Setting the Record Straight on Trudeau, Notley, Bitumen, and Our Future.

What's the difference between all-out nuclear war and catastrophic climate change? So far we haven't been stupid enough to resort to all-out nuclear war.

Both of them can end civilization, indeed most life on Earth. The way we're going it's unclear which will get the job done first.

Canada, of course, doesn't field a nuclear arsenal but it sure as hell is doing its bit on the other threat, runaway global warming. We have huge proven reserves of the filthiest, most dangerous, high-carbon ersatz oil on the planet, Athabasca bitumen. And we've got two provinces and a succession of federal governments hell bent on getting as much of that deadly crap as conceivably possible to foreign markets.

When challenged on this, our prime minister pops a fuze and says the only thing he can come up with. Here's what he told an angry crowd yesterday in Nanaimo:

"We wanted a national carbon reduction plan, a national emissions plan that is going to allow us to reach our climate goals, to reach our Paris commitments but in order to do that, part of moving forward is approving the Kinder Morgan pipeline. It is something many people feel very strongly about on either side, but that is the nature of the compromise we had to make in the best interests of Canada."

That's some ripe horseshit to be sure. Flogging Black Death is "part of moving forward." It's "in the nature of the compromise" that the Liberal government "had to make in the best interests of Canada."

If that's "moving forward," in what direction exactly is Canada heading? Well, given that Trudeau's climate goals were set by Stephen Harper and we're not on track to even meet those, you can probably figure out where Justin is taking us.

One of America's top climate scientists and advocates, James Hansen, had this to say five years ago about the Tar Sands.

"To avoid passing tipping points, such as initiation of the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, we need to limit the climate forcing severely. It's still possible to do that, if we phase down carbon emissions rapidly, but that means moving expeditiously to clean energies of the future. Moving to tar sands, one of the dirtiest, most carbon-intensive fuels on the planet, is a step in exactly the opposite direction, indicating either that governments don't understand the situation or that they just don't give a damn."

Hansen isn't alone. Climate science backs him up. When Justin Trudeau and his environment minister burst onto the floor of the Paris Climate Summit in 2015, they scored big by urging that the old target for maximum global warming, then at 2 degrees Celsius, be cut to a humanity-saving 1.5C. McKenna and Trudeau didn't hear, nor heed, the warning of another top world climate scientist at the Paris Summit, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber's warning that any hope of holding global warming to 1.5 C would depend on an "induced implosion" of the fossil energy industry.

Schellnhuber said if we want to do this we can if the petro-states move quickly to shut down their fossil fuel resources and rapidly transition to alternative energy. It doesn't sound like Hans had Trudeau's let 'er rip energy policy in mind.

Here's the thing. Trudeau, Notley and their Oil Patch patrons, frame this as a purely economic issue. Schellnhuber argues it goes way beyond economics.

“In the end it is a moral decision. Do you want to be part of the generation that screwed up the planet for the next 1,000 years? I don’t think we should make that decision.”

Oil field experts say that these new pipelines are 30-year investments. Barring some collapse of markets, those investing the hundreds of billions of dollars into these pipelines have confidence that they'll reap their rewards. And, so long as the Oil Patch has reliable and indulgent governments like Harper's and Trudeau's, they're probably taking a safe bet.

Trudeau sees calls for real action to fight climate change as "sanctimonious crap." Ask David Suzuki:

Trudeau called him personally June 28, 2015, to talk about the Liberal platform on climate change that was to be revealed the next day. “I didn’t call Justin, he called me,” Suzuki said. “He wanted an endorsement and he wanted to tell me exactly what his program was.”

The program includes support for the Keystone XL pipeline, a rejection of the Northern Gateway pipeline and a commitment to work with the provinces to establish a cap-and-trade system.

“I said, ‘Justin, stop it, you’re just being political, you just want to make headway in Alberta,’” Suzuki says he told Trudeau. “You’re for the development of the tar sands, you’re for the Keystone pipeline, but you’re against the Northern Gateway, you’re all over the damn map!”

