CALGARY — British Columbia’s energy minister says the province hasn’t changed its position on Alberta’s proposed West Coast oil pipeline, even as the threat of more Venezuelan oil coming online prompts calls to diversify Canada’s fossil fuel exports.

In an interview with The Logic, B.C. Energy and Climate Solutions Minister Adrian Dix dismissed calls to advance the project due to U.S. intervention in Venezuela as “silly grandstanding” and “not a particularly serious discussion.”

His comments underscore B.C.’s staunch and persistent opposition to its neighbour’s key effort to diversify its oil exports. Alberta proposed a new one-million-barrel-per-day pipeline to B.C.’s north coast in October, and Prime Minister Mark Carney promised to support the project as part of Ottawa’s landmark energy deal with the province. 

Dix said his position on the proposal hasn’t changed in light of America’s intervention in Venezuela, saying a reinvigoration of the Latin American country’s oil industry remains years away and highly uncertain.

“What [the situation] does tell us is, I think, the opposite of what some people are concluding,” Dix said. “The events happened this weekend. It will be a long time before there’s fundamental change in Venezuela.” 

U.S. President Donald Trump has promised to seize control of Venezuela’s oil industry following the capture of the country’s former leader Nicolás Maduro. That could eventually unleash a flood of Venezuelan crude, which has long competed directly with Canada’s oilsands for market share in U.S. Gulf Coast refineries.

That threat has prompted calls to fast-track the pipeline, including from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who urged Carney earlier this week to approve the project within 60 days of its application, and from Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. 

Dix said the Alberta pipeline remains strictly hypothetical, however, as no private companies have yet backed the project. Smith said the province would spend $14 million designing the project, and plans to officially submit it to regulatory bodies by spring. 

“There’s not even a proponent or a project or a route, or any possibility there are customers for this massively expensive project,” Dix said. 

“Alberta is spending $14 million on politics.” 

Dix declined to say whether B.C. would try to quash the project should it move forward, either through court challenges or by withholding permits. Former B.C. premier John Horgan had vowed to use “every tool in the tool box” to oppose the Trans Mountain expansion project when it was under review, and the province unsuccessfully appealed its approval in the Supreme Court. (B.C. Premier David Eby recently ruled out a legal challenge to the current proposal given the court’s firm support of Ottawa’s right to enforce pipeline approvals.)

B.C. has since softened its tone on Trans Mountain, saying it would support further expansion of that pipeline to help ramp up exports to Asia. Trans Mountain’s operator has said it could increase current capacity by 360,000 barrels per day by expanding the pipeline’s diameter in some sections and adding more pumps along the route. 

“We haven’t been saying no to Alberta,” Dix said. “We’ve suggested to them that lower cost options make a lot more sense, and they will occur a lot more quickly.” 

The constant focus on Alberta’s oil pipeline proposal “distorts” the energy relationship between the two provinces, said Dix, who highlighted that the pair are closely aligned on other issues like expanding electricity capacity and developing their vast natural gas resources. 

The B.C. energy minister said companies have proposed upward of $100 billion of potential development in the province’s natural gas alone. That includes the construction and expansion of at least four liquefied natural gas terminals on the B.C. coast, which will be fed by increased production from the Montney formation in the province’s northeast. 

Dix said he is regularly in conversations with major gas producers like Calgary-based Tourmaline about their investments in the region. Tourmaline is part of a consortium of Canadian natural gas producers that have backed the $10-billion Ksi Lisims project, the province’s largest LNG proposal.

B.C. is also targeting 10 new wind and solar projects, and the province has sought to fast-track its North Coast Transmission Line, which would provide critical electricity to several LNG facilities and critical minerals mines in the province.