Cruising around on LinkedIn, I stumbled across Premier Danielle Smith’s formal letter to the premiers of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. In the letter she invites them to meet in Churchill, MB to discuss an economic corridor across the Prairie provinces..Interesting timing. A company called Western Energy Corridor is right now looking for approval for an energy corridor from Alberta to Churchill Manitoba..I posted something to LinkedIn: After four days, there were 95,000 views, 37 reposts, 900 likes and 143 comments. As my typical LinkedIn posts rarely capture more than one percent of this level of notoriety, there's something here....Take David Inscho's post. Inscho was once on the Wildrose Party's (WRP) executive board. In conversation he said he raised the idea of an energy corridor from Alberta to Churchill with Danielle Smith back when she was WRP leader and even then, she expressed a keen interest in the idea..So what is an economic/energy corridor and why the widespread interest?.A quick Google search shows as far back as 2014 and to this day, the appeal has always been around expediting regulatory approvals for large energy projects. That would include critical public infrastructure, such as railways, pipelines and high voltage power lines. The assumption is regulatory approval would be expedited if multiple assets in the same area were vetted simultaneously, versus separately..Back in those days, large oil pipeline projects in Canada were a hot topic and there were quite a number going through environmental impact assessments — for example, Enbridge’s Northern Gateway and Line 3 expansion, Kinder Morgan’s Trans-Mountain and the former Trans-Canada’s Keystone XL and Energy East pipelines..In 2015, when Trudeau came into power, he immediately cancelled Northern Gateway, approved Enbridge’s Line 3 and bought Kinder Morgan’s Trans-Mountain pipeline..The continued protests and on-again off-again status of the Trans-Mountain approval process between 2016 and 2018 gave rise to an alternative project called the Eagle Spirit Energy Corridor. This corridor was conceived of by an indigenous businessman named Calvin Helin and could have transported four-million barrels per day of oil and 10-billion cubic meters of natural gas per year. Helin claimed he had agreements with more than 35 aboriginal communities from Northern Alberta to Kitimat, BC. The scale of the project as conceived would have dwarfed by a factor of two the combined volumes of oil to be moved by Enbridge’s Northern Gateway and Kinder Morgan’s Trans-Mountain pipelines and was accompanied by a massive natural gas pipeline..Sadly, Prime Minister Trudeau banned oil tankers off of BC’s coast and the indigenous-led Spirit Eagle Energy Corridor never came to be. But, it seems to have given birth to a new theme in Western Canadian energy resources politics, that of indigenous engagement in energy resource projects..The most well known level of engagement for indigenous peoples is the Trans-Mountain pipeline project, where the taxpayer backs equity financing. Several indigenous-led initiatives already came forward. Project Reconciliation is seeking a 100% ownership stake in the pipeline with no equity requirement or liability risk to indigenous partners. Its goal is to distribute cash flow from the pipeline between the participating indigenous community owners, and an Indigenous Sovereign Wealth Fund that will invest in energy transition projects..Another indigenous-led initiative is the NeeStaNan Utility Corridor, where Port Nelson on the southwest corner of Hudson Bay would be the export point for energy and agricultural commodities originating from across the Prairie region. The utility corridor would contain rail, natural gas and oil pipelines, and electric transmission infrastructure, thus having far reaching economic benefits beyond a single industry..Probably the single most important take-away from my conversation with Inscho was technology now exists to export bitumen as a solid. As regulations stand, solid bitumen exports by-pass federal jurisdiction and can be transported to global market via rail using inter modal containers. A Calgary company called Wâpahki developed a patented technology that transforms heavy bitumen into a solid using recycled plastic. When blended with bitumen, the composite solid has a specific gravity less than one and will therefore float on water in the event of spillage. The targeted markets are asphalt for road construction and synthetic carbon..Ultimately, this means Alberta has a chance to increase market access for its oil sands industry without the need for pipelines and all the political headaches that go with them these days..The Prairie premiers need to find common ground and work to maximize the benefit to each other’s provinces. In their effort to meet their emissions reduction obligations, northern Manitoba’s untapped hydroelectric potential would be of immense value to Alberta and Saskatchewan and long-term power purchase agreements for Manitoba would go a long way to convincing them to work with Alberta and Saskatchewan..Alberta and Saskatchewan likewise need to be pragmatic and consider traditional oil pipelines should not be the deciding factor here on a Western Canadian Energy Corridor.
