🇨🇦🇧🇳 Canada to fast track oil pipeline designed to diversify economy away from US

Canada will fast track the approval process for a new ‌proposed crude oil export pipeline to its west coast that could generate over C$20 billion ($14 billion) a year in GDP, Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Thursday.

The pipeline, which was announced in July, is a crucial part of Carney's bid to diversify the ​economy away from the United States and help lessen the effect of U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs.

Carney said ​Ottawa would officially list the Pacific Link pipeline as a project of national interest, ⁠which enables it proceed through a single federal regulatory review process. He said Ottawa aimed to complete the ​process by September 1, 2027.

"A pipeline to the west coast is part of our mission to transform our economy, ​to double our non-U.S. exports over the next decade ... (and) to unlock our full potential as a global energy superpower," he told reporters in Fort McMurray, hub of Alberta's oil sands industry.

Ottawa says the 1 million barrel a day project would create 140,000 ​jobs and generate over C$20 billion in GDP per year and C$100 billion in government revenue by 2060.

Canada ​currently has just one east-west oil export pipeline in Canada, the 890,000-barrel-per-day Trans Mountain pipeline. An expansion of that pipeline was ‌completed in ⁠2024, but it is already running at capacity.

For years, Canada has sent more than 90% of its crude oil exports to the United States via pipeline. A new oil export pipeline could make Canada a major global energy supplier, as Asia's top importers seek oil from outside the Middle East in the wake of the ​Iran conflict.

Filling the pipeline, however, ​would require new oil ⁠sands expansions of the type no company has undertaken in more than a decade.

🔗 https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/canada-fast-track-oil-pipeline-designed-diversify-economy-away-us-2026-10-01/