Canada’s PM vows to speed up energy project approval

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has highlighted that the country’s capacity to export energy is a national priority and vowed to speed up regulatory approval of energy projects.

Following the US administration’s rejection of TransCanada Corp’s Keystone XL, a pipeline that would have shipped oil sands crude from Alberta to the US Gulf Coast, Canada’s prime minister has promoted alternative routes to export the country’s oil.

While TransCanada is reapplying, Enbridge Inc is proposing another pipeline that will take oil from Alberta westward to the Canadian Pacific coast, where it can be loaded onto Asia-bound tankers.

Mr Harper was quoted by the Wall Street Journal as saying his government will soon take action to ensure energy and mining projects aren’t subjected to “unnecessary regulatory delays.” “We will make it a national priority to ensure we have the capacity to export our energy products beyond the United States, and specifically to Asia,” Mr Harper said, adding: “In this regard, we will soon take action to ensure that major energy and mining projects are not subject to unnecessary regulatory delays—that is, delay merely for the sake of delay.”