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Canada: Rough time on home-front Trans Mountain, Energy East pipelines mauled; opponents call for halt to review of BC project, mayors spurn chance to end imports GARY PARK For Petroleum News
Another week, another round of pummeling for Canada’s oil pipeline projects.
On the first day of National Energy Board hearings, while protesters kicked up a fuss out on the street in Vancouver, the federal regulator was told it didn’t have the authority to adjudicate on Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain expansion.
That was accompanied by First Nations and environmentalists calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to stop the pipeline review process.
On the other side of the country, mayors of 82 municipalities representing 3.9 million people in the Metropolitan Montreal region declared their opposition to TransCanada’s Energy East project, arguing the environmental risks posed by the 1.1 million barrels per day project far outweighed the economic benefits.
Although the Trudeau government has expressed reluctance to force Kinder Morgan back to square one, opponents of the US$5.4 billion plan to increase Trans Mountain capacity to 890,000 bpd of oil sands bitumen from 390,000 bpd demanded an immediate halt to hearings.
“This is a fundamentally flawed process (in which) the voices of Canadian citizens are not being respected or heard,” said Carleen Thomas of North Vancouver’s Tsleil-Waututh Nation.
Karen Campbell, a lawyer with Ecojustice, said the hearing process was “incredibly broken” because it failed to consider the potential impact of the pipeline on climate change - an argument that played a leading part in President Barack Obama’s decision to reject Keystone XL.
Kai Nagata, with the environmental group Dogwood Initiative, said that if the Trudeau government fails to deliver on its campaign promise to introduce a “new, open regulatory process” for pipeline hearings it would be ironic to let the current phase “unfold while promising real change.”
Decommissioning demanded The City of Surrey, within the Metropolitan Vancouver region, wants the NEB to decommission and remove the existing portion of Trans Mountain that runs through its jurisdiction.
Surrey lawyer Anthony Capuccinello said the expansion would increase the cost of building and maintaining infrastructure, such as sewers and roads, in Metropolitan Vancouver by C$93 million over 50 years, with no hope of getting reimbursed.
Representatives from the Musqueam First Nation urged the NEB to delay a recommendation until the Canadian government has met its duty to consult with aboriginal communities and justify Trans Mountain’s infringement on their cultural fishing rights.
They warned that increased tanker traffic would affect a fish habitat and annual catches, while the Musqueam would receive no compensation for the loss of their economic opportunities.
New report A new report by the Raincoast Conservation Foundation said environmental assessments required by the Canadian and British Columbia governments for any projects that would increase tanker traffic in southwestern British Columbia waters are too narrow and fail to consider the impacts of marine traffic on the ecological health of the region.
Trans Mountain’s plan is expected to increase the number of tanker trips through the region by 70 percent to 400 a year, while a nearby LNG project by Woodfibre would add dozens more.
The report examined the possible impact of an oil spill on 4,500 miles of coastline that cater to tourism and recreation and involve flood protection, climate regulation and fish habitat worth tens of billions of dollars.
“A fuller, honest assessment would make most people wonder whether a hydrocarbon export economy makes sense for the region,” said lead author Misty MacDuffee.
Mayors object On Energy East, the Montreal-region mayors joined Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard in delivering the back of their hands to Alberta Premier Rachel Notley for her efforts to gain backing for the pipeline in return for promising to introduce some of Canada’s toughest climate change legislation that would cost the industry C$3 billion a year.
Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre, who has close ties to Trudeau, said the benefits of Energy East would be slim, with only negligible job creation, generating about C$2.1 million a year on revenue for the Montreal area, while a major oil spill cleanup could cost between C$1 billion and C$10 billion.
He said a majority of 140 groups that consulted with TransCanada last fall were opposed to the project.
A TransCanada spokesman said the company hoped to continue its meetings with elected officials and other stakeholders.
TransCanada has noted that Energy East could displace most of the 634,000 bpd of crude that Canada imports from countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Algeria and Angola to supply refineries in Quebec and New Brunswick.
The NEB has estimated that Canada spends about C$26 billion a year on those imports because it does not have the infrastructure in place to deliver crude from Western Canada to Quebec and the Maritime region.
Alberta Economic Development Minister Deron Bilous suggested Coderre was being “ungenerous and short-sighted,” failing to give credit to the initiative Alberta was undertaking to get its products to market.
Brian Jean, leader of the opposition Wildrose Party in Alberta, was even blunter, noting that Montreal is buying “millions of barrels of foreign oil from dictatorships, but is rejecting oil from their friends in (The Canadian confederation). It’s ridiculous.”
The angriest response came from Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall who suggested Quebec should return the C$10 billion it will receive in 2016-17 from Canada’s equalization program which transfers cash from wealthy to poorer provinces.
For years, until oil prices started their downward slide, by far the largest slice of that money came from Alberta’s oil-derived budget surpluses.
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