Suzuki went on to advise Trudeau that taking the target of a two-degree rise in temperature seriously means 80 per cent of the oil sands has to stay in the ground. Suzuki believes stopping oil sands development will mean “no debate about pipelines or expanding railways or shipping stuff offshore—none of that comes into it.”

Suzuki says this is when the exchange turned nasty. “He said, ‘I don’t have to listen to this sanctimonious crap.’ I proceeded to call him a twerp.”

Mr. Trudeau obviously won't be talking about this but if you want to know how Athabasca bitumen impacts humanity's chances of averting climate catastrophe, a good place to start is this 2012 U. Vic. paper by Neil Swart and Andrew Weaver. I suppose, in Trudeau's mind, that's just more sanctimonious crap.

Hansen, Schellnhuber, Suzuki, and Weaver, there are plenty more voices backing them up. You can't reconcile their science with Mr. Trudeau's political bafflegab. 

Schellnhuber is right. This is a moral issue. It's a deadly serious moral issue. Deadly as in lethal. Remember how we used to export asbestos to sketchy markets offshore even though we knew it would condemn people in the Third World to a horribly painful end? Well, we're doing something along those same lines with bitumen.

Climate change is already claiming innocent lives, predominantly in the poorest, most vulnerable corners of the world. They're dying from heatwaves, drought, flooding, severe storm events, sea level rise, crop failures and more. We've now got a new phenomenon, climate wars - wars that are triggered in whole or in part by the devastation of climate change. The civil war in Syria began as the result of famine caused by crop failure. And this is just the early onset stuff. There's a lot more coming their way. These people are collateral damage to our economic imperative. 

I'm one of a growing number of British Columbians steadfastly opposed to the machinations of Harper-Trudeau, Klein-Notley, the Tar Sanders and their very sketchy dilbit pipeline operators with their horrible accident track record. They've shown us what these pipelines do to the territories they cross. Ask the people of Kalamazoo, Michigan. That, of course, was Enbridge. But what do you know about the current contender, Kinder-Morgan? Let's put it this way. If they were operating school buses instead of pipelines you would probably wind up home-schooling your kids.

And when it comes to an armada of lumbering, dilbit-laden supertankers navigating British Columbia's very challenging and dangerous coastal waters, there are many problems. The odds aren't on our side. We've had Coast Guard and RCN officers, merchant mariners, all advise Trudeau's National Energy Board that  a supertanker calamity isn't a matter of if but when and how often.

It was March 24, 1989, nearly 30 years ago, that the Exxon Valdez came to grief in Alaska's Prince William Sound. Ten million gallons were spilled. But that wasn't dilbit. It was conventional crude oil, kid's stuff. That spill covered 1,300 miles of coastline, 11,000 square miles of ocean.  More than a quarter of a century later the oil still isn't cleaned up.

On March 24, 2014, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the spill, NOAA scientists reported that some species seem to have recovered, with the sea otter the latest creature to return to pre-spill numbers. Scientists who have monitored the spill area for the last 25 years report that concern remains for one of two pods of local orca whales, with fears that one pod may eventually die out.[33] Federal scientists estimate that between 16,000 and 21,000 US gallons (61 to 79 m3) of oil remains on beaches in Prince William Sound and up to 450 miles (725 km) away. Some of the oil does not appear to have biodegraded at all. A USGS scientist who analyses the remaining oil along the coastline states that it remains among rocks and between tide marks. "The oil mixes with seawater and forms an emulsion...Left out, the surface crusts over but the inside still has the consistency of mayonnaise – or mousse."[34] Alaska state senator Berta Gardner is urging Alaskan politicians to demand that the US government force ExxonMobil to pay the final $92 million (£57 million) still owed from the court settlement. The major part of the money would be spent to finish cleaning up oiled beaches and attempting to restore the crippled herring population.

