NOVA Gas Transmission Ltd.

Finally, as the Hub reported, in a Cabinet report leaked in September 2026, the Ministry of Energy and Minerals prepared a report outlining measures to address constraints in the province's natural gas pipeline infrastructure.

At its core, is the problem of more demand than capacity for the Nova Gas Transmission Line, or NGTL, the backbone of Alberta's natural gas transportation system, which is owned and operated by TC Energy.

The province had determined that insufficient natural gas infrastructure, lack of competition in the regulated market, and a recent switch to federal regulatory oversight are constraining its ability to meet growing domestic and international demand and are keeping natural gas prices and thus royalties artificially low.

It is true that producers and TC Energy have been at loggerheads on NGTL capacity, and it is in Alberta's interest to ensure the issues get resolved.

What exploded heads was the ministry's recommended option? To create a crown corporation to plan and develop natural gas infrastructure.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith immediately and publicly rebuffed the idea, saying, But the fact it was seriously proposed, in concert with the other tools being developed, has provoked concerns about just how far Alberta intends to expand its role with regard to development of the province's oil and gas resources, security, market failure, and overreach.

And I think the capital allocated to both SAGD and potential of mine expansions in the next five years ahead will help them basically backstop these egress commitments they're making on their own oil takeaway side.

What remains to be seen is exactly how the oil sands is able to consume this new gas, the NGTL system.

after being expanded by tc in the last decade successfully um through and finished in the call the 2020 2019 2020 season uh has started to congest again a bit and the congestion this time is different uh the first air period of ingestion congestion was all upstream james river or call it the left hand side of your ngtl pool and the congestion now is moved slightly downstream and it's also a feature in the osda region which is the oil sands uh basically consumption arm the pipe that goes up into the oil sands region and so if they want to consume this additional billion cubic feet a day of gas they will need an ngtl expansion to access that molecule or potentially a linear pipe that's built from you know the wcsb by another player right into the region.

And so that's been of active debate.

One of our peers is building one plant on the Alberta side of the border.

Very, very few facilities are currently announced for construction in B.C., and in Alberta beside our own two and the other one that our peer is building at Sinclair.

And without facilities, you don't have supply growth and without NGTL expansion, you don't have supply growth.

And so without service or processing, we would say with meaningfully high confidence that we don't see a big surge of supply to answer this demand as of yet.