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Instead, the National Post spoke to experts to get some insight into how all this could play out and if, rhetoric aside, it would even work.

So, are there literal taps?

Sorry, no. If you’d harboured fantasies of watching Kenney take a novelty-sized crescent wrench to pipelines running from Alberta, that’s unlikely to happen. (There are valves on pipelines that can halt or control flow, but the vow to “turn off the taps” isn’t just about that.)

This is far more bureaucratic.

Then how do you turn off the taps?

Well, what Bill 12 does is it gives the provincial government power to impose licences on companies exporting petroleum products. It then gives the government power to impose restrictions upon those licence holders.

Those restrictions could be to limit the allowable daily quantities of petroleum products shipped, the method of shipment and point of export, and length of time a licence is in effect, among a few others. The minister of energy could also level fines for non-compliance.

So, basically, the UCP would pass Bill 12 and then they would be able to refuse permission to send oil and gas to B.C. — or at least severely limit how much travels there. Government estimates from December 2017 suggest that all total, about 80,000 barrels of refined fuels (diesel, jet fuel, gasoline) go to B.C. each day; about 44,000 of them travel via the current Trans Mountain pipeline. As for crude oil and blended bitumen, about 258,000 barrels per day pass through that pipeline.