Pipeline construction near Banff
Courtesy of the Glenbow Collection
Courtesy of the Petro-Line Construction Group
Building oil and gas pipelines that connected Alberta to eastern Canada and to the United States proved to be as important to the province’s economic viability as the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway. While finding oil and gas in Alberta proved to be easy, getting it to tangible markets was more difficult. Pipelines, the "mega-projects" of the 1950s, were the solution. While the Inter-Provincial Pipe Line connected Alberta to Ontario via the United States, the Trans-Mountain Pipe Line provided oil companies with access to the British Columbia market. Two natural gas pipelines, the TransCanada and the Transcoast, similarly connected Alberta to central Canada.
