Canada court rules in favor of Trans Mountain

Canada met its obligation to consult with and accommodate indigenous groups in its approval of the 590,000 b/d Trans Mountain crude pipeline expansion, an appeals court ruled today.

Canada's Federal Court of Appeal today dismissed a challenge against the pipeline's most recent approval. The case was brought by several First Nations groups including the Tsleil-Waututh Nation and the Squamish Nation.

The tribes argued that the consultation process was inadequate for various reasons including that the outcome was pre-determined because the government of Canada owns the Trans Mountain system.

The federal government in June 2019 issued a second approval of the Trans Mountain expansion, about a year after a federal court blocked the project because of several factors including insufficient indigenous consultation.

The Trans Mountain expansion would increase crude pipeline capacity from Edmonton, Alberta, to Burnaby, British Columbia, boosting total system capacity from 300,000 b/d to 890,000 b/d. The government of Canada bought the Trans Mountain project in 2018 as part of a deal with Kinder Morgan.

The project was first approved by Canada's federal government in November 2016, but permit disputes with British Columbia, protests near the terminus at Burnaby and legal challenges have caused delays.

The total expansion project will add about 609 miles (980km) of new pipeline and reactivate 120 miles (193km) of existing pipeline that has been idle as the system has expanded over the years.

In another major court ruling that benefited Trans Mountain, Canada's Supreme Court [last month] (http://direct.argusmedia.com/newsandanalysis/article/2052637) upheld that the province of British Columbia cannot restrict the flow of diluted bitumen across its territory from neighboring Alberta. The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed an appeal in that case, siding with a ruling by the British Columbia Court of Appeal that the movement of oil is a federal undertaking.

By Eunice Bridges