HOME PAGE SUBSCRIPTIONS, Print Editions, Newsletter PRODUCTS READ THE PETROLEUM NEWS ARCHIVE! ADVERTISING INFORMATION EVENTS PETROLEUM NEWS BAKKEN MINING NEWS

Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
January 2010

Vol. 15, No. 5 Week of January 31, 2010

Ready to block Gateway

Opposition mobilizes against oil sands export line, bolstered by court decision

Gary Park

For Petroleum News

The regulatory pieces are falling into place as fast as clouds are gathering over Enbridge’s plans for a Northern Gateway pipeline to carry oil sands production to a tanker port at Kitimat on the British Columbia coast.

Canada’s National Energy Board and Environment Minister Jim Prentice named the three members of a Joint Review Panel to conduct the environmental and regulatory review of the project, which could deliver 525,000 barrels per day of production to Asian markets and import 193,000 bpd of condensate to the Edmonton area on a parallel system.

The plan includes construction and operation of a marine terminal.

Terms of reference for the JRP process were released in December by the NEB and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.

The current proposal calls for Northern Gateway startup in 2015-16, following a three-year construction period.

Mounting opposition

However, as fast as the regulatory process takes shape, the project faces mounting opposition from environmental groups and First Nations, whose leaders said in a press release that the pipeline is “seen by critics as bad press for Enbridge and a potential legal quagmire for the company and the Canadian government.”

Enbridge’s Chief Financial Officer Richard Bird told an investors’ conference in Whistler, British Columbia, on Jan. 21 that a formal application is still expected to be filed later this year.

He said Northern Gateway will “provide an outlet for bitumen and synthetic crude to access both Asian and California markets and opens up a completely new market to Alberta producers and ensures they receive world pricing for their commodity.”

“The need for an alternative to Canada’s sole dependence on the U.S. market for crude oil is now greater than ever,” he said.

At the same time, environmental and aboriginal opposition is building and a Supreme Court of Canada decision on Jan. 21 is seen as raising the bar for federal agencies which determine the scope of environmental review for large industrial projects.

The court ruling was based on the Red Chris mining project in northern British Columbia, which is not expected to be suspended or halted by the court.

But Alan Harvie, an environmental lawyer with the Calgary firm of Macleod Dixon, said he expects the decision will cause delays for other projects, especially involving the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

That could lend support to various environmental groups and activists who are building their case against Northern Gateway.

Pembina Institute opposed

A new report by the Alberta-based Pembina Institute took a formal stand against the project Jan. 18, arguing that the pipeline hides environmental impacts associated with increasing oil sands production.

Simon Dyer, the oil sands program director for the think tank, said it’s the first time Pembina has estimated the “upstream impacts of filling the pipeline.”

The report calculated that production associated with Northern Gateway would produce 25 million barrels of toxic tailings, disturb about three square miles of forest, consume the same volume of natural gas as 1.3 million households do in a year and consume the same amount of water annually as a city of 250,000.

Pembina said there should be a moratorium on the transportation of oil sands production across British Columbia until a public inquiry can examine the impacts.

Dyer said it is “amazing that very significant projects like (Northern Gateway) are proceeding in a piecemeal fashion. Despite the negative attention the oil sands are receiving in the media there is still virtually no substantive policy debate on development.”

The Pembina report said the terms of reference for the JRP ignore the impacts and the increased greenhouse gas emissions, but an Enbridge spokesman said the Pembina report fails to direct any specific information at the pipeline.

He said Enbridge hopes to ease public concerns through an intensive dialogue and “meet a high test as to whether this project will be in the Canadian public interest.”

Other challenges

There has also been a flurry of other actions challenging the project, backed by public opinion polls that show considerable resistance to the use of coastal waters by tankers as well as resistance by aboriginal communities to allow access to lands that are subject to claims.

Aboriginal resistance to Northern Gateway is reflected in a new online presentation that shows the impact of the pipeline on more than 50 First nations and 1,000 streams and rivers.

“Our territory represents a large portion of the proposed pipeline route and there’s no way we are going to allow it,” said David Luggi, chief of the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council. “The only thing Enbridge investors can bank on with this project is strong opposition.”

Dolores Pollard, chief councilor of the Haisla Nation, whose territory embraces the Kitimat super tanker port, said her community will “not allow any project to proceed that infringes the constitutionally protected rights of our people. Sooner or later, that’s a lesson Enbridge and the federal government are going to learn, either in the court of public opinion or a court of law.”

David de Wit, natural resources manager for the Wet’suwet’en First Nation, has sent letters to potential Northern Gateway shippers warning them that the pipeline would be a direct infringement of First Nation rights, given that about 10 percent of the line would cross Wet’suwet’en land.

He said the Canadian government has failed to properly address aboriginal title and rights issues and, thus, commitments by oil sands producers would be a “direct infringement of our constitutionally protected rights.”

Eric Swanson, speaking for the British Columbia-based Dogwood Initiative, told the Calgary Herald that Gateway “looks like 525,000 barrels a day of trouble,” telling Enbridge it faces a tougher battle in British Columbia than it does in Alberta.

Two activist journalists, Andrew Nikiforuk and Ian MacAllister, told public meetings late last year in British Columbia that opponents are mobilizing against Gateway, taking issue with Enbridge claims that Gateway would create 4,000 construction jobs and “hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues over the life of the project.”






Petroleum News - Phone: 1-907 522-9469 - Fax: 1-907 522-9583
[email protected] --- http://www.petroleumnews.com ---
S U B S C R I B E

Copyright Petroleum Newspapers of Alaska, LLC (Petroleum News)(PNA)©2013 All rights reserved. The content of this article and web site may not be copied, replaced, distributed, published, displayed or transferred in any form or by any means except with the prior written permission of Petroleum Newspapers of Alaska, LLC (Petroleum News)(PNA). Copyright infringement is a violation of federal law subject to criminal and civil penalties.