Canada eyes more ways to ship oil to China as U.S. threatens trade
financialpost.comAlmost every day since the expansion of Canada’s Trans Mountain pipeline was completed in May, a tanker laden with oilsands crude shipped through the line has passed under Vancouver’s Lions Gate Bridge en route to refineries around the Pacific.
Those tankers, bound for China and Japan among other markets, mark a significant shift for Canada, which has long been stuck exporting its vast flows of oil solely to the United States. And with President Donald Trump’s tariff threats highlighting the risk of that dependence, the success of the $34 billion Trans Mountain expansion is stoking Canada’s desire to further decouple from its unpredictable neighbour — and play a larger role in global oil markets.
Trans Mountain “is a good start,” said Adam Waterous, a former investment banker and the founder and chairman of oil producer Strathcona Resources Ltd. “Now we have to build on it. The very fortunate thing is that we’re not starting from scratch.”
Canada’s oil industry has long pushed for more pipelines, both to its own coasts and to the U.S., only to see them thwarted by opposition from environmental groups, Indigenous communities and courts as well as the country’s own federal and provincial governments.
But those efforts are garnering renewed interest as Canadians reel from Trump’s trade attack, an episode that has sparked anger and distrust at the country’s southern neighbour, even pushing hockey fans to go so far as to boo the U.S. national anthem at recent games.
Two mothballed projects in particular are being discussed as ripe for revival: Energy East, which would carry western Canadian crude east to refineries in Ontario and Quebec; and Northern Gateway, which would haul Alberta oil to a Pacific port in northern British
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