Legault closes door on bitumen, open to West’s natural gas

François Legault thanked Alberta’s premier-elect Jason Kenney for his “elegant gesture” spoken in French during the United Conservative leader’s victory speech, but Québec’s premier will not revisit Energy East.

“I would like to congratulate Jason Kenney on a clear win,” added Legault, whose own right-leaning Action Democratique du Québec party had similar election success in October, beating incumbent-Liberals.

Last night in Calgary, following the UCP’s trouncing of New Democrats, Kenney appealed to Legault en français to assist Alberta to develop its natural resources.

Today, Legault suggested he would not revive Energy East, shelved by TransCanada in October 2017 after political resistance in Québec and elsewhere made it futile take the project through federal review and permitting stages.

But the Québec leader left the door open to developing natural gas resources to feed the province’s capital and coming export infrastructure; the $7.5 billion Énergie Saguenay Project.

“We also have a very important project, a gas pipeline that will start in Alberta and come to Québec City,” said Legault.  “We call it GNL, we’re talking about thousands of very well-paid jobs.”

Legault went on to say that “more than half (of provincial oil imports) is coming West, vai the Enbridge (Line 9) pipeline” and more oil pipelines for in Québec, “there’s no social acceptability for it.”

correction: an earlier version of this story suggested Legault was against pipelines, The Post Millennial regrets any confusion this may have caused