It might be that the U.S. environmentalists’ long campaign against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline is about to backfire. Canadian pipeline operators are poised to implement an all-Canadian Plan B network of pipelines in place of the ill-fated Keystone XL that was to run the length of the U.S. heartland to the Texas Gulf Coast.

With the hearty good wishes of an Alberta heavy-oil industry desperate to see a return on its multibillion-dollar investment, Calgary-based pipeline operators already have their Plan B underway. No fewer than four heavy-oil pipeline projects on Canadian soil are under construction or shovel-ready, pending almost certain approval by a pipeline-friendly Alberta and Ottawa.

In the next few days, Ottawa is expected to approve Enbridge Inc.’s controversial, $7.9-billion Northern Gateway pipeline that is to carry Alberta crude oil 1,177 km across the Rockies to the B.C. coast, even though polls show that about two-thirds of B.C. residents want Gateway rejected or postponed for further study. Enbridge’s Line 9 project in Southern Ontario has already been approved and should be operational by year-end.

In its entirety, Plan B consists of Enbridge’s Northern Gateway and Line 9 projects; TransCanada Corp.’s proposed $12-billion Energy East pipeline, extending 4,400 km from Alberta to refineries in Eastern Canada; and Houston-based Kinder Morgan Inc.’s proposed $5.4-billion expansion of its Trans Mountain pipeline to ship Alberta heavy oil to B.C. ports.

Collectively, these new and retrofitted pipelines will have a vastly greater capacity than Keystone XL to carry Alberta heavy oil, the world’s dirtiest, to global markets — almost four times’ the capacity, in fact. Keystone XL would have carried about 800,000 barrels of Canadian heavy oil a day. Plan B will ship as much as 3 million barrels a day.

That is a stake through the heart of the environmentalists, since their real concern isn’t pipelines but even greater Alberta tarsands production and resulting additional emissions contributing to global warming.

The increased capacity from Plan B would spur the Alberta producers as never before to achieve their goal of tripling oilsands production by 2030. Plan B, which would ship Alberta oil east and west rather than south, would assure Alberta producers access to global markets without U.S. government interference. It should also net the producers higher prices than the landlocked Alberta oilpatch has long had to settle for.

None of this all-Canada pipeline network will be subject to U.S. political meddling or regulatory scrutiny, of course, regardless of how many protesters chain themselves to the White House fence. The protesters’ cause will have moved outside U.S. jurisdiction. And the U.S. pipeline opponents’ reception in Canada, should they attempt to rally Canadian public opinion, will be as welcome as Brigitte Bardot’s was over the seal hunt.

Plan B means about $27 billion worth of Canadian economic activity and job creation, compared with Keystone XL’s budgeted cost of $5.9 billion that was to be spent largely in the U.S.

Plan B’s patriotic appeal extends further still. Under Plan B, Alberta crude would be refined in Ontario, Quebec City and Saint John, rather than at the refining hubs of Northern Illinois and the Texas Gulf Coast. Canada would also become more energy self-sufficient, as Alberta crude would displace the imported oil currently refined in Eastern Canada.

The latest setback to Keystone XL, when the U.S. yet again delayed approval, this time until after America’s mid-term Congressional elections this fall, was hailed as a “huge victory” by one U.S. anti-pipeline group, reflecting the exuberance of its peers. But the victory was Pyrrhic.

At a Toronto conference last month, Russ Girling, CEO of TransCanada, allowed that he has learned lessons from TransCanada’s unrelentingly dismal experience with Keystone XL.

Alas, the lessons Girling has taken don’t include the fact that last September, almost two-thirds of the just-completed East Coast Pipeline (ECP) leg of Keystone was found to be structurally deficient. Girling once declared the ECP pipeline to be “the safest in the world.”

Nor do they include the Plan B prospect of greatly increased greenhouse gas emissions, estimated by the Calgary-based Pembina Institute at as much as 32 million tonnes per year. (Keystone XL would have added about 22 million tonnes.)

That’s the equivalent of another seven million cars, or about the number of cars currently on the road in Ontario. It also equals the anticipated 32-million-tonne reduction in carbon emissions from Ontario’s phase-out of coal power, the most significant Canadian initiative in addressing the climate-change crisis.

No, the lesson for Girling is that Canada is far more business-friendly than the U.S., at least in pipeline licenses. Keystone XL has been in limbo so long it’s coming to be known as the “zombie pipeline.” In Canada, by contrast, the Harper government is so zealously pro-pipeline it has worked hard to limit public participation in the pipeline-approval process.

TransCanada and its peers have also learned that they must get out ahead of environmentalists, as Girling has put it, and nail down approvals as hastily as possible.

That doesn’t suit Clare Demerse, federal policy director at the Pembina Institute. “The oilsands are already Canada’s fastest-growing source of carbon pollution and the Energy East pipeline would help accelerate production,” she says.

“Any regulatory review should include not only the impact of the pipeline itself, but also the impact of producing the crude that would flow through it.”

More than 40,000 Canadians have signed a petition against Girling’s Energy East. Enbridge and Kinder Morgan are confronting environmental opposition and tribal-claim disputes in their West Coast projects.

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) said a Keystone XL approval, should it occur, would be conditional on a DOT-approved third party rechecking TransCanada’s work — a rare show of distrust for a firm of TransCanada’s stature.

Enbridge has its own cause for humility, arising from the worst-ever oil spill on U.S. land, in Michigan, four years ago from an Enbridge heavy-oil pipe break. Enbridge’s multi-dimensional mishandling of the rupture invited comparison to Chernobyl, except that the stakes were lower.

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As it happens, though, the Alberta approval process is weak. And Ottawa has stopped reviewing many oilsands projects altogether. In reviewing Northern Gateway, the National Energy Board (NEB) stuck to pipeline-safety issues, ignoring climate-change implications. To be fair, the latter are not in the NEB’s mandate. But, like Pembina’s Demerse, you might wonder why they aren’t the mandate of someone in government.

Plan B is a worry for those who fear that hubris hasn’t abated at the venerable pipeline firms, stuck in their ways and with a tin ear for public concerns — a liability they share with the prime minister.

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