This article was published by The Energy Mix on Feb. 20, 2025.
By Jody MacPherson and Christopher Bonasia with files from Mitchell Beer
A growing chorus of voices is beginning to push back on claims that new oil pipelines are part of the response to Donald Trump’s attacks on Canada’s economic sovereignty, even as several federal and provincial politicians fall in line behind the idea.
Even the companies that once proposed the failed Northern Gateway and Energy East pipelines are now decidedly lukewarm about resurrecting the projects, though one of them is pivoting to liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports that are receiving a rough ride from analysts concerned about future demand for the product.
At a news conference in Quebec City Wednesday morning, about 100 organizations and academics declared they “will not go back” and accept fossil fuel projects Quebec previously rejected, calling them “mirages.” Representatives from six of the groups told media the province has “proudly embraced the ecological transition, clean energy production, and the economy of tomorrow.”
Energy East would have carried 1.1 million barrels of crude oil per day from Alberta to New Brunswick for refining and export, passing through four provinces, including Quebec. GNL Québec had proposed a 780-kilometre gas pipeline project that would have delivered 11 million tonnes of gas annually from northern Ontario to an LNG terminal in northern Quebec.
At yesterday’s media conference, speakers representing labour, physicians, municipalities, citizens, and environmental groups said both projects were already obsolete when they were rejected in 2017 and 2021 and are even more so now, with European gas demand set to fall and investors declining to support the new infrastructure.
Prepping for Trump
The political conversation has shifted in recent weeks in anticipation of punishing Trump tariffs that could have an outsized impact on Canada’s fossil energy sector. Several federal and provincial leaders, including some who had previously opposed new pipelines because of their environmental and social impacts, have been softening or reversing their previous positions in the hope that the new infrastructure would help diversify the country’s export markets for oil and gas.
“Being so dependent on the United States for the export of oil is a vulnerability,” said Natural Resources and Energy Minister Jonathan Wilkinson, who called for a national conversation about whether the country should reconsider building a new east-west oil pipeline.
Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is pledging to do exactly that if he forms a government, with plans to facilitate the project by repealing the federal Impact Assessment Act, writes the Financial Post.
Quebec Premier François Legault, speaking for the province that became the first jurisdiction in the world to ban oil and gas exploration in 2022, has indicated he would approve an east-west pipeline if public opinion in his province—where people previously stood strongly against the Energy East project—reversed course.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith called for pipelines going east, west, and north in the name of protecting Canadian sovereignty.
And Trump’s over-the-top threats have taken their toll on public opinion, prompting Canadians to re-evaluate the country’s reliance on the U.S. as its dominant trading partner. An opinion poll by Angus Reid found support for expanding pipeline capacity, with two-thirds of respondents saying they would support revisiting the Energy East project. Support in Quebec rose from 33 per cent in 2019 to 47 per cent today.
Another recent Angus Reid poll indicated Canadians are almost twice as likely—43 per cent of respondents, compared to 23 per cent 18 months ago—to emphasize economic growth as a key driver for energy policy. Environmental concerns fell from 44 per cent to 31 per cent, while the proportion citing decreased reliance on international sources of energy as a top priority rose from 37 per cent to 46 per cent.
Despite those shifts, “renewable energy sources are still much more popular across political and regional divides than hydrocarbons,” with hydropower, solar, and wind the favoured sources for expanding energy capacity, Angus Reid reported.
‘Superfluous, Costly Infrastructure’
In Quebec City Wednesday, the groups at the media conference argued that even if projects like Energy East and GNL Québec were brought back to life and got off the ground today, they would take several years to build. In that time, customer demand would fail to materialize, and Canada would end up with “superfluous and costly infrastructure.”
Their position reflected modelling by the International Energy Agency (IEA) that shows global demand for oil, gas, and coal peaking within the next five years before going into permanent decline.
The Quebec groups said it would make sense for families to be feeling anxiety and fear about the current crisis with the United States, but that an ecological and social transition away from fossil fuels is still needed. Elsewhere, the argument is building that the usual elements of that transition—energy efficiency, renewable energy, and a focus on communities and mutual aid—will do a far better job of protecting Canada from Trump’s schemes.
Front and centre at the news conference was a sign from a decade ago, a rallying cry created by citizens opposed to the Energy East pipeline at the time. It said “Coule Pas Chez Nous!”, which roughly translates to English as “No leaks on our land”.
Others agree that new pipelines are a “trap” that will take too long to build to address the current circumstances. At the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, senior researcher Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood recalls that the oil industry previously abandoned Energy East over cost concerns. Fast forward to today, and oil and gas companies are showing little interest in taking up the project again.
The CEO of Enbridge Inc., the company behind the ill-fated Northern Gateway pipeline, recently remarked that government policies would need to shift drastically before the company would consider building new pipelines. And TC Energy, the company that fronted Energy East, now says conditions have changed in the years since, reports the Financial Post. Instead, the company is now “bullish” on LNG.
But for a country increasingly focused on the economics of its energy sector, the LNG industry’s grim future should be cause for alarm. IEA projections show that LNG production is expanding rapidly and supply could outstrip demand by 18 per cent under current energy policies.
The resulting glut could extend for years, meaning that Canadian investments in LNG made today could enter the market when prices are less favourable, writes Toronto Star business columnist David Olive. Analysts elsewhere have been raising similar concerns for years.
Be the first to comment