This Inside Climate News article discusses how major pipeline delays are affecting Canada’s tar sands. Keystone XL’s construction has been delayed by the courts, tar sands forecasts are down and investors are worried.
March has brought a string of setbacks for Canada’s struggling tar sands oil industry, including the further delay of two proposed pipelines, a poor forecast for growth and signs that investors may be growing wary.
On Friday, a federal appeals court in California refused to lift a lower court order that blocks construction of the Keystone XL pipeline until a thorough new environmental assessment is completed. The decision likely pushed back by a year the start of major work by TransCanada, Keystone XL’s owner, to complete the project.
The same day, ExxonMobil affiliate Imperial Oil said it was delaying a new tar sands project in Alberta, likely by a year.
Those setbacks followed an earlier announcement by Enbridge, another pipeline operator, that it would delay the completion of its Line 3 expansion through northern Minnesota by a year, to late 2020. That project is one of two other major pipelines planned to carry oil out of Canada’s tar sands, also called oil sands.