Canada will likely delay the sale of the Trans Mountain oil pipeline until after the national election in 2025, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing officials familiar with internal discussions.
The country’s government bought the C$34 billion ($24.88 billion) Trans Mountain expansion project in 2018 to ensure construction went ahead, with plans to divest it once operations began.
The long-delayed project became operational on May 1 and nearly triples the shipments of Alberta oil to Canada’s Pacific Coast to 890,000 barrels per day.
“The federal government will launch a divestment process in due course,” finance ministry spokesperson Katherine Cuplinskas said, but declined to give details on timing of the sale.
She said the project will ensure Canada receives fair market value while maintaining the highest environmental standards.
The government had said in May it was amending regulations on how it manages the state-owned pipeline to facilitate its sale to Indigenous groups.
However, there has been no consensus on the valuation of the pipeline. The government has faced criticism for the cost of the expansion ballooning to nearly five times its 2017 budget estimate.
The Prime Minister’s office and Trans Mountain did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
(Reporting by Mrinalika Roy and Tanay Dhumal in Bengaluru; Editing by Vijay Kishore)