The 1,500km-long crude and refined oil pipeline is planned to be twinned to increase its capacity to 890,000 barrels of oil per day
Image: The Trans Mountain expansion project will involve the twinning of the existing Trans Mountain Pipeline. Photo: courtesy of Trans Mountain Corporation.
An indigenous-led group that goes by the name Project Reconciliation is set to make a formal bid to acquire a majority stake in the 1,150km-long Trans Mountain pipeline in Canada.
The Trans Mountain pipeline is owned by Trans Mountain, a fully-owned subsidiary of the state-owned Canada Development Investment Corporation (CDIC). In May 2018, the Canadian government struck a deal to acquire both the Trans Mountain Pipeline system and the expansion project for C$4.5bn (£2.72bn) from Kinder Morgan Canada.
Currently, Project Reconciliation is looking to submit a CAD6.9bn (£4.18bn) bid to acquire the majority stake in the assets, reported Reuters citing the group’s managing director Stephen Mason.
Mason said: “We’ve been assembling something that will work for all sides and it will be ready as early as next week. When the government wants to talk, we’ll be ready.”
Expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline
Last month, the Canadian government approved Kinder Morgan’s C$7.4bn (£4.41bn) Trans Mountain expansion project (TMX project), which will involve the twinning of the existing Trans Mountain Pipeline that was laid between Strathcona County near Edmonton in Alberta and Burnaby in British Columbia.
The expansion project was proposed to boost the capacity of the existing pipeline system from 300,000 to 890,000 barrels of oil per day.
The Canadian government approved the pipeline expansion project citing that it was in national interest. It also said that measures will be taken to address the environmental concerns associated with the pipeline expansion.
Trans Mountain at the time of the approval said that it is set to re-start the pipeline expansion project having secured the federal approval.
Project Reconciliation said that the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau while re-approving the pipeline’s expansion in June 2019 revealed that he was open to as high as 100% indigenous ownership.
Project Reconciliation founder and executive chair Delbert Wapass said: “There’s real momentum towards Indigenous ownership.
“It’s exciting to see support is growing in governments and among Indigenous people. There is a pipeline to reconciliation and we should take it.”
The indigenous-led group said that its ownership structure is open to most of the 340 First Nations and Métis communities in Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan.