Pro-pipeline demonstrators rally outside Kinder Morgan meeting
Posted May 16, 2018 10:07 am.
Last Updated May 16, 2018 10:26 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Around 100 people rallied outside Kinder Morgan’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Downtown Calgary Wednesday.
They were there to voice their support for the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.
The demonstration outside the Metropolitan Centre comes as a deadline looms from the company on whether it will proceed with construction.
Lara said she knows the benefits of a strong oil and gas industry.
“I lost my job in 2015 and I was off work for a year and a half, so I just think, like, let’s get going and let’s get some people working and build it and get our oil out of here,” she said.
“We’ve been kinda getting pushed around a little bit and I think it’s time to show the rest of Canada that we really do need the energy and we should be proud of our Canadian energy and our Canadian product,” another demonstrator, Monty, said.
The CEO of Kinder Morgan Canada Ltd. says he “appreciates” an announcement by Finance Minister Bill Morneauthat the government will compensate investors in the proposed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion if “unnecessary delays” cause costs to rise.
Morneau says the government is willing to “provide indemnity” to any investors, be they the project’s original architects or otherwise, to ensure the controversial Alberta-B.C. project is able to proceed.
Kinder Morgan chief executive Steven Kean offered no further comment during his remarks and declined to talk to reporters after his company’s first annual general meeting on Tuesday since being spun off by U.S.-based Kinder Morgan Inc. to hold most of its Canadian assets a year ago.
Last month, the company said it would stop all non-essential spending on the expansion project to triple the amount of oil flowing from Alberta to the West Coast, which Alberta says is critical to reducing discounts on its product due mainly to pipeline bottlenecks.
Kean reiterated that construction won’t be restarted unless there are sufficient assurances by the end of this month that it can proceed.
