Oil - Pipelines

Katzie Nation Chief Susan Miller and her sister Debbie Miller of Katzie First Nation say they stand to lose everything if the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is approved.

Chief Miller said the continued expansion of pipeline projects and shrinking of Indigenous territories represents the ongoing assault on First Nations culture that started with the residential school system.

[Remember rally at the NEB on Saturday, Jan. 23 at 1 pm - see "Events"]

Carrying signs and a marching tune, dozens of people turned up to the Trans Mountain National Energy Board hearings in Burnaby to voice their opposition to the Kinder Morgan project. 

The rally was planned days before the hearings and was intended to send a message to the NEB, which was holding final arguments for intervenors inside the Delta Burnaby Hotel and Conference Centre Tuesday.

BURNABY, B.C. — First Nations and environmentalists had one question for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the start of National Energy Board hearings on the controversial Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

"You said no. Where are you?" asked Audrey Siegl of the Musqueam Indian Band, to a cheer from a crowd of protesters gathered outside a Burnaby, B.C., hotel on Tuesday.

"Stand with us if you're going to stand with us. We need more than just words."

OTTAWA — Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr acknowledges there's considerable urgency to building new Canadian pipeline capacity to tidewater, even as new roadblocks continue to appear.

A B.C. Supreme Court ruling this week and discouraging signals from B.C.'s provincial government have further undermined the prospects of two proposed oil pipelines to the Pacific coast, just as Carr is taking part in intense briefings on his new portfolio in Justin Trudeau's Liberal government.

Friends,

Tomorrow, the next round of National Energy Board hearings for the Trans-Mountain Kinder Morgan pipeline are set to start. With them, Prime Minister Trudeau and this government will be breaking their first big climate promise.

The new government campaigned against the broken NEB reviews of tar sands pipelines. But now, under pressure from big oil, they’re letting both the Kinder Morgan and Energy East reviews proceed -- with no consideration of climate change, without listening to communities, and without respecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Activists have issued a news release claiming that they've seized a drilling barge near Westridge Marine Terminal. Around noon, it was boarded by two activists.

British Columbia now has two competing proposals for oil refineries near Kitimat, both betting that pipeline projects have become so unpalatable that plans to ship Alberta bitumen by rail are more likely to be approved.

The bitumen refinery projects add to the 20 B.C. proposals to export liquefied natural gas. Experts say only a handful of LNG ventures have a realistic chance amid fierce global competition.

“There is going to be a shakeout of viable projects,” said Mary Hemmingsen, a partner at consulting firm KPMG Canada.

The worst possible project in the worst possible location – that’s what the City of Burnaby is claiming with respect to the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion, as the National Energy Board hearing enters the final argument stage for intervenors.

Burnaby outlined the written portion of its argument in a 148-page document filed with the National Energy Board Tuesday, citing a litany of concerns around the project.  

A clever argument about a detail in the federal-provincial agreement to co-operate when reviewing the Northern Gateway pipeline won the day in B.C. Supreme Court on Wednesday.

It resulted in a declaration by Justice Mary Marvyn Koenigsberg that B.C. abdicated its responsibility and breached the honour of the Crown by failing to consult with First Nations during the process of reviewing the planned crude-oil pipeline from Alberta to Kitimat.