Regulatory Chess: How Energy Proponents Should Approach Regulatory Approvals

This article is adapted from a luncheon address given by the author during the Canadian Energy Summit, held at the Toronto Region Board of Trade on September 25, 2013.

The past year has provided all of us with regular information on the challenges facing Northern Gateway, Keystone and many other energy pipelines and projects that need regulatory approval.  It is therefore timely to ask whether energy proponents start these approval processes with a regulatory strategy or something less.

What do I mean by a regulatory strategy? I will start with what it is not: it is not merely a descriptive activity. It's not the identification of all of the approvals required by a project to begin operations. That list of approvals is an essential building block to developing a regulatory strategy, but it's no substitute for one. A similar building block is knowing the procedures and standards demanded by a regulator to obtain a specific approval, but this is also a descriptive