Premier Jason Kenney said Alberta would consider backing the cost of the Keystone XL pipeline to “revive” the project pending “political certainty from Washington.”.At a press conference in Canmore Kenney said while he would prefer to have the project financed privately, he believes the U.S. is motivated to source oil closer to home amid the Russian/Ukraine conflict..“I believe where there’s a will, there’s a way and if President Biden wants to end America’s addiction to conflict dictator oil, all he has to do is pick up the phone and call Prime Minister Trudeau.”.“I’d be happy to take his call as well and say, look, you got it wrong on the Keystone XL veto. Let’s figure out how to get that pipeline built right away. If we had that political certainty from Washington, I believe we could find a way to revive Keystone XL.”.The premier said TC Energy would not be able to finance the project “given the political uncertainty,” but that the province is prepared “in principle, to de-risk the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.”.The Alberta government funded TC Energy to help advance pipeline construction, but after U.S. President Joe Biden revoked the permit for the Keystone XL border crossing on Jan. 20, 2021, Alberta taxpayers were left holding the bag..Alberta is currently trying to recoup the $1.3 billion in taxpayer dollars sunk into the cancelled project via a legacy trade claim. TC Energy confirmed Tuesday it would not revive the project..“We obviously would prefer that it be privately financed, but if the political uncertainty created by the Biden veto makes that impossible, we would be creative.”.The premier was in Houston, Texas this week at the CERAWeek conference to promote Alberta’s oil and gas industry to key markets..“And I think there is a will. I’ve been speaking to people in the U.S. Congress who understand this is a national security imperative to get that pipeline built — 840,000 plus barrels a day to displace dictator conflict oil,” said Kenney..The Keystone XL pipeline would have delivered crude oil from Western Canada to refineries in the U.S. Gulf Coast at that capacity..“And I believe that we could be partners potentially with the US government, in diversity in the project much of the same way that the federal government did with the Trans Mountain expansion,” said Kenney..The premier also talked about the 2008 coordinated effort of environmental organizations to landlock Alberta energy exports..“There has been a 14-year long coordinated campaign under the broad umbrella of the tar sands campaign, which began at a conference sponsored by the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation..“Those efforts had a very real impact. It informed Justin Trudeau’s decision to kill the Keystone XL pipeline, to indirectly kill the Energy East pipeline, the Biden and Obama administration’s veto of the Keystone XL pipeline, and the coordinated tar sands campaign also led to massive delays in approvals for the Trans Mountain expansion, which is why the federal government ultimately had to bail out of Kinder Morgan..“All together, those efforts were tragically successful at preventing the construction of new energy infrastructure, which is one of the reasons why the world is in this precarious situation of being so dependent on Vladimir Putin’s energy exports,” said Kenney..A 2008 TransCanada news release anticipated the Keystone XL expansion to cost US $7 billion..Amber Gosselin is a Western Standard reporter..agosselin@westernstandardonline.com
