Enbridge Inc.’s Line 3 pipeline replacement is on track to be in service by the end of the year despite ongoing protests and recent court challenges, the Calgary-based company said last Friday.
The C$9.3-billion project—which is expected to add about 370,000 barrel per day of crude oil export capacity from Western Canada into the U.S.—was handed a victory last month by the Minnesota Court of Appeals, which affirmed the approvals granted by independent regulators that allowed construction on the Minnesota leg to begin last December, The Canadian Press writes.
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Indigenous and environmental groups opposed to the project have appealed to the Minnesota Supreme Court, asking it to overturn the lower court’s ruling. The Minnesota Supreme Court has until mid-September to decide whether or not to hear the case.
In a conference call with analysts last Friday, Enbridge CEO Al Monaco said Line 3 remains on schedule and is now 80% complete, despite the continuing legal wrangling.
“Construction-wise, we’re tracking to schedule,” he said. “We’re moving along well and continue to work on water crossings. All that to say, we’re on track for a Q4 in service.”
The Line 3 replacement will carry oil from Alberta to an Enbridge terminal in Superior, WI. The Minnesota leg of the project—the last section remaining to be completed—has been met by protests along the route, with more than 500 demonstrators arrested or issued citations since December.
Opponents of the project, including Indigenous groups the White Earth Band of Ojibwe and the Red Lake Band of Chippewa, as well as environmental groups like the U.S. Sierra Club and Honor the Earth, say the Line 3 expansion will accelerate climate change and poses a risk of oil spills in environmentally sensitive areas.
Business-as-usual analysts see the Line 3 expansion as a critical project for the Alberta oilpatch, which they maintain has been hamstrung by a lack of pipeline infrastructure in recent years. An IHS Markit report last December found that delays in the expansion of that export pipeline capacity have contributed to lower prices in Western Canada, representing a loss of $17 billion for the crude oil industry over the last five years.
Other assessments have questioned the need for new pipeline capacity, pointing out that Alberta bitumen is expensive on world markets and more complicated for refiners to process. A growing mountain of evidence points to the job, economic, and environmental opportunities Alberta is missing out on as it stubbornly ignores the transition off fossil fuels.
In June, Calgary-based TC Energy walked away from its Keystone XL Pipeline project after U.S. President Joe Biden cancelled a key operating permit, leaving Enbridge’s Line 3 project and the taxpayer-owned Trans Mountain Pipeline as Canada’s main pipeline projects. Between the two, CP says, the total export addition of nearly one million barrels per day is expected to meet Western Canada’s oil export needs at least through the first half of the decade.
“Our understanding of the market here in Western Canada is there’s a significant amount of heavy crude waiting to come to market from producers that hasn’t been started up yet,” Monaco said. “There are some very close-to-completion brownfield projects with producers that would come to market very quickly, with sufficient egress.”
