By the end of the 1970s Canada had roughly 17,000 kilometres of main-line oil pipelines. Most of the oil in 1978, 164,000 cubic metres per day is carried by the Interprovincial pipeline. Capitalized one-third by Imperial Oil and constructed in 1949-1950, it runs 2,000 kilometres from Edmonton to Superior, Wisconsin, and then via two American routes to Sarnia, and finally to Montreal for a total length of 9,500 kilometres. Running west from Edmonton to Vancouver is the Trans Mountain pipeline built by Pacific Petroleums and Bechtel Corporation in 1953. Extended in 1955 to Anacortes, Washington, it delivered 3,700 cubic metres of oil per day there and 22,000 cubic metres per day to Vancouver in 1978.
Of the 45,000 kilometres of gas trunk lines in Canada, the highly controversial TransCanada pipeline system is the major natural gas carrier. Completed to a length of 7,000 kilometres by October 1958, it was financed by private and public funding. Initially, it ran across the Prairies from Alberta, through the difficult Canadian Shield section of Northern Ontario to Toronto and Montreal. In the mid-1960s a second line was built from Emerson, Manitoba, to Sarnia by Great Lakes Gas Transmission, a wholly owned American subsidiary of TransCanada Pipelines Ltd. Together, these two lines carried 40 million cubic metres of gas eastward in 1978, 22 per cent of which flowed into the midwestern market of the United States. Partly in anticipation of offshore gas discoveries in Nova Scotia, this system is currently being extended from Montreal via Quebec to Halifax in a form which will allow for two-way transmission.
Westcoast Transmission Co., Ltd. the second major gas carrier, moves gas from the Fort St. John and Fort Nelson fields in northern British Columbia to Vancouver and the American market in the Pacific Northwest. In 1978, it delivered 12 million cubic metres of gas. Built by Pacific Petroleums and the McMahon brothers of Calgary in 1957, it was supplying 52,000 cubic metres per day to the American market in 1978.
Courtesy: National Film Board of Canada; and National Museum of Man, National Museums of Canada
