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If you think we have hit rock bottom when it comes to legal and political obstacles to building pipelines, think again.

Things are now on track to get more difficult due to the federal government’s full embrace of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, an act that arguably gives a veto to Indigenous groups over new pipeline projects.

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The declaration goes by the acronym of UNDRIP, which is vaguely fitting as it could mean not one more drip or drop of oil moving through a new pipeline in Canada.

The problems around UNDRIP were addressed at Thursday’s Economics Society of Northern Alberta conference, where economists gathered to dig into the issues around investing in pipelines and the oilsands.

Jon Stringham, manager of fiscal and economic policy for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, said when oilsands companies invested in new oilsands projects, they fully expected that pipelines such as the now dead Energy East and Northern Gateway pipelines, along with Line 3 (370,000 barrels per day), KeystoneXL (830,000 bpd) and/or the Trans Mountain Expansion TMX (590,000 bpd) would be on board to move the oil. But Line 3 is the only one near completion (it’s expected to be online in late 2019).