Kinder Morgan wants to nearly treble Trans Mountain's capacity to carry 890,000 barrels per day of crude from landlocked Alberta, to Burnaby, British Columbia, where it can be loaded on to tankers and shipped to lucrative Asian refining markets.
Alberta's carbon-intensive oil sands producers are desperate for improved access to international markets for their heavy crude, which is among the cheapest in the world and was priced at about $16.50 a barrel outright late Thursday afternoon.
But the C$5.4 billion ($3.79 billion) project has run into fierce environmental and aboriginal opposition.
British Columbia Environment Minister Mary Polak said Kinder Morgan had failed to provide the National Energy Board (NEB), a federal regulator, with an adequate plan to prevent or respond to an oil spill.
In 2012 the province's premier, Christy Clark, outlined five conditions that any company wanting to build pipelines in British Columbia would need to meet to win approval from her Liberal government. These included a "world-leading" marine and land oil spill prevention, response and recovery practices.
"We have not seen evidence that convinces us that those five conditions have been met," Polak told reporters.
The British Columbia government did not entirely rule out the possibility of Kinder Morgan meeting their requirements in future, adding that it will continue to evaluate the project.
Read more at British Columbia to Oppose Kinder Morgan's Pipeline Expansion
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