Province could soon start financing pipelines; new committee struck

Citing their economic importance to the province and a shaky political climate, the provincial government could soon start helping out with financing for pipeline projects.

Evaluating the projects will be one of the jobs of a new cabinet committee, the Pipeline Projects Assessment Committee, which was announced Tuesday.

The committee will assess projects and engage with their proponents in a “systematic and structured way,” according to Trade and Export Minister Jeremy Harrison — one of the ministers on the committee.

“We’re prepared to move from advocacy to looking at other options in how we can advance these pipeline projects going forward, and the reason for that is the incredible important to our economy,” said Harrison.

Other options could include putting equity into projects.

Harrison said pipeline proponents have told the government that it’s difficult getting financing in the open market because of targeted litigation and delaying tactics, and things like environmental review processes which can create uncertainty.

“Political risk being such as it is, and the public policy objective for our government being a pipeline being built, we are prepared to move beyond advocacy to looking at other options,” said Harrison.

Harrison said this kind of thing isn’t completely out of the ordinary, pointing to the ownership of the Trans Mountain pipeline by the federal government.

Harrison said he wouldn’t characterize this situation as embracing state ownership, saying needing to get the government involved isn’t an ideal situation.

“The reality is that unless governments are involved in energy infrastructure projects, they’re not going to get built,” said Harrison.

Harrison wasn’t willing to talk about the budget or how these projects could be financed.

“This is a priority for the province and we have seen, in a historic context, investments into these sort of projects … But also there are broader economic impacts,” said Harrison.

When questioned about specific projects, Harrison said there are a lot of things that still need to happen before any projects are announced.

In response, the NDP’s critic on the file, Trent Wotherspoon, said oil and market access are very important to Saskatchewan and his party would be open-minded to what the options might look like.

“But you shouldn’t be racing to place public dollars on that front,” Wotherspoon said. “You’d hope that market conditions are such that projects can be advanced with private sector capital. And then anytime you’re looking at a public dollar, you really have to be certain around the value for money (and) the certainty of advancing a project.”