Oil - Pipelines

Redacted entries in Mike Duffy’s diary suggest he was in regular undisclosed contact with pipeline giant Enbridge during the height of the federal government's scorching attacks on environmental activists and charities in 2012.

The suspended senator’s journal shows a flurry of conversations and emails with or about top-level Enbridge executives, then PMO chief of staff Nigel Wright and the Prime Minister between January and June of 2012, just as the National Energy Board started its hearings on the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline proposal.

Metro Vancouver is bracing for protests in regional parks such as Colony Farm and Surrey Bend after negotiating a deal with Kinder Morgan granting its crews access to plan the route of the proposed Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion.

Regional district staff outline the agreements in a briefing note that will be before Metro mayors at a meeting Friday.

Once again, local MP James Moore and his constituency office in Port Moody were targets of a petition, this time over last week’s oil spill near Vancouver.

On Friday, a group that included First Nations leaders and representatives from organizations like Leadnow and Council of Canadians, delivered a petition to Moore’s office on St. Johns Street calling on the federal government to reopen the Kitsilano Coast Guard Station, reverse cuts to marine communications centres in B.C., and ban increased tanker traffic on the coast.

Many Vancouverites are quite rightly enraged by the sight of oil-soaked birds struggling to survive around English Bay.

First Nations worry about the impact of the M/V Marathassafuel spill on the fishery.

For environmentalists, the recent accident confirmed their worst fears about the dangers associated with the proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline project. If approved, it will triple shipments of diluted bitumen from the Alberta oilsands to the Lower Mainland and bring a massive increase in tanker traffic to Burrard Inlet.

Several hundred people marched through Fort Langley Saturday to oppose the expansion of the Trans Mountain oil pipeline that runs through Langley.

Organized by groups including the Pipe Up Network and the Kwantlen First Nation, the march headed from the Kwantlen reserve to the Fort Langley Community Hall.

The march paused in the center of the Jacob Haldi Bridge that connects MacMillan Island to the village of Fort Langley. Above the Fraser River, Kwantlen members drummed and sang before the march continued.

Following is an email synopsis of a Sooke, BC, Council meeting with Kinder Morgan by a Dogwood Initiative organizer:

The toxic bunker fuel that leaked from a ship into Vancouver's English Bay has washed up on the city's popular beach in Kitsilano.

Vancouver police told CBC News that there are visible clumps of oil on the shore at Kits Beach.

What is bunker fuel?

The Canadian Coast Guard said it was notified about a spill generated from an anchor point in English Bay at about 5 p.m. PT Wednesday.

Senior engineers at Canada’s energy regulator are under investigation by their professional association over their probe of alleged safety code violations at TransCanada Corp., Canada’s second largest pipeline operator.

The Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta (APEGA) confirmed to Reuters it is investigating some of its members who work at the National Energy Board (NEB).

Kinder Morgan says its protocols dictate that it report "suspicious activities" like taking photos near its Burnaby Mountain facility, even though the surrounding area is Crown land on which they have no jurisdiction to prohibit photography.

SFU climate change scientist Tim Takaro says he felt "intimidated" when he got a call from Burnaby RCMP earlier this week asking him about photographs he took with Kinder Morgan infrastructure in the background. They also told him they knew he had been to protest rallies that had taken place there a few months earlier.

A B.C. climate change scientist says he got an "intimidating" call from RCMP because he had taken pictures on Burnaby Mountain near the site of a proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline.

Tim Takaro, a health sciences professor at SFU, says he was having lunch in Tofino with his family on Wednesday when his daughter's cellphone rang.

When she answered it, she was told it was the Burnaby RCMP calling and they were looking for her father.