
Canada faces US$15B loss on oil pipeline, Morningstar says
BNN Bloomberg
Canadian taxpayers may end up taking a loss of $20 billion (nearly US$15 billion) on the government-owned Trans Mountain Pipeline after costs to expand it skyrocketed, according to Morningstar.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government will probably get no more than $15 billion when it goes to sell Trans Mountain — and possibly much less, Morningstar analyst Stephen Ellis said in an interview.
The government paid Kinder Morgan Inc. $4.5 billion for the system in 2018 after the midstream company threatened to cancel plans to nearly triple its capacity to 890,000 barrels a day. The cost of that project has soared to about $31 billion because of a range of factors including supply-chain challenges.
“At a $31 billion investment cost, no way the pipeline is going to recover costs,” Ellis said.

Oil tankers are crossing the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s actions to choke traffic through the shipping route have not hurt the U.S. economy, White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told CNBC on Tuesday, reiterating the Trump administration’s position that the war should be over in weeks, not months.

Daily oil exports from the Middle Eastern Gulf, home to top exporter Saudi Arabia and other major producers, have dropped by at least 60 per cent in the week to March 15 compared to February due to disruptions and output cuts amid the U.S.-Iran war, according to shipping data and Reuters calculations.











