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Enbridge signs tolling deal with shippers for Mainline pipeline system

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Enbridge Inc. says it has reached a deal with shippers for tolling on its Mainline pipeline system, which moves over three million barrels a day of crude oil and liquids from Western Canada. This photo taken in October 2016 shows an aboveground section of Enbridge’s Line 5 at the Mackinaw City, Mich., pump station. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-John Flesher

Calgary

Enbridge Inc. says it has reached a deal with shippers for tolling on its Mainline pipeline system, which moves over three million barrels a day of crude oil and liquids from Western Canada.

The announcement Thursday is a major milestone for the Calgary-based pipeline company, which has been negotiating with oil shippers on a new tolling agreement ever since its proposal to fill Canada’s largest oil pipeline network through long-term contracts was rejected by the Canada Energy Regulator in November 2021.

Enbridge CEO Greg Ebel said the settlement has been approved by the company’s board of directors and received “overwhelming support” from a 37-member industry stakeholder group that included producers, refiners, integrated companies, industry agencies, and governments.

“This settlement is a win-win-win – customers will continue to receive competitive and responsive service; Enbridge will earn attractive risk-adjusted returns; and the Mainline will continue to feed North America and global markets with a long-term source of safe, secure, and affordable energy,” Ebel said in a release.

Enbridge’s Mainline is Canada’s largest oil pipeline system, providing about 70 per cent of the total oil pipeline transportation capacity out of Western Canada.

The pipeline’s demand has exceeded capacity over the past few years, so Enbridge had applied to enter into long-term contracts for 90 per cent of the Mainline system’s capacity.

Enbridge had argued firm contracts would give customers more predictable access to the pipeline, but some Canadian oil producers argued the proposed change would worsen the existing capacity constraints and could lead to lower oil prices.

In rejecting the proposal in 2021, the Canada Energy Regulator concluded Enbridge’s proposal would dramatically change access to the pipeline. It said certain companies would benefit from long-term stability, but others would lose access to the pipeline.

Enbridge said Thursday the new settlement covers both the Canadian and U.S. portions of the Mainline system and will provide customers with a stable, competitive toll relative to competing alternatives.

The agreement also includes a financial performance collar providing incentives for Enbridge to optimize throughput and cost, but also providing downside protection in the event of extreme supply or demand disruptions.

Enbridge said it expects to jointly finalize the settlement with industry and submit an application for approval to the Canada Energy Regulator in the third quarter.

It expects the new tolling settlement could be approved and implemented later this year. The settlement term is seven-and-a-half years, lasting through 2028.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 4, 2023.

Companies in this story: (TSX:ENB)

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Dan McTeague

Will this deal actually build a pipeline in Canada?

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By Dan McTeague

Will Carney’s new pipeline deal actually help get a pipeline built in Canada? As we said before, the devil is in the details.

While the establishment and mainstream media cheer on the new pipeline agreement, there are specific details you need to be aware of.

Dan McTeague explains in his latest video.

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Energy

Canada following Europe’s stumble by ignoring energy reality

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Family in Spain eating by candlelight during a blackout, April 2025

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Canada’s own 2024 grid scare proves we’re on the same path unless we change course.

Europe’s green-energy unraveling is no longer a distant cautionary tale. It’s a mirror — and Canada is already seeing the first cracks.

A new Wall Street Journal investigation lays out the European story in stark detail: a continent that slashed emissions faster than anyone else, only to discover that doing so by tearing down firm power before its replacement existed comes with brutal consequences — collapsing industry, sky-high electricity prices, political fragmentation, and a public increasingly unwilling to subsidize wishful thinking.

The tragedy isn’t that Europe tried to decarbonize quickly.

The tragedy is how they did it: by insisting on an “or” transition — renewables or fossil fuels — instead of what every energy-literate nation outside Europe pursued: renewables and fossil fuels, working together while the system evolves.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth:

Canada has already had its first European-style crisis. It happened in January 2024.

Canada’s early warning: the January 2024 electricity crunch

Most people have already forgotten it, because our political class desperately wanted you to. But in January 2024, Western Canada came within a whisker of a full-blown energy security breakdown. Alberta, Saskatchewan, and B.C. were stretched to their limit. The grid was under cascading stress. Contingency plans were activated. Alberta came terrifyingly close to rolling blackouts.

