Pipes are seen at the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain facility in Edmonton, Alta., Thursday, April 6, 2017.JONATHAN HAYWARD/The Canadian Press
The Alberta government will intervene at the National Energy Board in an effort force the City of Burnaby to provide permits needed for construction of the controversial Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.
Kinder Morgan Canada Ltd. and Alberta's NDP government are engaged in legal battles with opponents of the pipeline project in British Columbia as delays push back its expected startup date.
Last month, Kinder Morgan asked the National Energy Board to force Burnaby to issue the permits required for company to begin construction of the federally approved project.
The Alberta government filed notice to the board on Wednesday that it will support Kinder Morgan in its dispute with Burnaby.
"One jurisdiction does not have the right to obstruct a project of national importance," Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said in a statement provided to The Globe and Mail late Wednesday.
"We will never back down fighting for Alberta jobs and Alberta's energy sector, and we will fight for this project until shovels are in the ground."
Burnaby and the City of Vancouver have joined with some First Nations communities and environmentalists in challenging Ottawa's approval of the pipeline expansion. Alberta has intervened to defend that decision.
Kinder Morgan aims to almost triple the capacity of its existing pipeline to carry as much as 890,000 barrels a day of crude from Edmonton to an export terminal in suburban Vancouver.
Kinder Morgan had already warned that the $7.4-billion project could be delayed by as much as nine months, meaning oil deliveries would not commence until the fourth quarter of 2020.
The company filed an updated schedule with the board on Wednesday that included the nine-month delay in the anticipated startup of the pipeline.
However, it asked the regulator to put the schedule back on track by speeding up its review of conditions that must be met before construction can begin.
"Trans Mountain's objective in providing this additional [scheduling] information is to enable the board to prioritize its review of Trans Mountain's filings in a manner that allows the project to remain on schedule," it said in a letter to the board.