Enbridge is requesting a three-year extension from Canada’s regulator National Energy Board (NEB) for the sunset clause until 2019 to allow the Northern Gateway pipeline project enough time to gain certainty.
The sunset clause is a condition on the project and stipulates the timeframe for when construction must begin.
The extension will enable the company to continue discussions with First Nations and Métis communities.
In June 2014, Canada’s former Conservative government conditionally approved the Northern Gateway project, seeking the company to fulfill more than 200 conditions set out by the regulator in 2013.
One of those conditions was that Enbridge needs to start pipeline construction before 2016-end.
As proposed currently, the Northern Gateway project will take 525,000 barrels a day of crude oil along a 731-mile route that starts near Edmonton in Alberta to a deepwater port at Kitimat in British Columbia.
Northern Gateway president John Carruthers said: "Northern Gateway believes projects like ours should be built with First Nations and Métis environmental stewardship, ownership, support and shared control.
"Based on collaboration with First Nations and Métis peoples, we are building a project partnership in a way and on a scale that has never been done before."
Opposing the project Coastal First chair Kelly Russ said that without the NEB’s approval, Enbridge’s certificate will expire on 31 December 2016, unless construction of the pipeline or the Kitimat Terminal has started by this date.
Russ said that the extension until 2019 means that most of the studies submitted in Enbridge’s original application will be more than ten-years old.
Russ said: "They will no longer reflect the latest environmental conditions. This in unacceptable environmental assessment practice and the baseline studies must be redone and updated.
"The risk of crude oil tankers on the North and Central Coast and Haida Gwaii is unacceptable to our members and no-one has yet demonstrated how to clean up a spill of sinking bitumen."
