Oil - Pipelines

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]...

The Koch Brothers are known for many things — their vast financial empire, their conservative political ideology, their active political involvement, their support of the Keystone XL pipeline — but their Alberta, Canada land ownership has not been as widely discussed. A Washington Post feature has brought this subject back to attention as the Keystone XL debate heats up and discussion over the relationship between the Koch Brothers and their Republican allies takes on even greater significance in an important election year.

It was reported today that Exxon-Mobil will begin disclosing the degree to which its assets are exposed to future greenhouse gas policies. This risk is at the heart of what has become known as the carbon bubble, a term advanced by UK group Carbon Tracker, which suggests that assets may be over-valued as a result of not accounting for potential future limits on fossil fuel extraction imposed to fight climate change.

You might expect the biggest lease owner in Canada's oil sands, or tar sands, to be one of the international oil giants, like Exxon Mobil or Royal Dutch Shell. But that isn't the case. The biggest lease holder in the northern Alberta oil sands is a subsidiary of Koch Industries, the privately-owned cornerstone of the fortune of conservative Koch brothers Charles and David.