TMX has pipeline on the ground ready for installation in Alberta. The company says overall the project has taken 6 million man hours to this point.

File Photo KDG Looking Back

Good luck! TMX

Six million man hrs circa 2019,Start of the pandemics hold on our Society.

Man-hours at completion

The **Trans Mountain Expansion Project (TMX)**, which twinned the original 1953 pipeline running from Edmonton, Alberta, to Burnaby, British Columbia, officially commenced commercial operations on **May 1, 2024**. Construction on this massive scale began in earnest in late 2019 after surviving a gauntlet of intense regulatory hurdles, legal challenges, and environmental protests. Completing the project required an enormous workforce, accumulating **more than 108 million man-hours** of labor to lay roughly 980 kilometers of new pipe, construct 12 new pump stations, and expand the Westridge Marine Terminal.The total cost of the expansion spiraled dramatically over its lifespan, jumping from an early 2013 estimate of 5.4 billion CAD to a final price tag of approximately **34 billion CAD**. This ballooning cost was driven by pandemic disruptions, historic British Columbia flooding, supply chain inflation, and extensive Indigenous consultation processes. Because original owner Kinder Morgan threatened to scrap the project due to political opposition, the **Federal Government of Canada purchased the pipeline in 2018 for 4.5 billion CAD** and currently owns it through a federal Crown corporation called the Trans Mountain Corporation.The current outlook for Trans Mountain is financially strong but politically complex. The expansion successfully nearly tripled the line’s capacity from 300,000 to **890,000 barrels per day**, and the pipeline is running nearly full at 90% to 95% capacity, successfully opening up Pacific and Asian markets for Canadian crude. While the federal government initially insisted it would sell the asset back to the private sector or Indigenous syndicates, the massive 34 billion CAD price tag means a sale would likely force taxpayers to take a major financial loss (writedown). As a result, federal leadership has signaled that Ottawa may comfortably hold onto this highly strategic, revenue-generating national asset indefinitely.

Good Luck, thank you Canada

The golden weld.

On April 11, 2024, construction crews completed the final major mechanical linkage of the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion project by securing the symbolic “golden weld” in British Columbia’s Fraser Valley, situated between Hope and Chilliwack. This critical final join marked the culmination of a decade-long, $34-billion infrastructure effort to twin the existing 980-kilometre line running from Edmonton, Alberta, across the rugged terrain of the Canadian Rockies, to the Westridge Marine Terminal in Burnaby, B.C. By connecting the final section of pipe, the golden weld paved the way for commercial operations to launch the following month, nearly tripling the system’s total shipping capacity from 300,000 to 890,000 barrels per day and opening Western Canadian crude to direct export markets across the Pacific Rim.