Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is signalling she may look south, not west, to reach Asian energy buyers. In a year-end interview she said that if new capacity through British Columbia stalls, Alberta crude could move by pipeline or rail across Montana and Idaho to Washington or Oregon ports.
“Anytime you can get to the West Coast, it opens up markets to get to Asia,” Smith told the National Post during the interview.
UNDRIP opens fresh legal unknowns
Pipeline proponents already wrestle with complex federal reviews, but the bigger wildcard now sits in Victoria. Premier David Eby’s government has embedded the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or UNDRIP, into provincial law through the 2019 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.
The B.C. Court of Appeal recently found the province’s mineral-claims regime out of step with that act, declaring that the system failed to secure “free, prior and informed consent” from First Nations. The decision “will impose massive economic costs on all British Columbians until it’s resolved,” Fraser Institute authors Tegan Hill and Jason Clemens wrote in a December commentary.
That ruling follows the Cowichan Tribes’ summer court victory that granted Aboriginal title over seven and a half square kilometres of Richmond’s Lulu Island.
Property owners suddenly need provincial loan guarantees because banks are uneasy about collateral; one tax expert warns the backstop could reach $1 billion, far more than the C$150 million Premier Eby has floated so far. If investors struggle to finance warehouses and homes on titled land, backers of a multibillion-dollar hydrocarbon corridor will face even tougher questions.
Washington State looks simpler and faster
By contrast, the U.S. Northwest already handles Canadian commodities. Potash producer Nutrien chose the Port of Longview in Washington for a new terminal this autumn, citing clear permitting and a firm construction window. Alberta shippers could tap the same rail corridors while partners map a dedicated pipeline. Any project would still pass U.S. federal checks, but Washington and Oregon do not grant Indigenous veto power and have shorter statutory timelines.
Routing south also spares Alberta from B.C.’s planned “made-in-B.C.” emissions cap and a potential coastal tanker ban extension. Freight distance from Edmonton to Longview is about 1,700 kilometres, only 150 kilometres longer than the Edmonton-Burnaby Trans Mountain run, yet offers direct access to deep-water berths built for Alaskan crude. Transportation costs would rise modestly, analysts say, but stable timelines could offset those cents per barrel.
Smith is careful to keep the door open to a northern B.C. line, yet political math remains bleak. Eby’s minority New Democrats rely on Green support that opposes new oil export infrastructure. UNDRIP obligations, unresolved title cases and the prospect of billion-dollar provincial guarantees leave project sponsors unable to price risk. “Certainty is the oxygen of capital,” Hill and Clemens argued in their piece, and right now B.C. is running low.
For Alberta, a U.S. route would still diversify away from the Midwest refining hub and could lift benchmark prices by trimming the long-standing Western Canadian Select discount. Asian refiners from Japan to India have signalled they will buy heavier Canadian grades if logistics improve. The question is no longer whether demand exists, but whether Ottawa and Victoria can match the decisiveness of Helena, Boise and Olympia. Until that answer changes, the path of least resistance may start at the Sweetgrass port of entry, not on the banks of the Fraser.
