Continued delays of the beleaguered Keystone XL Pipeline (KXL)—long the bane of a Democratic administration beset by environmental concerns and special interest group enmity—has raised the cost of the project a whopping 85%, according to some estimates.

With an initial price tag of $5.4 billion, TransCanada Corp. CEO Russ Girling has said in recent interviews the expense could reach the $10 billion mark by the time it’s approved. If it’s approved, that is.

But not all estimates pointed to the double-digit billion dollar figure. David McColl, an equity analyst at Morningstar Inc. who specializes in Canadian oil and gas companies, said his firm estimates the cost closer to roughly $7.7 billion to $8 billion. But that’s if the project was approved by the end of this year or early next year—essentially, after the mid-term elections.

Still, even $10 billion wouldn’t be too surprising, McColl said.

“The $5.4 billion number is now over six years old, and we’ve seen 10% to 20% cost inflation through various parts of the midstream business per year, so it is not necessarily too big of a shock for us,” he told Midstream Business. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t a little bit of caution thrown in there in the sense of, ‘if we keep delaying the project, then the cost of the project will continue to escalate higher’.”

Most of that cost increase, close to 75%, is born by shippers, with the remainder put on TransCanada, he said, which could impact the Calgary, Alberta-based company’s returns on the pipeline.

“But when we put all these things together, we say, ‘Yes, it’s unfortunate the pipeline wasn’t operating, and as a result, we have this cost inflation.’ But it’s still a far cheaper alternative than running something by rail, which means the pipeline is still economic. It’s still going to be in demand.”

With all the rhetoric that’s been said and the assessments that’ve been done, there has been ample time and opportunities for the Obama administration to have scuttled the project, McColl said.

“They obviously haven’t done that, which, as bizarre as it sounds, is a positive signal. They’ve approved diluent pipelines up into Alberta, which support the oil sands development. So what I’m getting at here is, I think at the end of the day, it’s likely to be approved, it’s just a case of whether it will be done after the mid-term elections,” McColl said.

Still, if the pipeline had been approved earlier on, it would’ve been in operation without the labor inflation of recent years. It also would’ve come online at a time when exchange rates were roughly at parity between Canadian and U.S. dollars, so without a doubt, the delays can effectively be seen through the cost inflation, McColl said.

However, if the Keystone XL project was only borderline-needed, the delays likely would’ve knocked it out of contention, he said, adding, “But the reality is, we’re going to be sending more and more crude by rail out of Canada into the United States, and the market is going to look for the most economic solution.”

Currently, the cost of crude-by-rail has a multiple of two to three-times that of crude by pipeline, McColl said. If the KXL is ultimately denied, he explained, the $2 billion that’s already been spent on pipes will be physically shipped up to Canada. That’ll support another pipeline in Canada to move crude east where internationally-flagged ships may deliver to the U.S. Gulf Coast, effectively bypassing the U.S. infrastructure.

“That’s where these dynamics are starting to come into play with what could happen, but even with that, though, we still need KXL,” McColl said.

TransCanada is seeking to build the 830,000 barrel-a-day pipeline through the U.S. heartland, connecting oil sands in Alberta with refineries along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana. The 1,179-mile pipeline would run from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, Nebraska. From there it would connect to an existing network.