ChatGPT created photorealistic aerial image of the TMX pipeline construction cutting through rugged terrain, capturing the scale and engineering complexity that contributed to the project’s cost overruns

From Promise to Perpetual Subsidy

How Megaprojects in Canada and the Netherlands Turned Cost Overruns into Taxpayer Burdens

Infrastructure megaprojects have an irresistible allure, and the Netherlands and Canada are illustrative of this. Governments, engineers, and industrial backers alike see in them the potential for transformative leaps forward — massive pipelines to move energy, corridors connecting resources to markets, and infrastructure that promises to underpin entire industries or energy transitions.

Yet, time and again, these ambitions collide spectacularly with stubborn realities: escalating costs, delays, and a seemingly inevitable drift toward heavy, persistent subsidies. The Canadian Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) pipeline is perhaps the most telling recent case, now joined by the emerging story of the Dutch national hydrogen pipeline network, each offering valuable lessons in financial and planning pitfalls.

In Canada, the TMX pipeline expansion was originally portrayed as a straightforward project — lay a new pipe parallel to an existing route to triple oil transport capacity from around 300,000 to 890,000 barrels per day. The initial estimates in the early 2010s hovered around C$7 billion, a seemingly reasonable price to unlock Alberta’s heavy crude, delivering it efficiently to coastal…