While Canadian officials remain “hopeful” that KXL will ultimately get approved, they’re not banking on it. While KXL languishes, pipeline companies are scrambling to get approval for a handful of other projects that would move vast amounts of Alberta’s heavy oil east and west, but not south.
Canadian regulators are currently considering four major pipeline projects: Two of them would move the crude to the west coast of Canada, where it would have easy access to Asian markets; the other two propose piping oil all the way east across southern Canada to refiners in Ontario and Quebec, which are stuck taking more expensive imported oil.
