The Pipeline That Trump Can’t Stop: Canada’s $4 Billion Bet on Asia
Canada has officially approved its first major pipeline project under Prime Minister Mark Carney, and the decision could reshape the country’s energy future. The $4 billion Sunrise natural gas pipeline expansion by Enbridge was approved after four years of reviews and consultations. Construction begins this summer, with gas expected to flow by late 2028.
The timing is not accidental. Global LNG markets have tightened after conflict in the Middle East disrupted energy supplies, and Asian countries are urgently searching for reliable alternatives. Canada now has a chance to become a major long-term energy supplier — and the United States cannot do a thing about it.
The Sunrise project will expand British Columbia’s existing West Coast pipeline system by adding nearly 140 kilometers of new pipeline and increasing natural gas capacity by 300 million cubic feet per day. Much of that gas is expected to supply LNG export terminals in Kitimat, sending energy to major Asian markets like Japan, South Korea, and Malaysia.
For years, such a project would have been politically impossible. Canada’s energy sector suffered from a reputation for world-class resources and third-class execution. Northern Gateway was killed. Energy East was abandoned. Even the Trans Mountain expansion, which eventually survived, cost three times its original estimate and arrived years late.
Sunrise broke the pattern. What made this approval different is Indigenous ownership. Thirty-eight First Nations already hold a 12.5 percent ownership stake in the pipeline system, creating a partnership model that helped break years of political deadlock around Canadian energy projects.
“This is not your father’s pipeline fight,” said a senior Carney administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy. “We stopped asking whether to build. We asked who benefits. When First Nations are owners, not just consultants, the politics change overnight.”
The math is straightforward. Asia currently imports more than 80 percent of its LNG from Australia, Qatar, Malaysia, and the United States. Canadian LNG represents less than 3 percent of the regional market — a share so small it barely registers. Sunrise is designed to change that by adding reliable, regulated, politically stable supply to a region that has learned the hard way not to trust single sources.
What makes the project geopolitically explosive is not its size. It is the message it sends to Washington. For decades, the United States has treated Canadian energy as a captive resource — guaranteed to flow south regardless of trade disputes, tariff threats, or diplomatic spats. Sunrise represents the first major pipeline built specifically to avoid the United States entirely.
“The Americans never thought Canada would actually do it,” said Dr. Michael Tanaka, a trade economist at the University of Toronto. “They assumed every pipeline would eventually turn south, like gravity. Sunrise goes west. That is a strategic pivot, not an engineering decision.”
The Carney government says this approval represents a new approach: faster decisions, economic growth, and energy sovereignty. Critics argue the project still takes too long and raises climate concerns, but supporters see it as proof that Canada can finally build major infrastructure again.
The climate critique is not trivial. Sunrise will transport natural gas — a fossil fuel, even if cleaner than coal. Environmental groups have already announced plans to challenge the approval in court, arguing that the project’s carbon emissions were underestimated and that Canada’s legally binding climate commitments require a faster transition away from all fossil fuels.
“You cannot claim to lead on climate while expanding fossil fuel infrastructure,” said Margaret Chen, executive director of the Pacific Climate Law Project. “Sunrise locks in decades of emissions at exactly the moment science says we need to phase out.”
The Carney government has a ready answer. First, natural gas remains a transition fuel that displaces coal in Asian power grids — displacing roughly 50 percent of the carbon per megawatt-hour. Second, Canada’s upstream emissions regulations are among the strictest in the world, meaning Canadian LNG is objectively cleaner than Qatari, Russian, or even Australian supply. Third, and most pragmatically, global emissions will not fall if Western producers voluntarily cede markets to dirtier competitors.
“Climate policy that ignores geopolitics is not policy. It’s theater,” the senior administration official said. “If we don’t sell gas to Japan, someone else will. And that someone else has weaker environmental rules, fewer labor protections, and zero interest in net-zero targets.”
The Indigenous ownership model may prove to be the project’s most enduring legacy. Under the agreement, the 38 First Nations collectively hold equity, receive quarterly dividend payments, and have seats on the pipeline’s community advisory board. For communities that have spent generations fighting resource extraction, ownership changes the calculus from resistance to revenue.
Chief Rachel Mallett of the Wet’suet’en Nation, whose territory includes part of the pipeline route, described the shift in stark terms. “We fought pipelines because they took and gave nothing back,” she said in a statement. “This one, we own. That changes everything.”
Not every First Nation along the route agrees. Several have refused to sign on, citing concerns about environmental impacts on salmon-bearing watersheds and unresolved land claims. But the majority support — and the financial terms — have created a template that other resource projects are already studying.
The pipeline’s impact on Canada-U.S. trade relations is already being felt. In a closed-door meeting last month, a senior U.S. trade official reportedly asked whether Sunrise meant Canada was “turning its back” on the American market. The Canadian response, according to a person in the room, was polite but pointed: “We’re diversifying. That’s what sovereign countries do.”
More importantly, projects like Sunrise reduce Canada’s dependence on the United States by expanding exports to Asia. That gives Canada more leverage in upcoming trade negotiations and strengthens its position in the global energy market. If the United States imposes tariffs on Canadian energy, Canada can now redirect those molecules to Pacific buyers at competitive prices.
“For the first time in half a century, Canada has a real alternative to the United States as an energy customer,” said the trade economist Tanaka. “That means when Trump — or any future president — threatens tariffs, Canada can say: ‘Go ahead. We have other buyers.’ That is leverage. Pure and simple.”
The Trump campaign has already taken notice. In a post on Truth Social last week, the former president wrote: “Canada is building a pipeline to Asia while ripping off the USA on dairy and lumber. Weak leadership. We will tariff their energy until they come back to the table.” The post was shared more than 200,000 times in six hours.
What Trump cannot do, however, is stop Sunrise. The pipeline crosses no U.S. territory. It requires no U.S. permits. It carries no U.S. molecules. It is, from start to finish, a Canadian project built for non-American customers — an engineering fact with profound political consequences.
Construction begins this summer in the rugged terrain of northern British Columbia. More than 2,000 workers will clear right-of-way, weld pipe, and install compression stations in one of the wettest, most mountainous pipeline corridors on the continent. If the schedule holds, first gas will flow into export terminals by late 2028 — just in time for the next U.S. presidential election cycle.
The world will be watching for different reasons. Asian buyers are watching for reliability. Environmentalists are watching for leaks. Indigenous communities are watching for dividends. But in Washington, they will be watching for something else entirely: the moment Canada stops being an energy colony and starts being an energy competitor.
That moment is now less than three years away. And there is nothing the United States can do to stop it.