Oil - Pipelines

The residents of Kitimat, B.C. have voted against the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline project in a non-binding plebiscite.

The ballot count from Saturday’s vote was 1,793 opposed versus 1,278 who supported the multi-billion dollar project — a margin of 58.4 per cent to 41.6 per cent.

Canadian oil and gas worker salaries jumped six per cent to an average of $130,000 US in 2013 and the trend is expected to continue, according to a survey released Wednesday. Furthermore, despite ongoing worries about oil transportation bottlenecks, nearly three-quarters of employers who took part in the survey by global recruiting firm Hays Oil & Gas say they expect their companies will hire more people in 2014. “This past year, the industry has taken a pause,” said John Faraguna, global managing director of oil and gas for Hays.

The current trajectories of Canada’s predominant political economies are increasingly dysfunctional, due in no small part to the fact that we have become, in many respects, a petro state, rather than the much vaunted “Energy Superpower” that we were promised.

As Kinder Morgan's oilsands pipeline expansion lumbers towards public hearings, the National Energy Board's announcement yesterday of who can participate, and how, is stirring debate in the province. Four hundred applicants, including the cities of Vancouver, Burnaby and New Westminster, were granted intervenor status, allowing them to directly question the proponent and submit expert testimony and evidence when hearings begin in Jan. 2015. Of more than 2,000 applicants seeking to weigh in, 468 were outrightly rejected.

START with the term “tar sands.” In Canada only fervent opponents of oil development in northern Alberta dare to use those words; the preferred phrase is the more reassuring “oil sands.” Never mind that the “oil” in the world’s third largest petroleum reserve is in fact bitumen, a substance with the consistency of peanut butter, so viscous that another fossil fuel must be used to dilute it enough to make it flow.

B.C. Premier Christy Clark was a partner in a lobbying firm that was contracted by Enbridge and lobbied the federal government on the company's behalf, according to documents obtained by The Vancouver Observer. The Premier's spokesperson, however, stated that Enbridge was no longer a client of the firm by the time she joined the company.  In a 2008 

A strong economic boost is coming to the Northwest with the news that Husky Energy is going ahead with two new heavy oil thermal projects in the area. The projects are the 10,000 barrels/day Edam East project and the 10,000 barrels/day Vawn project. The company said in a news release Jan.

Deepwater Horizawhatnow? Less than a year after BP upgraded its Whiting refinery in northwestern Indiana to allow it to handle heavy Canadian tar-sands oil, causing petroleum coke to begin piling up in nearby Chicago, an industrial accident at the refinery has spewed some of that oil into Lake Michigan.

With a deeply unpopular $6.5 billion Northern Gateway project at risk, Enbridge is betting heavily on ads and a door-to-door corporate campaign to sway residents in a small northern coastal B.C. community to "vote yes" for its oil sands pipeline project.  "It’s mind boggling how they’re pouring so much into [the Enbridge campaign]...