CALGARY — Premier Danielle Smith has hinted that her government is working to bring forward legislation to allow more companies to build natural gas pipelines in Alberta, pointing to wait times of three to five years for industry customers to connect to TC Energy’s NGTL system.Speaking at an event in Calgary on Tuesday, Smith said “we will need to have more players enter into this market to build from point A to point B.”“As long as it’s intra-provincial, from a gas field to an installation, we have the ability to regulate that. And so you’ll begin to see that there’ll be some legislation that will come forward to enable that,” Smith told the audience.On Friday, Energy Minister Brian Jean's office confirmed to the Western Standard that it is working on legislative solutions, saying concerns over access to industrial quantities of natural gas extend across several regions and industries..“An increasing number of project proponents across a variety of industries have raised concerns about accessing industrial quantities of natural gas in several regions of Alberta,” the statement said.“We are working with industry, including the natural gas infrastructure owners, to better understand these issues and identify practical solutions that support future growth and investment.”Smith said Tuesday that Alberta’s energy infrastructure “crossed itself about 15 years ago,” so that “there was more infrastructure than demand, and now there’s more demand than infrastructure.”“Some companies are three to five years just to get onto the NGTL," she added. The existing NGTL system has a capacity of approximately 18 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day, with another 1.4 Bcf/d under development..TC Energy has spent approximately $15 billion on the system, while roughly 55% of NGTL throughput is exported to higher-value markets elsewhere in Canada, the United States and abroad.NGTL has been federally regulated since 2009, and the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2020 Trans Mountain reference held that a province cannot regulate a federal pipeline.Jean’s office tied the issue to Thursday’s announcement that Alberta’s Court of Appeal had again found the federal Impact Assessment Act unconstitutional and that Ottawa had agreed not to appeal the decision.“Intra-provincial projects are provincial jurisdiction, and the federal government has accepted the Alberta Court of Appeal ruling that Bill C-69 is unconstitutional,” the minister’s office said.“This will result in an overhaul of the legislation which will eliminate all federal interference in intra-provincial projects. As the Premier has mentioned, we are working on legislative solutions for this issue, and we will have more on this in the future.”In September, a leaked Alberta cabinet report recommended two Crown corporations and new powers for the Alberta Utilities Commission and cabinet to require pipeline companies to serve customers and invest in infrastructure..Leaked report recommends Alberta government spend up to $162M to break natural gas pipeline monopoly .After the leak, Smith said a Crown corporation was “unlikely.”On her September 12 radio show, she said her government was not considering spending billions of dollars to build new pipelines.However, she accused TC Energy of having a “monopoly” on the province’s gas pipeline system and said the government wants other companies to build additional capacity.“If one player isn't able to feed our entire market … then we're going to look to some of the other private providers to do it,” she said.In October, an industry source told the Western Standard that the Alberta government was pressing ahead with its plans to intervene in the province’s natural gas pipeline system, with legislation allegedly being prepared.One risk identified in the leaked cabinet report is that expanding access to Alberta natural gas could contribute to higher prices, potentially increasing heating, electricity and industrial costs.The source echoed those concerns, warning that higher prices could undermine the industrial growth the Smith government is attempting to attract.On Tuesday, Smith also pointed to projects already underway, including Pembina’s partnership in the Greenlight Electricity Centre — a planned 932-megawatt gas-fired plant in Sturgeon County to supply a Meta AI data centre — and ATCO’s $2.9-billion Yellowhead pipeline, which will run from the Peers area to the Fort Saskatchewan region.“We can build things in this country. We've got a desire to build things in this country, and that should be a noncontroversial thing,” Smith said.“We're sitting on an ocean of natural gas.”
