VANCOUVER—Canada’s $4.5-billion purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline from Texas energy giant Kinder Morgan has gained a key U.S. regulator’s blessing.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States — which scrutinizes some international transactions for national security concerns — gave the green-light to the deal signed May 29 but not yet closed, Canada’s finance ministry and the company confirmed Friday.

“The required regulatory approvals necessary for the close of the sale have been received,” said Pierre-Olivier Herbert, press secretary to Finance Minister Bill Morneau, in an email. “The transaction is proceeding as scheduled, and construction activities are on track as detailed in line with the 2018 work plan.

“The Trans Mountain expansion is in the national interest and it must be built.”

The company also applauded the decision. In an email, Trans Mountain spokesperson Ali Hounsell said the firm now has all the “required regulatory approvals” needed to close the sale of the existing 1,100-kilometre pipeline system and the planned $7.5-billion expansion.

“The next step is the Kinder Morgan Ltd. shareholders meeting to approve the transaction,” Hounsell said, “scheduled for Aug. 30.”

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The expansion would see the bitumen flow from Alberta’s oilsands to the B.C. coast nearly triple to 890,000 barrels a day, thereby increasing oil tanker traffic sevenfold.

According to Eugene Kung, a lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law, the U.S. regulator’s approval isn’t the final hurdle. There are conditions of the deal that still to be met, he suggested, and much uncertainty with multiple lawsuits against the project awaiting judges’ decisions.

Last month, Canada missed its deadline to quickly find another, private buyer of the pipeline before it took ownership itself. And Kinder Morgan’s own shareholders voted for environmental resolutions put forward at the company’s Texas annual general meeting earlier this year.

“This is just another hurdle in a decathlon that still has a long way to go,” Kung said in a phone interview. “The purchase itself hasn’t finalized, and clearly no buyers have stepped forward.

“So Canada will be the ones who have to move forward with construction, and it will remain to be seen how that plays out with the continued uncertainty from the court cases and their eventual appeals.”

That plan has sparked years of opposition from many — though not all — First Nations along the land and water route, as well as B.C.’s New Democrat government, environmental groups and the cities of Vancouver and Burnaby.

Hundreds of protesters have been arrested at the company’s gates in Burnaby, B.C., including several seniors who have been jailed for seven days this month as penalties increase for violating a court injunction.

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The Alberta government supports the project and says it is economically crucial to get bitumen to tidewater, blaming B.C. for delaying the project that was already approved by Ottawa and the previous B.C. government.

This week saw police evict and arrest opponents of the pipeline from a long-standing protest camp outside Kinder Morgan’s facility in Burnaby. An Indigenous-led Watch House remains nearby on Burnaby Mountain.

Even if the expansion is built, Kung argued, Canada’s global climate commitments would require we use less, not more, oil to reduce emissions by 2050. Ottawa “absolutely” risks finding itself owning a “stranded asset,” he said, long before the pipeline’s lifetime ends.

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