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| CARTOON - July 29, 2008 |
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| EDITORIAL - July 29, 2008 |
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| TransCanada Pipeline |
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Leader Staff
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A Calgary company, TransCanada, has won the endorsement of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to construct a new pipeline that will carry natural gas from Prudhoe Bay in northern Alaska to Alberta and the rest of the United States.
Prudhoe Bay is the largest oil field in North America, and one of the primary sources of natural gas on the continent. The Alaska pipeline project would consist of 1,715 miles of pipe, the distance from Prudhoe Bay to Boundary Lake, B.C. From Boundary Lake, the gas would join up with the existing Alberta pipeline network, which would then carry the gas as far east as Quebec and Vermont, where it would then join other U.S. and Canadian pipelines to the east coast.
TransCanada already operates thousands of kilometers of pipeline, from Alaska all the way to the Baja Peninsula in Mexico. Their pipelines are major arteries for natural gas going to eastern Canada, and their role in the future of energy stakes is sure to be a big one.
The reason TransCanada won the rights to the Alaskan pipeline, according to Palin, is because the deal favours Alaskan tax payers and the Canadian company was able to come in at a much lower price than energy producers BP and Conoco Phillips. Trans-Canada will also reap substantial rewards from the deal should it go through.
But this has drawn the ire of interest groups who claim that pipelines and the flow of natural gas through the province should have greater benefit for Albertans. Their accusations and claims are simply unfounded.
Albertans will enjoy the immediate benefit of more jobs in the energy sector should the Alaska State Senate approve TransCanada’s proposal, and the long term benefit of taxation on natural gas transport. Trans-Canada is an Alberta company making a purely legitimate business decision, and a good one at that.
Before Albertans attack the energy sector, they should take a long hard look at how much that sector has done for this province in the last decade. |
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