Thursday, December 01, 2016
If This Is So Goddamned Important
If this "pipeline to tidewater" is so goddamned important, why do the beneficiaries have so little skin in the game?
Why isn't Alberta defusing the dilbit bomb by refining the toxins and the heavy metals and the carcinogens and the petcoke out of their crud on-site, in Alberta? It's one thing to subject the BC coast to a conventional oil catastrophe, a la the Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound (that's still not cleaned up) but it's an order of magnitude worse to create the conditions of a dilbit disaster. Alberta can refine their vile shit at home but they would rather "externalize" that cost by massively increasing the risk to coastal British Columbia. And that petro-pimp Trudeau, in the most despicable betrayal of the province and people of British Columbia, is going along with it.
I don't know but if we're going to gamble with the marine ecology of coastal British Columbia for generations to come, shouldn't the players be putting some money on the table? Big money.
How about this? In the event of a spill, both Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ottawa will immediately transmit every and all royalties they receive from fossil energy to British Columbia until all contaminants are cleared, including from the seabed. Every last dime. Think of it as "polluter pays." We're all into that, surely.
And, to make sure they'll be serious about cleaning up their mess, why not have Alberta agree to cede to British Columbia all that area stretching from the foothills of the Rockies to the BC border including Jasper and Banff? If the spill isn't cleaned up within ten years that territory is permanently forfeit by Alberta.
Right now, Ottawa and Alberta and Saskatchewan have no skin in the game when it comes to the catastrophic risk they want British Columbia to endure. That's bullshit.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
with the price of oil about to spike, and stay there, it is time to tie all applications for pipes to an upgrader, that means strategic alliances must be found by the pipers with the upgrading industry.
Said it for a long time Mound, doesn't make sense not to refine in Fort Mac. The approval of Line 9 through Ontario would be made easier if they didn't pipe dilbit.
Alberta barely collects royalties to start with, and certainly nothing on the scale needed to clean up a dilbit spill at sea and compensate affected communities. As you say, BC should demand a compensation mechanism from AB as a condition of approval, including requiring AB to collect sufficient royalties.
These companies make money by externalizing costs onto the public. Internalizing costs would make the venture much less profitable. Kinder Morgan began as an Enron company and is run by former Enron executives. It cannot be trusted. BC should require KM to set up a clean-up fund as a condition of approval. The fund should be held in trust by the BC government so it would still be available in case KM went bankrupt. And you can't allow Liberian- and Panamanian-registered oilers, whose owners hide behind multiple layers of shell companies, off the hook either. No oilers should be allowed to transport dilbit or diluent through sensitive marine areas without proof of insurance adequate to cover the cost of a clean-up.
That's just a start, I'm sure the BC government can come up with other ways to protect its citizens and resources. Oh, I forgot, Clark's your premier. Never mind.
Cap
A carbon tax, as the Fed Govt says it will impose, is meant to encourage people to use less gasoline and diesel.
An expanded pipeline in BC is meant to ship more dilbit offshore, where it would presumably be turned into gasoline or diesel.
NOW you're talkin' Mound! Take the $10 Billion we're wasting on Site C and GIVE it to Alberta as a contribution towards a refinery on their turf. Get Black to take his Kitimat refinery proposal and move it to Alberta. Then maybe we can talk Pipeline.
Cap, you're right about the Enron bunch of non-taxpaying leaches (fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice.....) but wrong about paying the fund to the BC Government. Can you imagine what Chrispy would do with a bonanza like that!
John, that's why the fund would be "in trust." No oil spill, no touch.
Cap
.. a 'Shock & Awe' supertanker catastrophe will just be the icing on the Christy Clark cake / Harper regime / Trudeau / triumph of get the glop to 'tidewater' & Asia opportunity.. as Ol Joe Oliver so aptly put it.. Quite sure Stevie/Ray & Laureen + Joe & Kellie Kouvalis Inc were deeply invested via 'blind trust' pipeline 'interests.. its how you get to be public servant millionaire serpents.. right?
Post a Comment