The Exxon Valdez spilled conventional crude oil and yet Trudeau and Notley want to put us to that very risk only with something vastly worse, dilbit, diluted-bitumen. Bitumen, a persistent sludge laced with acids, abrasives, toxins, heavy metals and carcinogens, that will head right for the sea bed where it will remain for decades contaminating the coastal waters, devastating the marine ecology. To borrow Hansen's words, "they just don't give a damn."

The Trudeau government put the lie to its vaunted "world class oil spill clean up" preparations when Dame Cathy's environment ministry was caught having approved an incredibly dangerous chemical, Corexit, for use in BC waters as an oil dispersant. We know a lot about Corexit from its use during the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon oil spills. 

If you don't know about this chemical that our federal government has cleared for use in British Columbia's coastal waters, watch this.

If you've got the stomach for it and want to watch the entire Vice expose on Corexit, you can watch it here.

This is the reality of what Justin Trudeau wants to do to our coast, intends to do to our coast, tells us he is going to do to our coast.

Pushing ever more bitumen onto world markets is morally reprehensible. Worse yet, it's a betrayal of our own kids and grandkids. Shipping it in the most lethal possible form, dilbit, rather than requiring that it be refined on site, in Athabasca, to remove the most odious components - the acids, the abrasives, the heavy metals, the carcinogens, the pet coke, and the sludge - is equally reprehensible. To even imagine using Corexit in British Columbia's coastal waters is fiendishly reckless. And they're doing it all just to put a few extra bucks in Rachel Notley's and her Oil Patch patrons' pockets.

Whether You Support Pipelines or Not, Here's Something We Can Surely Agree On.

No secret I'm opposed to both Kinder Morgan and Northern Gateway.  A sizeable majority of British Columbians are of the same mind but a significant minority supports the pipeline initiatives.  In situations like this it can be helpful to seek out areas of agreement, common ground.

Here's an idea we should all be able to endorse.  If you insist on shipping Athabasca oil to Asia, why not ship oil?  That may sound facetious but it's not.

Bad as these pipelines are, they're made far worse by what Ottawa and Alberta want to push through them - dilbit.  Dilbit is bitumen mixed with a light oil condensate called a diluent.  Bitumen is just too sludgy to push through a pipeline.  It's full of acids, toxins, heavy metals and, of course, petroleum coke or "petcoke," a granular and very high carbon form of sulfur-rich coal.  To get it through a pipeline you have to dilute it with condensate.  Even then you have to heat the mixture and propel it with powerful pumps to get it moving through the pipeline.

Pipeline opponents have plenty of reason to object to dilbit pipelines.  You're taking a product that is full of corrosives and forcing it through a pipeline under high pressure.  If you want to know what that pressurized corrosive does to a pipeline you might ask the authorities in Kalamazoo, Michigan.  Yes, and that was an Enbridge pipeline.

British Columbians have ample reason for concern because a Kalamazoo-type spill here would likely happen in the mountainous wilderness where Enbridge intends to run Northern Gateway.  That would make it more difficult to detect and extremely difficult to get crews and equipment in to attempt clean up.  A spill into a fast-moving mountain stream would spread rapidly, confounding clean up efforts and endangering the ecology for great distances.  Enbridge repeatedly balked at cleaning up Kalamazoo.  How would the company respond to a far more difficult and enormously more costly clean up in British Columbia?

Another cause for concern is the prospect of a supertanker catastrophe. Navigating those northern coastal waters with their currents and tides is challenging on a good day and, up there, good days are not abundant.  When you're tasked with moving the volumes of dilbit Enbridge is planning for Northern Gateway, you have to keep tankers sailing in and out no matter the conditions and that is a formula for disaster.

Dilbit, because of all the sludge in it, sinks.  The condensate separates out and floats to the surface where it dissipates.  The bitumen component congeals and heads for the bottom which, in a lot of places up there, can be 600-feet down and neither the governments nor Enbridge has anything that can clean up a deepwater spill like that.

