Pipeline proposals proliferate as globe seeks new energy supplies

Posted on September 24, 2026 by Ryan Dahlman

By Trevor Busch
Commentator/Courier
editor@tabertimes.com

With Ottawa and the provincial government blazing a new trail to the West Coast on oil pipeline development through their recent Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), even more projects are on the drawing board or already announced to help ship Alberta’s crude to domestic and global markets.

On the heels of the MOU announcement, this summer Alberta and Ontario also announced the Northern Shield Energy Corridor (NSEC), a proposed 3,300 kilometre west-to-east crude oil pipeline project from Hardisty, Alta., through Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and across northern Ontario to refineries in Sarnia.

“I actually think this could possibly be the largest expansion in pipelines in Alberta’s history at any given time, and so, it’s really exciting,” said Taber-Warner MLA Grant Hunter. “I’m extremely excited about it, and I work very closely with the federal government on my parts of the MOU; to tell you the truth, it has changed a lot in the last 18 months, where it seems like the federal government is now recognizing that Alberta can play a very important role in jumpstarting the Canadian economy.”

Called a “grand bargain” by some observers, the MOU clears the path for a new West Coast oil pipeline, shipping up to 1 million barrels per day to serve Asian markets, but also establishes strict, binding timelines for carbon capture infrastructure and industrial emissions reductions.

All Canadians will benefit from the development of such projects, says Hunter.

“For every dollar that Albertans make, and the Alberta government makes on new pipelines and product going into pipelines going west, east, south, and north, the rest of Canada gets dollars as well. So, this is going to be not just generational wealth for Albertans, but it’s going to be generational wealth for Canadians as well. I’m quite excited about it.”

 Designed to move between 500,000 – 800,000 barrels of oil per day, the NSEC is aimed at enhancing Canadian energy independence and security by keeping domestic oil within Canadian infrastructure instead of routing through the United States. 

“We’ve got movement on the resurrection of the Keystone project going to the States,” said Hunter. “And then the one going east – it was just announced by Premier Danielle Smith and Premier Doug Ford – it’s a great opportunity for us because we were sending our oil, and it has to go down to the United States, then it comes back up into Ontario, and they pay U.S. dollars for that. Why would we do that?” 

Officials and lawmakers in the U.S. often accuse Canada and many other nations around the globe of taking advantage of the American economy as justification for levying various tariffs, but in this situation it seems the shoe is firmly on the other foot when it comes to allegations of exploitation.

“You send oil down to the States, and sometimes they just put a premium on it,” said Hunter, referencing existing Enbridge pipelines shipping oil to Ontario through the U.S. “There’s a difference between WTI, which is West Texas Intermediate, and Western Canada Select, which is ours up here in Alberta, and the difference between those two is what’s called the differential. The Americans will take our oil – they won’t even actually upgrade it – and they’ll sell it to someone else as WTI. It’s still Western Canada Select, so they’re making a premium off of our oil going down to the United States.”

 Direct access to domestic and global energy markets while cutting out the middleman is always the ideal approach, argues Hunter.

“Look, they (the U.S.) are a big partner of ours, and we’re grateful for the work and the partnership that we have with them. But why would we do that? Why wouldn’t we go directly to the markets, the other markets? Why wouldn’t we go to Asia ourselves, which is what we did with Trans Mountain, and what we’re going to do with the new pipeline going to the West Coast? And why wouldn’t we sell directly to other Canadian provinces like Ontario and the Maritimes from a pipeline going that way? That only makes sense rather than going through a middleman in the United States, and that’s why I’m quite excited about it. I think we actually will start to maximize profit for Albertans and for Canadians.”

 Hunter, who also serves as Minister of Environment and Protected Areas, has been surprised at the turn of path the federal government has taken since the ascension of Prime Minister Mark Carney and the departure of Justin Trudeau.

 “I have been surprised, and I guess that’s from 10 years of really bad governance on the federal side. There were nine bad laws that were really specifically designed to lock in our wealth in Alberta. Let’s just put this in perspective. How much wealth is there in just oil alone in Alberta? There’s $10 trillion of wealth in the oil sands and in our oil industry in Alberta – $10 trillion. We saw $50 billion worth of investment dry up over those 10 years because of those bad laws, and it’s not even just oil. It’s the clean energy regs that they brought in that was basically going to put people in jail if they did any natural gas electricity plant. That’s what the law was, and so being able to have a carve-out so that we don’t have to deal with that – it’s a huge, huge win. So, I’m pleasantly surprised.”