It was not hard to see this coming.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had long ago begun playing a political poker game with Kinder Morgan, and it was quickly apparent the hand he was holding consisted of see-through cards.
Trudeau made it clear he desperately needed the pipeline expansion to proceed. He vowed, “this pipeline will be built” over and over again, even after Kinder Morgan set a May 31 deadline for potentially walking away from the project entirely.
Kinder Morgan’s concerns about political delays and uncertainties hovering over the project hardly disappeared after that deadline was imposed and there was absolutely no chance of them being eased within that tight time frame.
The B.C. NDP government was not going to back off its somewhat muted and limited opposition to the project, even if its onetime fiery anti-pipeline rhetoric had shrunk into an apparent weak court challenge or two.
The various court challenges from First Nations and some B.C. municipalities against the pipeline were not going to disappear either.
So it quickly became apparent that the chances of Kinder Morgan sticking around without some kind of huge financial investment from the Trudeau government were pretty well nil.
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And Trudeau could hardly back away from his vow the pipeline would be built. He had gone all-in in pledging his support for it and had invested his own personal political capital in the project.
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The only question was what form that hefty financial investment would take: indemnification, partnership or full-on ownership.
When no prospective investors emerged, the ownership option came into view.
The trap that Trudeau was forced to walk into was set by that May 31 deadline and the issues — uncertainty and delays — it brought into light.
It is unclear whether this trap could have been avoided if Trudeau had acted more decisively in championing the pipeline much earlier than he did.
For years, Kinder Morgan experienced nothing but court challenges, protests, and battles from B.C. municipal and provincial governments. The federal government did not have the project’s back until the past few months, which in Kinder Morgan’s view, was simply too late.
And so Trudeau was forced to sit in on that poker game, showing all his cards. The pot in that game turns out to be pretty expensive — perhaps more than $12 billion when all the chips are counted.
Coverage of Kinder Morgan on Globalnews.ca:
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