"Thomas Gunton is the director of the Resource and Environmental Planning program at Simon Fraser University"

This tells me that the writer of the story had an agenda other than a reasonable analysis of future pipeline needs in Canada.  A perfect example of this is his insistence to include rail capacity in his calculations.  NO oil producer would use rail if pipelines were available.  Simple economics would dictate this. 

Would the fact that Kinder Morgan wants to bore through Burnaby Mountain (Simon Fraser sits atop Burnaby Mountain) to access their tank farm and marine terminal have anything to do with his conclusion?

"The good news is that the more controversial projects with the highest environmental impacts due to reliance on tanker traffic such as Trans Mountain may never be needed. The bad news is the federal government may have missed this opportunity by prematurely approving Trans Mountain before completing a comparative assessment."

I think there is a hidden agenda here.