Alberta to detail ‘million-barrel

The Alberta government says it will be announcing plans for its proposed pipeline to the West Coast on Thursday.

It’s a change from the province’s previous plan to give details on Tuesday, according to information available on a publicly viewable website.

“We will have a major announcement on July 2 to share new details about the Government of Alberta’s submission to the Major Projects Office for a new one-million-barrel-per-day oil pipeline to Canada’s West Coast,” Sam Blackett, press secretary to Premier Danielle Smith, said in an email to Global News.

Smith and her government previously said they planned to present a final pipeline proposal to Ottawa on July 1. Blackett noted that July 1 was a holiday in his email to Global News.

Tim Hodgson, federal minister of energy and natural resources, said Monday that negotiations between Ottawa and Alberta toward a pipeline deal were “going well.”

Asked Monday if Alberta’s adoption of the Pathways carbon storage project was necessary to secure a deal, he said the pipeline and carbon capture initiative were “mutually dependent on one another.”

Earlier this month, documents first reported on by CBC News showed a number of options for the pipeline, with the majority ending in British Columbia.

Heather Exner-Pirot, with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, told Global News it appeared all the routes were going farther north than the Northern Gateway pipeline.

Exner-Pirot, who is also a special advisor on energy to the Business Council of Canada, said the routes appear to have been selected for political advantage to go through areas more supportive of oil and gas, rather than economics.

Any pipeline that goes through B.C. is likely to face opposition from Premier David Eby and would require the lifting of the federal ban on northern oil tankers, something the B.C. government and several First Nations oppose.

A week after the documents were reported, B.C. Energy Minister Adrian Dix expressed frustration about communications involving the pipeline.

He said it was “pretty late in the process” for the B.C. government to learn of the proposals but also rejected the notion that the province was “caught off guard,” adding that any pipeline would face “significant fundamental challenges.”

— with files from Global News’ Amy Judd