Premier Danielle Smith sounds confident about getting the remaining key pieces of the Alberta-Ottawa energy accord across the finish line, but it also appears the endeavour is growing more complicated by the day.

On Thursday, Smith indicated Alberta still prefers a new oil export pipeline that goes to a deepwater port in northern British Columbia — not one to southern B.C.

Speaking to reporters, Smith noted that some opposition to the Trans Mountain expansion (TMX) project last decade focused on the increased tanker traffic tied to more crude shipments leaving the Westridge Marine Terminal in Burnaby, B.C.

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Developing a new oil pipeline to the lower B.C. mainland, as some have suggested, would only increase the traffic at the Port of Vancouver, she noted.

“In a very congested port like that, is there an appetite for a doubling, once again, of that amount of traffic? So that’s why I am a bit skeptical that that would be the appropriate route,” Smith said in Edmonton.

“We’re looking for a route that would get us to a deepwater port with very little navigation needed for channels, and a rapid way of getting to South Korea and Japan and other Asian markets.

“And when you look further up the coast, you can cut three days off trans-Pacific transit, so that’s why we still favour some of the sites where you would get (to) a deepwater port — and we’re very conscious of the fact that there is a lot of congestion already........

© Calgary Herald