The Trans Mountain Westridge Marine Terminal, where crude oil from the expanded Trans Mountain Pipeline is loaded onto tankers, in Burnaby, B.C., in 2024.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
The Trans Mountain pipeline system will be running at capacity in June, as the Crown corporation works to boost volume on the federally owned line amid conversations about an entirely new oil conduit from Alberta to the West Coast.
Chief executive officer Mark Maki attributed this month’s high flow to a combination of factors, including production growth in Alberta, other pipelines out of the province being largely full, and the continuing global energy crisis exacerbated by the war in Iran.
The federal government’s goal is to eventually sell the pipeline, but that’s not in the cards any time soon.
First, Trans Mountain Corp. is planning a series of optimization projects to boost the system’s capacity by roughly 34 per cent, or 300,000 barrels a day.
After all, Mr. Maki said in an interview, “when’s the best time to sell a restaurant? When it’s full.”
British Columbia’s government is backing the optimization proposal – a sharp reversal from its fierce opposition to the initial Trans Mountain expansion, when it argued that increased shipping traffic would endanger B.C.’s marine environment.
With such a huge bump in volume set to be added to the pipeline system, now simply “isn’t the right time” to try to sell it, Mr. Maki said.
“If you try to sell it today, someone’s going to go, ‘Well, I don’t believe you.’ And so they’re going to start discounting that,” he said.
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Adrian Dix, the B.C. Energy Minister, has urged Crown-owned utility BC Hydro to engage in talks with the pipeline company to support the optimization project. The province has also given the green light to the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority to dredge the Second Narrows waterway to allow tankers to load more oil at the Trans Mountain marine terminal in Burnaby.
But the B.C. government does not support a new pipeline to the province’s northwest coast, which is being championed by Alberta.
Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith signed a memorandum of understanding in November, with the goals of unlocking Alberta’s energy sector and diversifying export markets in the face of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war. The agreement laid out the conditions for construction of a new oil conduit to the Pacific.
The federal government is eyeing a new oil pipeline route in southern British Columbia, and Mr. Maki acknowledged it “probably has more merit” given some northern First Nations’ deeply held opposition to such a project.
Trans Mountain recently met with representatives from some of those communities, Mr. Maki said.
“It’s going to be hard, I think, to get them to a point where they’re comfortable with the risk, no matter how much you can take it out of the equation,” he said.
“No one wants to have a spill, a leak or anything else, but there’s a chance it can happen, and they don’t even want to deal with the chance. They make that absolutely crystal clear when they’re talking.”
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Not everyone in the oil sector is convinced a pipeline will be built. But Mr. Maki is optimistic, saying it’s too critical to the country to let it fall by the wayside.
Plus, he said, the global demand for oil isn’t going anywhere – though it won’t necessarily be used for combustion.
“People have got to get their heads out of the ‘it’s going to be burned’ idea, because that’s not what’s happening a lot of places,” Mr. Maki said.
He pointed to the Rongsheng refinery in Ningbo, China. It refines crude and sends it directly to the connected petrochemicals plant, then the end product is converted into plastics.
China is one of the largest export markets for oil from Canada’s West Coast.
It wants even more product – particularly with the Iran war removing millions of barrels of oil from the world market – and Canada is well positioned to send it there, Mr. Maki said.
“This is a really important advantage. This country has access to the Pacific, and then access to all kinds of markets.”
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article stated that Trans Mountain Corp. plans to boost the pipeline system’s capacity by roughly 40 per cent, or 360,000 barrels a day, which was the company's original plan. It has since changed its plans to call for a 34-per-cent increase, or 300,000 barrels a day.