Oil - Pipelines

A B.C. Supreme Court ruling Wednesday that brought a halt to Enbridge’s $7.9-billion Northern Gateway project could have wider environmental implications for the province.

Justice Marvyn Koenigsberg found the B.C. government abdicated its statutory duties and breached its duty to consult First Nations when it signed and failed to terminate an equivalency agreement that handed the federal National Energy Board sole jurisdiction over the environmental assessment decision-making on the project.

Contrary to the suggestion that the BC government has 'put its foot down on Kinder Morgan’s controversial Trans Mountain pipeline expansion' the reality is that Premier Christy Clark and Environment Minister Mark Polak have their feet firmly planted in thin air.

For the submissions by Burnaby Residents Against Kinder Morgan Expansion (BROKE) and the UNIFOR union to the National Energy Board (NEB) hearings on TransMountain's proposal to expand their pipeline to carry diluted bitumen from the Alberta tar sands to tanker docks in Burnaby, BC:

Friends,

Yesterday, the government of British Columbia joined Indigenous peoples, community groups, cities, climate activists, and thousands of others in opposing the Kinder Morgan Trans-Mountain tar sands pipeline.

Despite this, and despite their campaign promise to the contrary, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the federal government are proceeding with a review of the pipeline that ignores climate change, silences communities, and refuses to respect the rights of Indigenous peoples.

In a final written submission to the National Energy Board (NEB) on Monday, the provincial government announced it would not support the hotly-debated proposal based on Kinder Morgan’s failure to prove it would meet stringent "world leading" oil spill safety requirements.

Media Statement: January 8, 2016
Final Arguments on Trans Mountain Pipeline Hearings Submitted by Andrew Weaver

For Immediate Release

Victoria, B.C. - Today Andrew Weaver, MLA for Oak Bay Gordon Head and Leader of the B.C. Green Party submitted his Final Argument in the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Hearing Process.

On the surface, the Sturgeon refinery project has just about everything Albertans would hope for as their economy sputters.

It will create jobs by processing scads of gooey crude from the oil sands into diesel fuel. It has long-term bitumen supply agreements with the province and one of Canada's largest oil companies.
 
Its carbon emissions will be piped away for use in old oil reservoirs to help produce leftover crude rather than vented into the atmosphere. That fits well with the province's new climate framework.

~~Legal observers say that while TransCanada Corp. appears to have a strong case under the North American free-trade agreement to challenge Washington’s rejection of its Keystone XL pipeline, the Calgary-based company has just embarked on a long-haul process in which it remains an underdog.

METRO VANCOUVER -- As the federal review of Kinder Morgan’s $6.8-billion Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion nears its end, at least a dozen First Nations continue to say the review is flawed, and they oppose the project over its potential environmental effects.

Those effects, they say, include the risk of tanker spills in Burrard Inlet.

Barring intervention in the review process by the new federal government under Justin Trudeau, these First Nations are prepared to take their fight to the courts.