CALGARY — Few are as acquainted with Canada's graveyard of defunct oil pipelines as Alex Pourbaix, a former executive at the company behind the Keystone XL and Energy East proposals.

"You can see the scars on my back," he quipped at a news conference earlier this month, twisting his body at the lectern for emphasis.

Pourbaix was on hand as the Alberta government announced plans to propose a new West Coast bitumen pipeline to the freshly created federal Major Projects Office, which aims to speed along projects deemed in the national interest.

The former chief operating officer at TransCanada Corp. — now known as TC Energy — and CEO of oilsands giant Cenovus Energy Inc. is co-chairing a panel tasked with developing Alberta's pipeline application.

Industry players and the Alberta governme

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