After a hiatus of about two weeks, construction on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is expected to resume today, but with a restricted workforce.

The return to work marks the beginning of a critical year for the federal government-owned pipeline. In 2021, the project plans to make significant progress on work to twin the existing 1,500 kilometre Alberta-to-British Columbia pipeline. Hiring and project spending are expected to increase as additional sections of the pipeline are built.

But 2021 could bring with it more headaches and setbacks for the pipeline’s Crown corporation and the project’s owners — Canadian taxpayers.

Trans Mountain ended 2020 on a relative high note. Construction accelerated as the worksite COVID-19 caseload remained relatively low, and the existing pipeline also remained full. Trans Mountain’s CEO Ian Anderson said that, coming off a bleak year for the industry — when a bottle of olive oil was worth more than a barrel of Canadian oil — the project’s performance was a surprise.

“I fully expected to lose some volume but we didn’t,” Anderson told CBC News in a year-end interview.

Anderson spoke to CBC before Trans Mountain Corporation took the surprising step last month of halting project construction temporarily. (Trans Mountain declined CBC’s requests for follow-up interviews.)

But the sudden shutdown was likely the last resort, said a former top energy industry executive in Calgary.

“Major construction projects never want to stop once they get going,” said Dennis McConaghy, a former executive vice president at TransCanada, now called TC Energy.

British Columbia’s Public Health Officer has ordered five major industrial projects in northern B.C., including the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, to reduce the size of their workforces in an attempt to ensure the northern health region does not become overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases.

The abrupt move to halt construction on Dec. 18 happened after a worker was seriously injured at a work site at Trans Mountain’s Burnaby Terminal in British Columbia. Few details have been released but, in announcing the shutdown, Anderson referred to safety incidents he called “unacceptable” and “inconsistent” with his corporation’s safety record.

Keep reading on CBC News