That which is exported provides valuable foreign exchange and less dependency for crude oil on less friendly regimes.  But the White House refuses to allow the international project to go forward for purely political reasons: his environmental activist friends oppose it. 

Imagine how history without this pipeline will affect the wealth of citizens, companies, states and the national economies of Canada and the United States.  Imagine this being done by an administration presiding over an accumulated deficit now approaching the unfathomable level of $18 trillion, a debt per taxpayer of plus or minus $153,000.  Not to mention national defense implications and an injured relationship between two of the world's greatest friends and trading partners.

While the Keystone XL pipeline proponent, TransCanada, awaits final word from the U.S. on that project it is furiously seeking to create another outlet for prolific Alberta oil sands production and make best use of an underused gas pipeline.

We made reference, yesterday, to the $12 billion Energy East project, designed to convert a natural gas pipeline with spare (i.e. unused) capacity into a fully used oil line.

Marowitz noted in his report that it, "…would be one of the biggest infrastructure projects in Canadian history, crossing six provinces and traversing 4,600 kilometres in total. Roughly two-thirds of it would make use of underused natural gas pipe that's already in the ground, with new pipe being built through Quebec and New Brunswick. The idea is to connect oilsands crude to eastern refineries and to export some of the oil by tanker."

He concludes with a Deloitte study conclusion that the gas to oil pipe conversion, "…will boost the Canadian GDP by $35 billion over 20 years, add $10 billion in taxes, support 10,000 jobs and help eastern refineries.

When TransCanada files its application to proceed with the National Energy Board (i.e. NEB, Canada's counterpart to the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC) Gaz Metro is likely to file in opposition to the project, partly on the basis that the underused TransCanada gas line currently provides the extra gas needed during high demand, winter months.  One can envision a protracted, contested TransCanada application that can cause delay, raise costs and reduce value to taxpayers and ratepayers alike.  We would hope Gaz Metro, on behalf of its consumers, would work out a private compromise with TransCanada that would be mutually acceptable.  We would hope, too, that TransCanada would be flexible enough to join in a cooperative effort to resolve differences around a bargaining table rather than before an expensive and unpredictable regulatory, tribunal.  Just look at the NEB's propensity to attach unpredictable and costly "conditions" to application approvals that could cause significant angst and expense for project proponents (e.g. Just 'Google', "conditions NEB pipeline").

TransCanada is also the big-inch gas pipeline member of the Alaska LNG Project consortium attempting to build a pipeline/LNG project designed to transport long-stranded Alaska North Slope Gas to Asian markets.  This is the most feasible concept now that the gas shale phenomenon has precluded the need for Mackenzie Valley and Alaska Highway gas pipelines (i.e. In both projects, TransCanada played a leading role).

One can imagine the tension that must exist in the TransCanada board room with three world class pipeline projects all teetering between approval and rejection amid tumultuous world tensions in a volatile regulatory, political, price, supply and demand environment!

If none of the three projects moves forward, that will be a big problem for shareholders since so much development cost will be written off and/or shared with existing pipeline ratepayers.

If all three projects were to receive market place and political and regulatory approvals, that in and of itself would be a huge challenge for TransCanada to manage in the coming decade.

Management of multiple mega projects poses a huge variety of challenges, including but not limited to: 1) transitioning from a baby boomer, experienced pipeline workforce to a vast generation of new workers; 2) giving existing pipeline maintenance, marketing and construction adequate attention; 3) convincing Alaska partners and other project stakeholders that it has the resources to manage all the projects in a somewhat similar timeframe; 4) conducting three world class stakeholder engagement programs both prior to, during and following construction; and 5) managing state, provincial and federal regulatory filings and disputes in both countries and across many states and provinces; and 6) dealing with limited, worldwide big inch pipe manufacturing and other logistical capabilities.

Having worked with and known TransCanada for a long time, we believe that if any company is capable of absorbing such multiple challenges, it is TransCanada.

That said, one hopes — for the sake of North American economies — that all three projects are successful and that TransCanada can successfully and efficiently build and operate them.

One also hopes that these three projects will 1) moderate world tensions in Europe, where new, North American energy might take the edge off of Russian energy blackmail/bribery; 2) free Alaska stranded gas while filling an Asian demand from a secure and diversified, North American source; and 3) enable the United States and Canada to reaffirm their historical relationship as each others' largest trading partner and best friend.

While hope is not a strategy, one cannot resist the belief that hope does, indeed, spring eternal and will win in the end.