Trudeau’s Trans Mountain pipeline investment ‘clearly’ not profitable: watchdog

Canada’s financial watchdog says the federal government is “very unlikely” to recoup its $4.5-billion investment in the Trans Mountain pipeline now that the project’s costs have soared by 70 per cent.

On Feb. 18, Trans Mountain Corporation announced the projected cost of the pipeline expansion has risen from $12.6 billion to $21.4 billion. The news release said the COVID-19 pandemic and last year’s floods in B.C.’s Hope, Coquihalla and Fraser Valley areas contributed to increased costs.

Last week, the NDP’s environment and climate change critic Laurel Collins wrote to Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) Yves Giroux requesting an updated cost analysis of the pipeline and expansion project.

“It is crucial that we hear from the PBO again to lay out clearly what a boondoggle this project is,” Collins told Canada’s National Observer.

Even before costs jumped, the project already walked a fine line between profitable and unprofitable, according to a 2020 analysis by the PBO.

Based on the previous cost estimate of $12.6 billion, a startup date of Dec. 31, 2022, and several other factors, the pipeline and expansion project’s net value was $600 million. Now, the completion date has been pushed back to somewhere between July and September 2023, and Giroux told National Observer he is “not hopeful that there will be any profits to be made from that pipeline, at least for the federal government.”

Based on his previous analysis, if construction costs increased by even 10 per cent to $13.9 billion, the project’s present net value would be an $800-million deficit.

“Now that we’re talking about over $20 billion in construction costs, it is clearly non-profitable,” said Giroux.

“It will probably mean losses for Canadian taxpayers whenever the government decides to sell the pipeline to a private-sector entity,” he said, adding this loss is the most likely outcome unless some of his key assumptions change.

For example, if the cost oil producers are charged to use the pipeline “increases dramatically,” the project could come closer to breaking even, but “the long-term contracts that are used for the majority of the capacity of the pipeline do not suggest this will be a possibility in the near future,” he said.

Giroux said from a financial perspective, killing TMX right now would be the worst outcome because it would mean bearing the cost of the money spent so far and forgoing additional revenues from the expansion.

When the cost increase was announced, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said no more public funds will go to the Trans Mountain Corporation and that the Crown corporation that owns the massive oil pipeline will need to secure third-party funding through banks or public debt markets to complete the project. She said the project is “in the national interest and will make Canada and the Canadian economy more sovereign and more resilient.”

Steven Guilbeault says climate action not tied to TMX revenues

Because the pipeline will generate cash flow for decades, it will be able to finance itself on the private market by borrowing from institutional investors, banks or corporations, but the operator will have to borrow at higher rates, so the cost of financing will likely rise, said Giroux.

Former federal environment minister Jonathan Wilkinson, now the natural resources minister, previously told CBC last August that Canada needed to maximize profits from the Trans Mountain expansion in order to fund climate action and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

But Steven Guilbeault, who is now the environment minister, suggested Canada would no longer need these revenues.

“If the only thing we did to fight climate change is use the profit of the sales of the pipeline to invest in cleantech or climate-friendly technologies, I’d be worried. But it’s not,” Guilbeault, referring to measures such as methane regulations, carbon pricing, dedicated funding for bike and pedestrian infrastructure and investments in zero-emissions vehicles and chargers.

“What we need to do … going forward (is) reduce more and more our dependency on fossil fuels,” he said. “Does it mean that there will be absolutely no more projects ever built in Canada? That’s not what we’re saying. What we’re saying is that we need to do less and less of those and more and more of the things that will help us reduce our emissions — like cleantech, like transit, like electrification, like renewables.”

According to the Canadian Development and Investment Corporation’s most recent interim report, the federal government has already borrowed and invested well over $14 billion in the project, including the original purchase. The Trans Mountain Corporation will have to secure upwards of $10 billion in funding to meet the revised project cost of $21.4 billion.

Freeland’s office did not respond to National Observer’s request for comment by deadline.

Eugene Kung, a staff lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law, says Freeland’s promise of no more public funds for the project is “a bit of smoke and mirrors” because any debt incurred by a Crown corporation is public debt.

“It’s deceiving to leave the impression that this is not going to cost the Canadian public more, because it will,” he said.

The existing Trans Mountain pipeline carries 300,000 barrels of oil per day and is Canada’s only pipeline system transporting oil from Alberta to the West Coast. The expansion project will essentially twin the existing pipeline, raising daily output to 890,000 barrels.

Ever since the purchase of TMX in 2018, the federal government has justified its decision by saying “every dollar” earned from the pipeline “will be invested in Canada’s clean energy transition.”

Collins said that claim was dubious at best from the get-go given the PBO’s financial assessments of the project and the urgent need to get off fossil fuels and reduce emissions.

Although the cost jump makes clear the federal government won’t reap any great benefits from selling TMX, Giroux said his assessments can’t account for broader impacts like better prices for Canadian oil, which he says could potentially lead to higher taxes for producers and more jobs in the oil sector.

A central rationale of the project is that the expansion would allow Canada to get a fair price for its oil in Asian markets. This claim was challenged by a 2020 study from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives that found Canadian producers would be taking a loss of US$4 to $6 per barrel if they sold to Asian refineries through TMX compared to selling to U.S. refineries.

Just like the broader economic impacts of the pipeline are hard to calculate, so are the costs of climate change.

A new IPCC report warns humanity is entering an era of irreversible breakdown unless there’s immediate large-scale action to reduce emissions and lays bare the severe costs of climate change for vulnerable communities across the world. More serious climate impacts — like the disastrous wildfires, flooding and heat waves that marked the summer and fall of 2021 — are just a preview of what is to come, according to the report.

Collins said the NDP is calling on the federal government to abandon the TMX pipeline, calling it an “economic and environmental disaster.”

“The people who pay the cost of this are Canadians, it’s our communities,” the Victoria MP said. “The cost is borne both in terms of the dollar spent, but also the cost when it comes to flooding, extreme heat, the impacts on our food systems and the future for our children and our grandchildren.”

Giroux said his office will do a cost analysis “probably in the course of this year” when more detailed financial information becomes available, adding it can’t be done in the immediate future because their work plan is “already quite full.”

— With files from The Canadian Press