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In an interview, Neil Earnest, president of Dallas-based consultancy Muse Stancil, said if the project was needed when first proposed two years ago, it’s even more needed today. The $5.4-billion twinning would nearly triple the capacity of the Edmonton-to-Burnaby, B.C. 60-year-old line to 890,000 barrels a day.

“The (existing TransMountain) pipeline has been full for half a decade, the Canadian crude oil supply continues to build, there is a lot of it now moving by rail. I think this is very timely,” the engineer said Monday, after his firm filed an 89-page report highlighting the benefits of the project to the National Energy Board (NEB) on behalf of Houston-based Kinder Morgan.

“If it’s built, it will be used and useful,” he said. “To the extent that the other major export pipelines are not constructed, for whatever reasons, the economic benefits offered by the TransMountain expansion go up.”

The Muse Stancil report replaces a similar report submitted two years ago by Steven Kelly, a consultant with IHS Global Canada.

Last month, the NEB panel conducting the regulatory review ordered any evidence prepared by Kelly to be struck from the record to avoid concerns about conflict of interest. Kelly was recently appointed to a seven-year term at NEB starting Oct. 13 and is not involved in the project.

Kelly’s report reflected a different reality. It was based on expectations of oilsands growth before oil prices collapsed and many projects were put on hold, and assumed competing pipeline projects (Northern Gateway, Keystone XL and Energy East) would be completed by 2017 to 2018.