Alberta premier ready to talk but wants action at Trans Mountain meeting

EDMONTON — Alberta Premier Rachel Notley says she will attend a meeting about the Trans Mountain pipeline in good faith and with an open mind, but the bottom line is the expansion project must get built without delay.

Notley also says she will bring in legislation next week that would allow her to curtail oil shipments to British Columbia — regardless of the outcome of her Sunday meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and B.C. Premier John Horgan.

Such action is expected to cause gas prices and other costs to spike in B.C.

Trudeau has called the meeting for Ottawa amid increasing public pressure to resolve the impasse over Kinder Morgan’s pipeline from Edmonton to the port at Burnaby, B.C.

The $7.4-billion expansion would triple the amount of oil headed to the coast, which Notley says is critical to ease transportation bottlenecks that are causing Canadian heavy oil to sell at a deep discount.

The project already has federal approval, but Kinder Morgan says delay tactics and court challenges by B.C. have put the financial viability of it in jeopardy.

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