OREANDA-NEWS. First Nations tribes in Canada and the US have started flexing their muscles, successfully delaying pipeline projects on both sides of the border. Indications are that this effort is becoming more organized and may play a larger role in infrastructure decisions across the continent.

Tribal action is behind the delays encountered by Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota. Tribes are demanding more consultation and, in some cases, opposing expansion of energy infrastructure altogether.

That effort reached a new level in late September, when First Nations and tribal chiefs gathered simultaneously at Musqueam in Vancouver and Mohawk in Montreal to sign a new continent-wide treaty and form an alliance committing nearly 50 other bands in Canada and the US to stop all proposed oil sands pipeline, tanker and rail projects in their territorial lands and waters.

“What this treaty means is that from Quebec, we will work with our First Nation allies in BC [British Columbia] to make sure that the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline does not pass and we will also work with our tribal allies in Minnesota as they take on Enbridge’s Line 3 expansion, and we know they’ll help us do the same against Energy East,” Kanesatake Grand Chief Serge Simon said in a statement.

The collective stance will have a major impact on the Liberal Party government, which was voted into power last November on the promise of granting a larger say for stakeholders and particularly First Nation bands in British Columbia in any oil pipeline approval and building process.

“This whole issue in relative. They have always been bold and we will see that happening in the future,” Chris Bloomer, president of the  Canadian Energy Pipelines Association, told Platts.

“Compared with the previous Conservative Party government, First Nations feel they have an ally in the Liberals now and feel their voices will be heard more clearly.”

Canadian projects in doubt

Building new crude oil pipelines and the relentless debates about such pursuits have in the past several years proved to be a comprehensively futile exercise in Canada. In fact, there is little public memory of when an export pipeline was last built from land-locked Alberta—the nerve center of Canada’s oil production.

The debate is raging once again, and will have long-term implications for the future of Western Canada’s ailing oil industry, including the  potential of barrels being left in the ground, Canadian pipeline companies increasing their investments in Mexico and the US rather than on their home turf and lastly for the country to lose its market share over the medium to longer term.

In the shorter term, Enbridge is working diligently to provide an additional 60,000 b/d to 80,000 b/d of additional capacity on its Mainline through a combination of debottlenecking and installing high-pressure pumps. But come 2020 and with some 700,000 b/d of new production capacity being started up, crunch time will inevitably dawn on producers.

With a second-quarter throughput of 2.2 million b/d, the 2,366-mile Mainline system that runs from Edmonton, Alberta to Illinois in the US Midcontinent, is a prime source of pipeline takeaway capacity for producers in Alberta and Saskatchewan that have a combined output of just over 3 million b/d.

Four new pipeline projects have been mounted on the drawing board in the past decade with a targeted in service date of 2018/19. Starting off with the 525,000 b/d Northern Gateway that already received regulatory approval, the others are the 1.1 million b/d Energy East, the 590,000 b/d expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline and the 830,000 b/d Keystone XL system.

All the pipelines have not only missed their targeted timeline for start up, but it is still anybody’s guess when the first line pipe will be laid underground.

The Northern Gateway pipeline is also in a limbo, as a decision was due by September 22 from Ottawa after a Federal Court of Appeal this summer overturned an NEB approval granted in late 2013 to Enbridge to build the pipeline. The court’s objection was primarily focused on the lack of stakeholder consultations.

Without a pipeline breakthrough, Western Canadian production could be capped at about 4.4 million b/d. In the US, further Bakken crude production is at risk if Dakota Access doesn’t come to fruition. Since the pan-continental movement is just getting underway, and collecting additional allies, producers could have difficulty making longer term plans.