The war is on.” With that declaration one of British Columbia’s aboriginal leaders moved in for the kill on the weakened Enbridge Northern Gateway project.
In issuing his call to arms, Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, said opponents of the pipeline system must now be prepared to “go out onto the land and onto the waters and physically stop any effort on the part of Enbridge to do preparatory work, site preparation and survey while this matter is in the courts.”
“Some of us are going to jail because that’s what it’s going to take,” he said.
Phillip said the Canadian government’s decision to open the door for certification of Northern Gateway while telling Enbridge it must engage in more consultations with aboriginal communities, issued an even more ominous warning.
He said Prime Minister Stephen Harper will “absolutely not be welcome into (British Columbia) in the future.”
“It means more protests and demonstrations and rallies wherever he speaks and wherever he visits,” Phillip told hundreds of protestors in downtown Vancouver, describing the upcoming battle to stop the pipeline and protect the environment as “the fight of a lifetime.”
Balance of approvals shifts
A news release signed by 31 First Nations and aboriginal groups said they “will immediately go to court to vigorously pursue all lawful means to stop the Enbridge project.”
So far three, along with two environmental groups, have launched cases in the Federal Court of Appeal and another seven appellants are expected to start actions.
With that Phillip and his compatriots have upended 60 years of regulatory approvals in Canada for energy pipelines - a process that was ruled by the economic and engineering aspects of a proposal, more recently expanded to include the social and environmental impacts.
The balance of power has tilted dramatically to passion, legal test cases and raw politics over the last 15 years, starting with a Supreme Court of Canada ruling that requires government and companies to consult with First Nations on resource development projects.
Three lines at brink
The aboriginal communities have indirectly aligned themselves with well-funded environmental and non-government organizations that have pushed three major pipelines to the brink of extinction - Northern Gateway, TransCanada’s Keystone XL and the Mackenzie Gas Project - all of which were gummed up in regulatory wrangling.
Northern Gateway has now been before regulators (including the Canadian government) for four years, which is longer than it took in the early 1950s to plan, build and activate the original Trans Mountain line from Edmonton to Vancouver, which is now facing a replay of the Northern Gateway ruckus as it applies to triple capacity to 890,000 bpd.
The understanding within the Harper administration of what lies ahead for Northern Gateway and its own political future was captured in how the government chose to endorse the findings of a Joint Review Panel, JRP, drawn from the National Energy Board and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.
Harper’s crusade to open world markets for Canada’s energy and his overhaul of regulatory legislation to give his cabinet an enhanced role in approving projects, now lies in tatters.
After taking six months to ponder the JRP’s recommendations, the government merely rubberstamped two years of regulatory work and signed off on the panel’s 209 conditions.
Enbridge must meet conditions
Harper said the government based its decision on the JRP’s findings and it’s now up to the “proponent” - he never mentions Enbridge by name these days - to meet those conditions.
“The government is acting on the advice of an independent, scientific panel that thoroughly reviewed these matters. The government has applied the conditions demanded by that panel,” he said under a barrage of questions in the House of Commons.
“The government has to base its findings on the facts and on the hearings as they transpired.”
Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford made only one minor observation in his prepared statement.
“The proponent clearly has more work to do in order to fulfill the public commitment it has made to engage with aboriginal groups and local communities along the (pipeline) route,” he said.
Neither Rickford, nor government Members of Parliament (notably the 21 from British Columbia whose jobs are now on the line in the October 2015 federal election), made an appearance to explain their position or answer questions.
Effectively, the government tossed the issue back in Enbridge’s lap, prompting many to suggest that Harper is trying to distance himself from Northern Gateway as the lead project to achieve his cherished goal of making Canada an energy superpower.
Low-key view from Enbridge CEO
Even Enbridge Chief Executive Officer Al Monaco, in a conference call, offered a low-key view of the odds for Northern Gateway.
Before a sanctioning decision can be made “we need to undertake a few more steps over the next 12 to 15 months, including satisfaction of the Joint Review Panel conditions.”
“As we move through that, we will be continually evaluating where we are on the project and, at some point, when we get satisfied one way or the other, we will make that call. That’s not today,” he said.
Without using the same language, Monaco’s phrasing sounded like an echo of corporate comments in the dying days of the Mackenzie Gas Project, the C$16 billion plan to ship natural gas from the Northwest Territories to southern Canadian and U.S. markets - a scheme that first got bogged down in a protracted regulatory process, then overtaken by the rapid emergence of shale gas.
Monaco would not assign a timeline or cost to Northern Gateway, other than conceding that the 2010 estimate of C$6.5 billion will be “significantly higher.”
Steven Paget, an analyst with FirstEnergy Capital, said Northern Gateway’s capital cost would add only 20 percent to Enbridge’s current lineup of projects and is not included in the company’s target of holding assets valued at C$80 billion by 2017.
Monaco echoed that lukewarm assessment by noting that Enbridge is not counting on Northern Gateway to sustain its growth beyond 2017.
Regulatory phases by late 2018
He said the company still hopes to complete the regulatory phases, including the approval of federal and provincial permits, by late 2018, but added “we are taking the project one step at a time.”
Enbridge holds 50 percent of the Northern Gateway limited partnership, with the rest belonging to 10 oil sands producers, including France’s Total, Suncor Energy, MEG Energy, Cenovus Energy, Nexen (a unit of China National Offshore Oil Co.), Sinopec and four others who have not been publicly identified.
Suncor Chief Executive Officer Steve Williams conceded there is “hard work ahead” for the project, while Cenovus said it was confident Enbridge would “work with landowners and aboriginal communities along the route to ensure this project meets the highest safety and environmental standards and supports working families and people in the area.”
Enbridge, which says it has been approached by 25 First Nations interested in securing pipeline-related business contracts, has repeatedly claimed that 15 of 18 Alberta First Nations and 11 of 22 in British Columbia - all of them with land on the right of way - are ready to take an equity stake in Northern Gateway. But neither Enbridge nor the First Nations have disclosed who they are.
From the sidelines, Canadian Natural Resources, which operates the Horizon oil sands project, is not a contracted shipper on Northern Gateway, although President Steve Laut views Northern Gateway, along with the Trans Mountain expansion, Keystone XL and Energy East as important to Canada’s economic well-being.
