Why Northern Gateway is probably dead

Along the proposed route of the Northern Gateway pipeline, nothing is moving.

There is no clearing, mowing, grading, trenching, drilling, boring or blasting. Industry analysts have almost stopped asking questions because interested parties – contractors, engineering firms and others – have moved on to more realistic prospects. Meanwhile, the estimated cost of the project has climbed to $7.9-billion, while not one of the 209 conditions attached to its environmental certificate has been checked off as complete.

After spending half a billion dollars in an effort to win the right to build a 1,100-kilometre pipeline to carry Alberta oil-sands bitumen to tidewater, Enbridge Inc. is understandably reluctant to tell its shareholders that the effort has been for naught. In fact, the company insists that the project is not dead.

But the commitment from the federal Liberals to impose an oil-tanker ban off of British Columbia’s north coast, in addition to promised tougher environmental assessments, already provides a draft of the project’s obituary.