Allowing Enbridge to contract out the Mainline "is highly likely to weaken WCSB crude oil price," the EPAC submission reads. “Lower prices will mean weakened economic viability, shrinking investment and declining royalties and tax payments.” The former chairman of the National Energy Board has blasted an application by Enbridge Inc. to change how its oil pipeline network operates, calling it an attempt to fend off competition from new pipelines. Roland Priddle, the former chair and board member of the National Energy Board, filed evidence last month before Canada’s pipeline regulator, now called the Canada Energy Regulator, that described a controversial Enbridge plan to sign long-term contracts for its Mainline pipeline network as a move “to retain Mainline volumes and reduce its long-term volume risk.” The risk for Enbridge is that the federally owned Trans Mountain Expansion project or TC Energy Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline, both under construction, could begin siphoning crude oil volumes off Enbridge’s Mainline, once they start operations in the next few years. The Mainline is Canada’s largest oil export pipeline network that carries more than three million barrels of oil per day from Alberta to refineries in the U.S. Midwest, Ontario and Quebec. For 70 years, […]
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