Pipeline criticism ‘half-baked’

Regulatory hearings on Kinder Morgan’s plans to triple capacity on its Trans Mountain crude pipeline system wrapped up to the sound of a final withering blast at opponents from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the industry’s leading mouthpiece.

In asking the National Energy Board to approve the C$5.4 billion plan to raise shipments of oil sands bitumen to 890,000 barrels per day from 300,000 bpd, a lawyer for CAPP said “denial of the project would be detrimental to Canada’s oil producers, to Alberta and to Canada.”

Nick Schultz urged the NEB to weigh the benefits of the pipeline to the economy and to disregard some of the evidence against the pipeline.

“You do have some half-baked, so-called evidence in the Gunton report” by Professor Thomas Gunton of Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University that claimed there is a 99 percent likelihood of an oil spill in British Columbia if the expansion proceeds, he said.

Schultz said the report misquotes CAPP data and forecasts and should not be viewed by the NEB as important evidence as it arrives at a recommendation.

The Gunton report also claimed Kinder Morgan’s application “contains major methodological weaknesses that do not provide an accurate assessment of the degree of risk associated” with the pipeline.

Schultz also said the NEB panel had been subjected to “unfair criticism” during the hearings by those who regarded the proceedings as broken, unfair and biased in favor of Kinder Morgan.

He said some of those comments amounted to “abusive behavior,” which he described as “shameful.”

Schultz said the NEB received “comprehensive and detailed evidence” on which to base its recommendation.

- GARY PARK