A Northern Gateway failure is not Enbridge’s death knell

19/06/14
Author: 
Jeffrey Jones

Imagine a world where the Northern Gateway pipeline doesn’t get built. With the federal government’s curiously tepid approval in hand, Enbridge Inc. sets to work trying to chip away at the dozens of conditions it must meet before it is allowed to fire up its trenching equipment. First Nations opposed to the project dig in for lengthy court battles and noisy demonstrations, arguing that an oil sands pipeline threatens long-held rights and title to their lands and that they were inadequately consulted. Despite its unprecedented push to start over and gain trust, Enbridge fails to bring enough aboriginal leaders on side.

B.C. Premier Christy Clark scans her bitumen pipeline checklist – the environmental, safety, financial, consultative and financial conditions laid down two years ago – and finds boxes unticked. The project’s final go-ahead gets pushed back again and again. The market moves on.

It’s a nightmare scenario for Northern Gateway, as well as for the energy sector and Alberta and federal governments that have so much riding on it in terms of economic hopes and political capital.

It would be a major blow to Enbridge’s reputation as a company that can get important work done for its customers and, in the short term, its earnings statement as it is forced to write off the hundreds of millions of dollars it has sunk into the years of planning, design and regulatory work.