It’s a 12,000 kilometre route for Irving Oil to get its product from western Canada to the east coast, via the Panama Canal.

The Saskatchewan Party highlights this situation in an online petition to urge the federal government to get a pipeline built.

Minister of Energy and Resources Bronwyn Eyre says the Energy East Pipeline was supposed to be a 4,500 kilometre pipeline that would transport more than a million barrels a day from Alberta and Saskatchewan to New Brunswick.

The former TransCanada Pipelines, now TC Energy, backed out of the project in 2017, citing in a letter to the National Energy Board regulatory delays, the associated costs, and increasingly challenging obstacles.

Eyre hopes there will be a different ending for the TMX pipeline which is now taxpayer-owned.

She says this is about preserving a major driver of our provincial economy, and about preserving livelihoods.

Eyre estimates about 34,000 jobs in Saskatchewan depend on the oil and gas sector.

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