In late February, Trans Mountain filed responses to the second round of Intervenor questions or IR’s as part of the written portion of the NEB hearing for the proposed expansion project. To date, we have received more than 16,000 questions from Intervenors and the NEB in multiple rounds of questioning.

We are committed to a transparent and full process as defined by the NEB but it isn’t the only way we are having conversations about the pipeline and the project. Early in the process, the NEB identified a list of 12 issues that it would consider during the hearing, but that hasn’t stopped us from having productive and important conversations about issues not on that list including climate change, impacts both upstream and downstream and operation of the existing Trans Mountain Pipeline.

The City of Vancouver and the City of Burnaby recently expressed their dissatisfaction with some of the responses received from Trans Mountain in the last round of IR’s. Together, those two municipalities asked 1200 questions in this round – approximately 25% of all the questions from a possible 400 Intervenors - and filed Motions related to about half of their questions.

“The regulatory process is an important way to exchange information – but it shouldn’t be the only way, “ said Scott Stoness, Kinder Morgan Canada’s Vice President of Regulatory and Finance. “Both Vancouver and Burnaby have been vocal critics of the Project and have not accepted our offers to sit down with us for informal discussions – and we think it has resulted in the disproportionate number of IR’s and Motions from them. We are having productive discussions with other municipalities all up and down the pipeline that have resulted in community benefit agreements and provides the appropriate venue to talk about issues or concerns that may be outside of the scope of the NEB review.”

Though the written portion of the hearing is complete, there are still a number of steps in the regulatory process. Trans Mountain will continue our conversations both within the hearing process and through our public engagement, as we work to develop the Project in consideration of the input, questions and concerns gathered since the Project was announced in 2012.