The prime minister has ordered a moratorium on oil tanker traffic along British Columbia's northern coast. No tankers, no pipeline - this appears to be the end of the Northern Gateway fiasco.
What Mr. Trudeau may have overlooked is that this will draw the focus of dilbit opponents to the Kinder Morgan southern pipeline. That's for another day.
common sense returns to Canada
ReplyDeleteYes, common sense. It is also sensible in that it avoids a war in the woods with First Nations, environmentalists and locals who live along the route.
ReplyDeleteNow, if the government can just bury Site C . . .
British Columbians can breathe a little easier.
ReplyDeleteYes, Site C should go, along with a tanker moratorium for the Salish Sea.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure there's anything the feds can do with Site C because there's no obvious federal jurisdiction over it that I can see.
ReplyDeleteThe fight now is over Kinder Morgan's expanded pipeline project into Burnaby/Vancouver. A host of jurisdictions have dogs in that fight. These include the US, the State of Washington, the US Coast Guard, British Columbia, the municipalities of the Lower Mainland, First Nations and environmental groups and, with few exceptions, they're aligned together in opposition.
My hope is that the opposition is powerful enough to easily force the feds and province of Alberta to compel petroleum producers to refine bitumen on site. It would be costly building the refining capacity that would be needed to turn that volume of production into synthetic crude and i'm guessing Big Oil knows well enough that bitumen is a risky proposition and not worth the investment.
KM will happen, I think. Trudeau's announcement here is very carefully constructed. Like David Anderson has his ear. With his commitment for changes to the national energy board's assessment process, I think KM can still navigate that process.
ReplyDelete