Oil - Pipelines

The B.C. Supreme Court will decide by Nov. 17 whether to grant Kinder Morgan an injunction to stop anti-pipeline protesters from interfering with survey work on Burnaby Mountain.
The pipeline company also launched a multimillion civil suit against the five pipeline opponents, claiming, assault, trespassing and intimidation, and protesters are anxiously waiting for the Associate Chief Justice Austin Cullen's decision.

There's nothing more unambiguous in the battle against global ecocide than placing one's body between the fertile earth and a giant fossil fuel company. This is why when one spends a few minutes with the caretakers of Burnaby Mountain, one develops a genuinely abiding allegiance to their cause. This is direct witness to the existential immediacy of the climate crisis that threatens the future of our planet. This is appropriate response to the danger climate change entails.

An injunction and a $5.6-million civil suit in damages is what corporate energy giant Kinder Morgan is seeking against blockaders at a court hearing this week.

Since August of this year, a determined group of Burnaby residents have been stopping Kinder Morgan work crews at a designated conservation area within Burnaby Mountain. SFU professor and defendant Stephen Collis explains, "Many of us are increasingly concerned about climate change, issues relating to Aboriginal title, and the erosion of our democratic rights."

You would think that, in the name of public relations, somebody at Kinder Morgan might take a clue from the company’s name to work on its image.

It could do with some “kinder.”

But no. Quite the opposite. In its clumsy handling of its proposed pipeline expansion to bring diluted Alberta bitumen to Vancouver, Kinder Morgan — through its pipeline subsidiary Trans Mountain Pipeline — has alienated the city of Burnaby, the city of Vancouver and, well, me, for one. As part of its survey work, it took down trees in a public park.

Recent revelations that the RCMP spied on Indigenous environmental rights activist Clayton Thomas-Muller should not be dismissed as routine monitoring. They reveal a long-term, national energy strategy that is coming increasingly into conflict with Indigenous rights and assertions of Indigenous jurisdiction over lands and resources.

Marc Eliesen has withdrawn as an intervenor in the federal government’s review of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline and oil tanker expansion project, detailing his reasons for quitting in a scathing 1,500 word letter to the National Energy Board.

Eliesen is the former CEO of B.C. Hydro and the former Chair of Manitoba Hydro. A deputy minister in seven different federal and provincial governments, Eliesen has forty years’ executive experience in the energy sector, including as a board member at Suncor.

It was a typical northern Ontario day on the shores of Shoal Lake, when I really got it.

I was a month into a photography project to highlight the voices of people along the proposed Energy East pipeline route. I was interviewing Chief Fawn Wapioke of Shoal Lake 39. We had retreated from the mosquitos outside to a couch in the living room.

OTTAWA, Oct. 30, 2014 - After TransCanada filed its official application with the National Energy Board today, environmental organizations in Canada and the United States, First Nations and community organizers said the Energy East pipeline will never be built.

A 135-metre container ship laden with hundreds of tonnes of bunker and diesel fuel is adrift off the west coast of Haida Gwaii, says the Canadian Forces' Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Victoria.

The Russian container ship Simushir is about 25 kilometres off Tasu Sound, according to the centre. 

The Canadian Coast Guard says the ship was incapacitated in gale force winds early this morning around 1:30 a.m. PT.

RCMP said a TransGas pumping station near Prud'Homme, 70 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon, exploded Saturday, and a fire continues to burn at the site.

Fire departments from Prud'Homme and Vonda are on scene and working with TransGas employees, but they have yet to be able to move onto the site and are working to contain the fire.

​​TransGas is the pipeline transmission and storage subsidiary of the Saskatchewan crown corporation.

Dave Burdeniuk, a spokesman for SaskEnergy, confirmed to CBC News that the fire was continuing to burn Saturdayat the pump station.