It wasn’t caused by climate change. It wasn’t caused by a mysterious cyberattack.

It was caused by the same structural brittleness now crippling Europe:

  • Insufficient firm power, after years of political messaging that we could “electrify everything” without adding real generating capacity.
  • Overreliance on intermittent sources not backed by storage or gas.
  • A planning system that punted risk into the future, betting the grid could be stretched indefinitely.

The January 2024 event was not a blip. It was a preview.

Our European moment in miniature.

But instead of treating it as the national wake-up call it should have been, B.C. did something telling — and deeply damaging.

The B.C. government’s response: attack the messenger

Just a couple of years ago, an economist publicly warned about the economic price of emerging system vulnerabilities due to a groaning stack of “clean economy” policies.

The B.C. government didn’t respond with data, evidence, or even curiosity. Instead, a cabinet minister used the safety of legislative privilege — that gold-plated shield against accountability — to launch nasty personal attacks on the economist who raised the concerns, which themselves had originated in the government’s own analysis.

No engagement.

No counter-analysis.

No willingness to consider the system risks.

Just slurs — the very definition of anti-intellectual governance.

It was a moment that told the whole story:

Too many policymakers in this province believe that energy systems obey politics, not physics.

Physics always gets the last word.

Europe shows us what political denial turns into

The WSJ reporting couldn’t be clearer about the consequences of that denial:

  • Germany: highest domestic electricity prices in the developed world.
  • U.K.: highest industrial electricity rates among major economies.
  • Industrial flight: chemical plants closing, data centres frozen, major players hinting at exiting Europe entirely.
  • Grid instability: wind farms paid tens of millions not to generate because the grid can’t handle it.
  • Public revolt: rising support for parties rejecting the entire green-transition agenda.
  • Policy whiplash: governments rushing to build gas plants they swore they’d never need.

Europe is now an object lesson in how good intentions, executed poorly, can produce the exact opposite of what was promised: higher prices, higher volatility, declining competitiveness, and a public ready to abandon climate policy altogether.

This is precisely what January 2024 warned us about — but on a continental scale.

The system cost we keep pretending doesn’t exist

Every serious energy expert knows the truth Europe is now living: intermittent renewables require massive amounts of redundant capacity, storage, and backup generation. That’s why the U.K. now needs 120 gigawatts of capacity to serve a demand previously met with 60–70 gigawatts, even though electricity use hasn’t meaningfully grown.

This is the math policymakers prefer not to show the public.

And it’s why B.C.’s refusal to have an honest conversation about firm power is so dangerous.

If we electrify everything without ensuring affordable and abundant natural gas generation, we’re not building a green future.

We’re building Europe, 10 years early.

The lesson for Canada — especially for B.C.

Here is what Europe and January 2024 together say, in one clear voice:

1. There is no energy transition without firm power.

Renewables are part of the system, but they don’t run the system. Natural gas does. Hydro does. Nuclear does. Pretending otherwise is how you end up with rolling blackouts.

2. Political denial makes crises worse.

When ministers attack economists instead of answering them, it signals that ideology is running the show. Europe learned the cost of that. We will too, unless we change course.

Europe lost the room. Once people see their bills double while factories close, the climate agenda becomes politically radioactive.

4. B.C. has an advantage Europe would kill for.

Europe dreams of having an abundant, local, low-carbon firm-power fuel like northeastern B.C.’s natural gas. We treat it like a political liability. That’s not strategy. It’s negligence.

5. The transition will fail if we don’t treat electricity like the national security asset it is.

Without energy, there is no industry.

Without industry, there is no prosperity.

Without prosperity, there is no climate policy that survives the next election cycle.

What we need now

Canada must embrace an “and” strategy:

Renewables and natural gas. Electrification and realism. Climate ambition and economic competitiveness.

January 2024 showed us the future in a flash. Europe shows us the end state if we keep ignoring the warning.

We can still choose something better. But only if we stop pretending that energy systems bend to political narratives — and start treating them with the seriousness they demand.

Resource Works News

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