Alberta’s Gas Was Cheap. A Leaked Plan For AI Could Change That
A leaked Alberta cabinet report on AI data centres proposes provincial control of natural gas pipelines and estimates gas prices could nearly double. Here’s what the plan says about TC Energy, and what it could mean for Edmonton power bills.
For most of the last few years, the problem with Alberta natural gas was that there was too much of it. Prices sank so low at points that producers were close to paying people to take it off their hands. A good part of the province’s pitch to the AI industry was built on that surplus: come to Alberta, the cold is free and the gas is cheap.
A leaked cabinet report suggests the government sees that cheap gas a little differently. The Narwhal obtained it earlier this month and has since published it in full. One estimate inside points to a government aim of nearly doubling natural gas prices to support and expand production, which could raise the cost of generating electricity by about 25%. The document stops short of saying what that would do to anyone’s power bill.
You can read the document here. It takes about half an hour, and a surprising amount of it is plain language.
What’s in Alberta’s leaked gas plan
The core recommendation stacks two moves on top of each other. First, bring every natural gas pipeline in Alberta under provincial jurisdiction. Then pass legislation letting the government create a pair of Crown corporations. One would oversee the system and push companies into investments the province wants. The other could build, run or finance new pipelines and compete with the private operators directly. Just setting up the Crown corporations was costed at between $53.9 million and $162.6 million, before anyone buys a single length of pipe.
Data centres drive most of this, though the document also points to oilsands demand. The province had already capped how much new load can connect to the electricity grid and told data centre builders to generate their own power. The draft rules say that power has to come from natural gas, at least for now. So every hyperscale project Alberta brings in is also a new gas customer somewhere on the map, and the gas has to get to it.
TC Energy and the NGTL system
That’s where TC Energy comes in. Its NGTL system has been running since 1957 and now stretches more than 24,000 kilometres across Alberta and into northeastern B.C., moving roughly 15 billion cubic feet a day. Most of the gas in this province passes through it at some point.
The cabinet report says TC’s expansion plans don’t line up with where demand is heading. It calls the company’s dominant position a “market failure” that has left key growth regions unable to get gas. By The Hub’s reading, the document also says years of talks with TC had produced nothing workable. TC points to about $15 billion spent expanding the network over the past decade and another $1 billion in projects planned.
Picture an engineer in Grande Prairie working on a gas-fired plant for an industrial customer. The fuel is practically under his boots, and he’s told the nearest line won’t have room until some year he can’t build a schedule around. That’s the frustration the document is trying to solve.
Whether a Crown corporation solves it is another matter. The report itself concedes that a provincial planner would be limited to pipelines inside Alberta and probably couldn’t do much about NGTL’s buildout. Data centres coming online before 2028 would likely still depend on the existing system.
Premier Danielle Smith’s answer on her radio show, asked about the province building pipelines, was “short answer, no,” and she called a Crown corporation unlikely. She did say TC holds a monopoly, and she didn’t rule out forcing private companies to build lines the government decides are in the province’s interest. Energy Minister Brian Jean’s office said internal materials aren’t government decisions.
What it could mean for Edmonton power bills
Take a family in Mill Woods, two kids and a furnace that runs from October into April, opening their bills in January. They aren’t thinking about NGTL or jurisdiction. If gas prices climb, they pay for it twice: once for the furnace, and again wherever gas sets the price of the electricity coming into the house.
Smith’s argument is that constrained supply is what drives prices up, so moving more gas keeps them down. It’s a reasonable point on its face. It just sits awkwardly next to a government document that estimates the opposite. Separately, the Pembina Institute figures the Meta data centre near Edmonton alone could add $270 to $460 a year to electricity bills.
Not everyone skeptical of the plan is on the left. Sonya Savage, energy minister under Jason Kenney, told the Calgary Herald that government intervention in energy markets makes her nervous given its track record. She added that she isn’t against the province studying options if private companies won’t invest in projects with real public benefit.
Olds has already been through a version of this argument. A gas-powered data centre planned for the town would have drawn about as much electricity as the whole city of Edmonton. Residents pushed back, and the Alberta Utilities Commission eventually rejected it.
What happens after cabinet
According to the document, the plan went to a cabinet committee on September 10th and to full cabinet on September 22nd. Legislation was to be drafted by October 15th and regulations by December 4th. As of this writing there’s been no public word on what cabinet decided.
Alberta’s gas has been cheap for so long that most people here stopped thinking about it. In Mill Woods the furnace kicks on sometime in October either way.
Sources
The Narwhal, “Here’s the full leaked document causing a stir in Alberta,” Drew Anderson, September 17, 2026
https://thenarwhal.ca/alberta-leaked-document-natural-gas-explainer/
Alberta cabinet report (leaked), via The Narwhal / DocumentCloud
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28651967-cr-2-s/
The Hub, “Inside Alberta’s bombshell plan to take greater control of its natural gas future,” September 11, 2026
https://thehub.ca/2026/09/11/inside-albertas-bombshell-plan-to-take-greater-control-of-its-natural-gas-future/
The Hub, “Alberta’s AI data centre boom could run into natural gas bottleneck,” September 11, 2026
https://thehub.ca/2026/09/11/albertas-ai-data-centre-boom-could-run-into-natural-gas-bottleneck/
The Hub, “Danielle Smith says no to Crown pipelines—but Alberta’s wrangling of TC Energy over AI data centre growth is just the beginning,” September 14, 2026
https://thehub.ca/2026/09/14/danielle-smith-says-no-to-crown-pipelines-but-albertas-wrangling-of-tc-energy-over-ai-data-centre-growth-is-just-the-beginning/
CBC News, “Premier Smith says Crown corporation for natural gas unlikely in Alberta after report leaked”
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-natural-gas-crown-corporation-smith-9.7341890
Global News, “TC Energy urges co-operation on growing natural gas network to meet ‘generational’ demand”
https://globalnews.ca/news/12058615/tc-energy-alberta-natural-gas-network-demand/
The Globe and Mail, “TC Energy willing to grow network, calls for co-operation to meet ‘generational’ gas demand”
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-tc-energy-network-expansion-alberta/
Pembina Institute, “Footing the bill”
https://www.pembina.org/pub/footing-bill
Calgary Herald, Chris Varcoe column on Alberta gas system constraints
https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/varcoe-should-alberta-fix-gas-system-constraints-past-energy-interventions
