Many hours of discussion to come before any of Kitimat’s pipelines are turned on.

The proponents of the Enbridge Gateway pipeline from Kitimat to the Athabaska tar sands of Alberta may wish to catch up on their reading.

A story in the latest on line edition of The Tyee, suggests that the approval process for the much touted pipeline is not quite a fait accompli.

From a lack of consultation with First Nations to troubles with foreign markets, not to mention the upcoming battles with environmentalists over the proposal of tanker traffic along the north coast, the net result thus far is that the entire project has already lost some of its competitive time frame advantage.

The Enbridge proposal is but one of three separate proposals to move Alberta’s black gold to a Pacific port at Kitimat, and all are going to run into basically the same problems before one metre of pipe is put into the ground.

One assumes that any similar projects suggested for the Prince Rupert area would also have to be cognizant of the same amount of concerns and obligations that the three Kitimat projects are currently discovering.

Key to any development is the ability to find the funding to make it work and some of the financial lenders are already suggesting that these projects may not ultimately provide their designers with a successful return on their investment and may be more ambitious than financially sensible.

It’s an interesting article that Tyee has put together, one which goes to show that no matter how many grand projects can be announced, unless the proper groundwork is laid, many of them end up as just grand dreams.