Alberta

Rachel Carson is a voice from the past.

[Website editor: Note the interesting account of ENGO strategy re the Kinder Morgan pipeline detailed in this post to a US site.]

A confrontation is brewing on Canada’s west coast, and the stakes could not be higher.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau said Wednesday he is prepared to protect the Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion to the west coast against financial loss.

The Trudeau Liberals have been in discussions with Alberta as well as the proponent of Trans Mountain, Kinder Morgan, over an arrangement to use public money to back the pipeline.​ British Columbia NDP Premier John Horgan, however, has pledged to use all legal tools available to block its construction.

“It’s so rare for people outside the province of Alberta to see that there is opposition here,” said Emma Jackson, co-founder of Climate Justice Edmonton.

“Don’t bank on it.”

TD was one of six major Canadian financial institutions targeted by demonstrators, but was first in their crosshairs.

A primary lesson in political communications is that there is room in the public mind for only one big political news story at a time, and whoever drives that one big story wins twice: their story sets the headlines, and stories they don’t like are pushed to the margins.

Trans Mountain’s expansion was never commercially viable. It has needed unprecedented support from the get-go when in 2011 the National Energy Board (NEB) approved a $286-million special fee fought by Canadian oil producers. Chevron described it at the time as an “extraordinary precedent … If they (Kinder Morgan) need financing, then they should go to the market” and get it. 

May 9th 2018

A Kinder Morgan shareholder vote for an annual environmental sustainability report indicates investor concern about the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion proposal, says an Indigenous leader who addressed the company's annual shareholder meeting in Houston on Wednesday.

Chief Judy Wilson was among a group of Canadian Indigenous leaders who reaffirmed their opposition to the Trans Mountain proposal at the meeting where shareholders passed two of three non-binding proposals calling for improved environmental reporting.

Editor: Listen here for a summing up of the situation with gas prices in BC in relation to the Trans Mountain Expansion (Kinder Morgan pipeline):

http://www.cbc.ca/listen/shows/the-early-edition/episode/15541907

pipeline facts

At the 01:41:11 point