The estimated price tag for the pipeline is $35.2-43.7 billion, before factoring in potential cost increases like the monumental 584% cost overrun by the last fossil project Canadian taxpayers underwrote, the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.
And you may be wondering, what about the other 10%?
Pembina Pipeline maintains it has entered into a “non-binding Heads of Agreement,” a contractual term more similar to a memorandum of understanding than a firm, final contract.
Investopedia explains that a Heads of Agreement is just “the first step toward creating a formal deal, and due to its tentative nature can often be renegotiated or reneged.”
@JEmphatically
Experts are predicting an oil glut with the reopening of the Hormuz.
You can't ship 1M bbl/day unless you increase production by that amount, and that doesn't begin to make sense. The Big Oil investment needed to increase production will not happen. They are realistically where Telecom was ten years ago with landlines and trying to convert to Income Funds. Big Oil knows that peak demand is already passed; they aren't going to put billions of their money into new extraction and production.
@JEmphatically Didn't the MOU specify the whole thing had to be privately funded?
@Chigaze That's a "no" and even though the pipeline was supposed to be dependent on a CCS commitment, the Oil Sands Alliance has yet to commit to build Pathways.
@JEmphatically Interesting as when the original MOU was announced the reporting made it seem like it had to be a private sector project. The MOU itself does say:
"Construction of one or more private sector constructed and financed pipelines..."
https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/backgrounders/2025/11/27/canada-alberta-memorandum-understanding
@Chigaze You are absolutely correct. The original MOU did say that - but it looks like that part disappeared in the "implementation agreement" that was published in May that I linked to. It's all so shady.
@JEmphatically Yup. They ended up dropping one of the key elements, at least key for me in finding the MOU even slightly tolerable. :/
Of course at this point they will have confirmed no private company wants to build this on their own.
@Chigaze At the time I covered the MOU back in November, I remember one of the criticisms I heard was that NOTHING in an MOU is set in stone. An MOU is largely political performance. Even the presser yesterday was highly choreographed to make it seem more palatable. Pembina was referenced frequently, even though they've not even officially signed on to anything. The public funding was hardly mentioned.