Enbridge’s CEO doesn’t think investors should take on the risk of developing new fossil fuel infrastructure — that, instead, governments should do so for them.

The CEO, Greg Ebel, made his comments during a recent earnings call with analysts and they were reported by The Globe and Mail. In them, he was saying the quiet part out loud, and admitting in the process that a new West Coast oil pipeline might not be economically viable.

His fiscal pessimism contrasts sharply with the “Build Canada Now” open letter he and other oil and gas executives signed in March 2025 and then reiterated in September, which argued Canada was on the verge of becoming an energy superpower — if only the Carney government would commit to eliminating environmental regulations. 

While the open letter asked the federal government to “simplify regulation” and “grow production,” it never explicitly suggested public coffers should shoulder the costs of building a new pipeline. Perhaps the leaders of Canada’s fossil fuel sector didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that the government of former prime minister Justin Trudeau did just that — at a cost of $35.6 billion — and the results have been less than encouraging. The Trans Mountain Expansion project cost more than $30 billion above initial estimates and hasn’t been running anywhere near its projected utilization rate since it opened. And that’s without projecting forward into a world where oil demand is expected to fall.

Without the convenient and familiar scapegoat of Trudeau to blame for the fossil fuel sector’s troubles, Ebel appears to be trying to concoct a hypothetical jurisdictional crisis to preemptively explain why the private sector shouldn’t pay for any future pipeline. Ebel reportedly referred to British Columbia as a........

© National Observer