The Financial Post reports in its Thursday, April 17, edition that the National Energy Board says the cost of moving oil and natural gas on Canadian-regulated pipelines has advanced 60 per cent in five years. The Post's Jeff Lewis writes that tolls on the Enbridge system, which carries the bulk of Canadian crude into the United States, doubled over the period. Most of that increase can be attributed to system expansions by Enbridge since 2008, including construction of its Alberta Clipper line to Chicago. New pipelines are expensive, and tolls tend to decline over time as assets depreciate. But the overall escalation comes with regulators increasingly flexing their muscles, attaching new environmental, financial and technical conditions to pipeline approvals in response to public calls for greater scrutiny. The stepped-up regulation threatens to exacerbate cost inflation at a time major energy companies are desperate to see new pipelines built. The result could be even higher shipping fees on newer pipelines, from Enbridge's $7.9-billion Northern Gateway to TransCanada's $12-billion Energy East pipeline to Canada's Atlantic shore. One observer says, "What you see on Northern Gateway is unprecedented."