One of the most important reports submitted to the National Energy Board’s review of Kinder Morgan’s proposed Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion has been denied, according to a biologist with one of the hearing’s intervenors.
Last weekend, Canada signed onto a global climate agreement that ushered in a new chapter for this global movement. We are at a potential turning point away from fossil fuels -- but only if Canada keeps its promises, increases ambition, and comes up with a plan to keep fossil fuels, starting with the tar sands, in the ground.
When it comes to the proposed Trans Mountain expansion in British Columbia, ''confidence is actually growing,'' Kinder Morgan CEO Steve Kean told investors on a conference call Dec. 8.
"We also had, of course, a government changeover up there, and we're in communication with the new government to understand what, if any, additional process will be required,'' Kean said from a boardroom in Houston. ''But we're hopeful that that can be managed within the existing timeframe that we're working with.''
After a years-long, hard-fought campaign against Line 9, which employed a diversity of tactics, from lobbying to legal battles to direct action, Line 9 transported crude to a refinery in Montreal on December 3, 2015.
On December 7, we shut it down. Literally. Most media reported that Enbridge shut down Line 9 as a “precautionary measure”, but we know better. We closed the valve manually. This is historic: to our
knowledge, this is the first time that activists have manually shut down a pipeline. Who would have thought that it be so simple?
It was quite a sight: The CEOs of Alberta’s oilsands projects stood with NDP Premier Rachel Notley to announce Alberta’s climate plan before the climate talks in Paris. The CEOs had the widest smiles.
No wonder. Alberta’s climate plan targets the 28 per cent of Alberta’s greenhouse gases from power generation and transportation (driving), and leaves the 46 per cent of the province’s emissions from the production of oil and gas almost scot-free.
A hard cap on oilsands emissions that became part of Alberta Premier Rachel Notley’s climate change plan was the product of secret negotiations between four top oilsands companies and four environmental organizations, the Financial Post has learned.
The companies agreed to the cap in exchange for the environmental groups backing down on opposition to oil export pipelines, but the deal left other players on the sidelines, and that has created a deep division in Canada’s oil and gas sector.
Along the proposed route of the Northern Gateway pipeline, nothing is moving.
There is no clearing, mowing, grading, trenching, drilling, boring or blasting. Industry analysts have almost stopped asking questions because interested parties – contractors, engineering firms and others – have moved on to more realistic prospects. Meanwhile, the estimated cost of the project has climbed to $7.9-billion, while not one of the 209 conditions attached to its environmental certificate has been checked off as complete.
On November 10, newly-elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met in Ottawa with the leadership council of the Canadian Labour Congress, the federation of trade unions in English-speaking Canada. Amazingly, this was the first meeting of a Canadian prime minister with a national labour body since 1958. The event was very cordial, according to a report published in the Globe and Mail. The CLC group numbered some 120 delegates.
("This is the politics of the 21st century: nudging over regulation, corporate power over public power.")
Anytime the oil barons and baronesses are smiling for the cameras with NGOs and politicians, we should at least be interested, if not outright worried. Was the release of Alberta’s newclimate change strategy just an occasion for the oil execs to ham it up for the cameras pretending all is well or do they have truly something to be smiling about?
