ABSTRACT
The pipeline stories in the USA and Canada are mirror images at times and run parallel at other. The regulatory requirements for major energy projects in Canada were becoming so stringent that it became unlikely any company would try to build a new export pipeline. Canada has the second-largest reserves of oil next to Saudi Arabia. It is located in the tar sands, made up of lumps of sand particles that are encased in a thin envelope of tarlike substance called bitumen. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers predicted that the country’s oil production would grow to 5.1 mbd by 2030. The Conversations on Responsible Economic Development, an influential opinion maker in Canada, concluded after a study of the Trans Mountain pipeline that ‘the pipeline would create few jobs, minimal tax revenues and would not impact energy security or guarantee a long-term solution to Alberta’s ailing economy’.
