Trans Mountain CEO Sees No Urgency to Return Pipeline to Private Hands

By Robb M. Stewart

Canada should be in no rush to offload the operator of the country's sole oil pipeline to the Pacific, the heads of Trans Mountain and its state owner say.

The backdrop has shifted since the federal government stepped in to buy Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline to ensure an expansion project that would triple capacity went ahead, Trans Mountain Chief Executive Mark Maki said.

"That was in a different market and that was in a different time," Maki told an audience at a Canadian Club Toronto event. "Just look where we are and look how important energy security is and look how incredibly profitable this asset is. I'd say there's a lot of merit to holding on to it and realizing that full value."

Canada's Liberal government in 2018 agreed to buy the pipeline for 4.5 billion Canadian dollars, about US$3.29 billion today, in an extraordinary step to ensure construction of a planned C$7.4 billion expansion that faced regional opposition. Ottawa has long held to plans to sell the asset when the time was right, though the expansion project took roughly six years to complete, and by the time it was done in 2024 the cost had ballooned.

"There should be no rush to move this out into the private sector at all," said Elizabeth Wademan, president and CEO of Canada Development Investment Corp., which counts Trans Mountain among its assets. It is in the "taxpayer's interest to hold this for a while, get things done that add a whole bunch of value to it before you even think about monetization."

Wademan said the intention remains to offer a stake in Trans Mountain to indigenous communities, though with about 127 nations on or near the land the pipeline runs through it is a complex situation and negotiations will take time. "It is important and it will happen, but there's other strategic pieces that I think have to be sorted out to make sure it's at the right timeline and being very thoughtfully progressed," she said at the event.

The vast majority of Canada's oil exports head to the U.S., but Trans Mountain has opened up other markets. More than 65% of shipments from Canada's west coast go to Asia.

Tariffs and trade uncertainty and more recently the conflict in Iran that has sent the price of oil soaring has heightened interest in sourcing oil and in energy security, Maki said.

"I think Canada is recognized as a very stable partner," he said. "I think there's an opportunity to double down on that and recognize that what we have is exactly what the market wants. And we have the ability to further strengthen those partnerships and diversify our customer base."

Write to Robb M. Stewart at robb.stewart@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 11, 2026 15:30 ET (19:30 GMT)