Canada's federal government said on Wednesday it supports Kinder Morgan Canada Ltd's second appeal to the country's energy regulator over local permits for its planned Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion project.
Kinder Morgan has been pushing its C$7.4 billion ($5.9 billion) federally approved pipeline in an increasingly public way, repeatedly seeking regulatory intervention amid increased roadblocks with lower governments and environmentalist and aboriginal opposition.
Canada's minister of natural resources, Jim Carr, said in a statement that his government has told the National Energy Board (NEB) it supports the company's request to set up a process to resolve potential disagreements with provinces or municipalities over the federally approved project.
Kinder Morgan and the NEB did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The company, a unit of Houston-based Kinder Morgan Inc , made its regulatory appeal this month, following a similar one last month after the company failed to obtain local permits from the city of Burnaby, British Columbia.
Kinder Morgan last month also asked the regulator to allow it to bypass Burnaby, a request for which the NEB has scheduled oral hearings on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Ethan Lou; Editing by Diane Craft and Leslie Adler)