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.
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.
