Oil - Pipelines

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.

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: