A pipeline expert says it’s inevitable that the Trans Mountain Pipeline will get more costly for taxpayers.

Every year of delay for the pipeline’s expansion will devalue the pipeline by $700 million dollars, according to a Parliamentary Budget Office report.

“It just means get off your duff and build the pipeline. It comes back though very simply to what I suggested before; the federal government should’ve taken the Federal Court of Canada’s position, challenged it in Supreme Court, and in the meantime get on with the process of building. Now we have a bigger problem,” Gasbuddy.com senior analyst Dan McTeague says.

That “bigger problem,” McTeague says, is Ottawa still needing to do a secondary set of consultations.

“That’s going to take another two, three, four months, five months, just to satisfy what is rigorous consultation. (The National Energy Board has) done its work, but now it’s up to the federal government to do its work as well.

“This thing isn’t going to happen in time, and so I guess the value, according to the PBO, the value will drop if it isn’t (finished) by December 1st of 2021. So I don’t think you can build this thing in two years. So it looks like a bit of a loss. Again, dithering has a cost.”

The PBO report also says the feds may have overpaid by nearly $1 billion when it bought the pipeline last summer, noting the pipeline’s value was between $3.6 and $4.6 billion when the feds purchased it for $4.4. billion.