Kinder Morgan Canada’s pipeline woes hurting investment in Canada: observers
CALGARY — The suspension of work on Kinder Morgan Canada Ltd.’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project will have a “chilling” effect on overall investment in Canada, industry observers say.
The company’s decision Sunday to impose a May 31 deadline for government reassurance that it can safely spend the bulk of the project’s $7.4-billion construction cost comes after two other projects were ended last year — TransCanada Corp.’s proposed Energy East pipeline and Enbridge Inc.’s previously approved Northern Gateway.
“We have become a high-political-risk jurisdiction because of the apparent ambivalence of government resolve to develop our resources. And we are a resource economy,” said Bob Skinner, executive fellow at the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, on Monday.
He said Kinder Morgan and other megaproject developers are being prudent and acting in the shareholders’ interest when they halt the investment of billions of dollars in projects when they “have no idea” if it will be allowed to proceed to completion.