Pacific Link: What Canada’s New West Coast Pipeline Actually Is

A proposed one-million-barrel-per-day pipeline from Alberta to the B.C. coast has become one of Canada’s most consequential infrastructure projects. Here’s what we know so far.

On October 1, 2026, the federal government formally listed Pacific Link as a Project of National Interest under the Building Canada Act.

That matters.

It moves the proposed pipeline into an accelerated federal review process and gives a project that, until recently, was largely discussed as Alberta’s proposed West Coast oil pipeline a name, a framework and a much clearer path toward becoming real infrastructure.

Pacific Link is being developed with involvement from the Governments of Canada and Alberta, Trans Mountain Corporation and Pembina Pipeline Corporation. The proposed system would move more than one million barrels of crude oil per day from Alberta to Canada’s Pacific coast, creating substantially more access to customers in Asia and other international markets.

The proposed route would begin near Bruderheim, Alberta and travel west toward British Columbia, with much of the corridor expected to follow existing infrastructure, including portions of the Trans Mountain corridor. Two routing concepts — currently described as the Original Corridor and Optimized Corridor — remain under consideration.

The scale is substantial.

Alberta’s Major Projects database currently lists an estimated project cost of approximately $43.7 billion, with completion targeted around 2032. Government estimates say the project could help generate as many as 140,000 jobs, attract significant additional investment and add billions of dollars annually to the Canadian economy.

But perhaps the bigger story is market access.

Canada remains heavily dependent on the United States as a buyer of Canadian crude. Pacific Link is designed to change that equation by creating another major connection between Western Canadian production and tidewater.

A million additional barrels per day reaching the Pacific would give producers far greater access to Asian refiners and global pricing.

That makes Pacific Link much more than a pipeline construction project.

It potentially becomes a new piece of Canada’s long-term energy export infrastructure.

What happens next?

The Project of National Interest designation does not mean construction begins tomorrow.

Consultation, engineering, environmental work, route selection, permitting and commercial development remain ahead.

The current objective is to secure the permissions necessary for design and construction to potentially begin as early as September 1, 2027.

That creates an unusually important period between now and construction.

• Engineering firms will mobilize.
• Communities will prepare.
• Indigenous partnerships will continue to develop.
• Suppliers and contractors will begin positioning themselves.
• Governments will make decisions that could shape the project for decades.

And hundreds — eventually potentially thousands — of Canadian businesses will be asking the same question:

Where do we fit into Pacific Link?

That is the question ThePacificLink.ca intends to follow.

We will track the project, the companies, the communities, the contracts and the people building what could become one of the defining Canadian infrastructure projects of this generation.