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QUEBEC

The Parti Québécois opposition welcomed news that TransCanada Corp. will not build an oil port in Quebec as part of its cross-country Energy East pipeline project.

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The company originally planned to pump Western Canadian oil, at a rate of up to 1.1 million barrels per day, through to terminals in Cacouna and Saint John’s, N.B.. The choice of Cacouna, the site of a beluga nursery, was met with a public outcry in Quebec.

TransCanada reportedly considered other locations—Lévis, Bécancour and Baie-des-Sables, near Matane—before ruling out a Quebec port, according to a La Presse exclusive citing unnamed sources.

“It’s a beautiful victory for the preservation and sustainability of the belugas we have in the St. Lawrence River,” the PQ’s natural resources critic, Bernard Drainville, said in a news conference on Wednesday.

Without a terminal in Quebec, the project has become “less detestable,” Drainville said. “However, the environmental risks related to the completion of this project are still there.”