Work was suspended Friday until Jan. 4, 2021 on the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project as a result of construction contractor accidents.

Pipeline president Ian Anderson said, “Trans Mountain is proactively taking the step to temporarily stand down construction to review, reset and refocus our efforts, and those of our contractors and their workers.”

The work suspension follows accidents at both ends of the 1,150-kilometer (690-mile) oil conduit across Alberta and British Columbia: an October fatality near the Edmonton inlet and a serious injury this week at the outlet in the Burnaby suburb of Vancouver.

Construction is about 20% complete on the project that would nearly triple the pipeline’s capacity to 890,000 b/d as an export route for Canada’s top natural...