DALLAS, Tex. — While Canada’s Energy Minister is assuring anyone who will listen that two pipelines will be running through Alberta before long, Premier Ralph Klein isn’t so sure.

“Maybe I wasn’t at the same meeting,” Klein told local media yesterday, following meetings in Dallas with U.S. oil executives. “I would have liked to have heard they were ready to go ahead with one of both of those pipelines.

Klein says there is no momentum to build these pipelines right now, and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have shuffled the project to the back burner.

The holdup could cost Alberta as much as $6 billion, he points out.

The proposed pipelines would ship gas to market from Alaska’s North Slope and possible the Mackenzie Delta. Klein hopes they get the green light before long.

“Certainly they’re saying when the time is right, both lines can come on stream,” says Klein. “But what I heard today is that the economics today are not there to start construction.”