The uncertain trade relationship with the United States has changed the outlook for infrastructure projects like pipelines in Canada, the chief financial officer of TC Energy says.

In an interview with BNN Bloomberg on Friday, Sean O’Donnell said the climate for conversations about new pipelines is changing in Canada. TC was the lead for a project known as Energy East that would have pumped oil from Alberta all the way east across the country to export terminals in the Maritimes.

The company pulled the plug on the project back in 2017 but with U.S. President Donald Trump threatening tariffs on the oil that Canada ships south, the situation has changed. TC Energy CEO wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal this week saying that Canada would have a better negotiating position in trade talks right now if previously scrapped projects existed.

As O’Donnell put it, the company thinks “markets both commercial and political are increasingly amenable to those types of projects.”

“Whether you are running a country or a business, having multiple customers for your project clearly makes sense,” he said, adding that massive infrastructure projects such as pipelines take a lot of time and require support from government to make them happen.

“While we are hopeful we are also measured in terms of how quickly projects of that size and scale could come to market.”

Strong earnings

O’Donnell joined BNN Bloomberg on a day the company posted quarterly results, numbers which he said showed the company had a “tremendous year in 2024.”

The company posted record EBITDA and cash flow, something O’Donnell attributed to “a diversified business across Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.”

He trumpeted the recent completion of the Southeast Gateway Pipeline, a 700-kilometer-long natural gas pipeline on Mexico’s east coast that came in on time and 13 per cent below budget.

“TC is fundamentally building the backbone down the east coast of Mexico,” he said.