The city of Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada) has taken legal steps against the Trans Mountain crude oil pipeline expansion project, developed by Kinder Morgan and approved by the Canadian energy regulator National Energy Board (NEB) in May 2016. Vancouver has filed an application for judicial review at the Federal Court of Appeal in Vancouver to block the project, claiming that it would increase seven-fold the number of oil tankers in city waters and would badly impact greenhouse gas emissions.
The Trans Mountain crude oil pipeline will stretch from Edmonton, Alberta, to Burnaby, British Columbia. The C$6.8bn (US$5.2bn) expansion project aims at increasing the transportation capacity from approximately 300,000 bbl/d to 890,000 bbl/d by twinning the existing light crude oil and refined product pipeline.
In January 2016, the government of British Columbia opposed Kinder Morgan's plans to expand the Trans Mountain crude oil pipeline, considering that Kinder Morgan had not provided an adequate plan to prevent or respond to an oil spill and failed to meet any of the five conditions it had laid out in 2012. The NEB's recommendation on the project will be reviewed by the Prime Minister's cabinet and the final investment decision is expected in December 2016.