So, where is this elusive common ground?  I think both sides should be able to rule out the dilbit option/problem.  How can that be done?  Refine the product on site in Athabasca.  Do it there, at the source.  Then, once you have refined out all the garbage, all you'll be transporting is conventional crude oil.  The product you send to market won't be bitumen or diluted bitumen.  The acids, the abrasives, the toxins and heavy metals, the carcinogens and the petcoke will be removed and dealt with on site in Alberta where they belong.

That doesn't mean we'd be okay with it.  The 1989 Exxon Valdez catastrophe, after all, was a conventional oil spill,the ship didn't even sink, and, a quarter century later, Prince William Sound still isn't cleaned up. However refined oil that floats is vastly preferable to hazmat oil that sinks and coats the bottom for generations, poisoning the entire marine habitat.

Another major factor is that transporting fully refined conventional crude oil significantly cuts the volume of product shipped.  The condensate isn't in there. The crud isn't in there.  All of that is removed and left behind in Alberta.  That refining process would allow a major reduction of up to 40% in the number of supertanker trips required to get the product to overseas markets.  The more tanker trips you have the more groundings or sinkings you'll have.  It's that simple.  Even pipeline supporters can understand that.

Bear in mind that the stuff Big Oil and its governmental minions want to ship, dilbit, still has to be refined somewhere.  That somewhere will be in Asia where they'll have to refine out not only the condensate but also all the crud, including the pet coke, out of the bitumen.  So what could be the objection to refining the goop in Athabasca?

What we're usually told is that it would be uneconomical to refine bitumen in Alberta.  Overseas markets, we're told, have unused refining capacity.  So what? We could not only address the hazmat issue but also create a lot of jobs and revenue by refining Athabasca bitumen on site.

I suspect the on-site refining option would be refused because it would add an unbearable burden to the sleight-of-hand trick used to portray the Tar Sands as a huge money maker.  It would also leave Alberta responsible for the energy requirements and emissions related to the refining process.

So you can see how, to a British Columbian, this smacks of a set up.  We have to accept the risk of a potentially catastrophic hazmat spill to bolster the bottom line of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.  They're externalizing the risks, offloading them on the province and people of British Columbia, and we're being told they're doing it as of right.

That they're dealing us cards from a stacked deck is obvious.  One by one, Harper has stripped us of our safeguards.  He moved the West Coast oil spill emergency centre to Quebec.  He shut down entire sections of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans responsible for monitoring our coastal marine habitat. He trashed fisheries regulations. He closed essential Coast Guard installations.  He gutted the navigation regulations to accommodate the supertanker armada.  He set up an utterly fraudulent environmental review process, plainly sculpted to deliver a scripted result.  He's engaged the state security apparatus to spy on environmentalists.  Now you tell me this federal government isn't already at war with us.

When taken in the context of this litany of skulduggery, the refusal to refine this bitumen on site in Alberta can be seen in a plain light for what it is - a deliberate choice to expose British Columbia to enormous risks by transporting hazmat - hazardous materials - through highly risky conditions while simultaneously stripping us of every means we ever had to respond to catastrophe.

RCMP + CSIS - Add Water and Stir. Voila, the Stasi Lives Again

They were East Germany's dreaded secret police.   They spied on ordinary East Germans, tapped their phones, intercepted their mail, assessed their 'reliability', used informants, kept dossiers on persons of interest and ordinary citizens alike.  

The hated Stasi fell with the Berlin Wall but they live on - in today's RCMP, the Royal Conservative Mounted Police, Harper's personal security apparatus. Today the RCMP, in conjunction with our official spy agency, CSIS, and the Canadian Border Service Agency, operate a domestic spying network called the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, INSET.

And just whose security is INSET enforcing? Yours? Mine? Canada's? Hardly. Don't be naive. They're the taxpayer funded security service of the fossil fuelers and especially the tar sanders, corporations like Enbridge and Kinder Morgan.  Oh yeah, and the Peoples Republic of China.

71-year old Leslie Askin received a "visit" from state security officers.  Why? She had taken some photographs of what she thought were Kinder Morgan storage tanks in Burnaby, B.C.  She wasn't sneaking around.  She wasn't trespassing.  She stood a good distance away and took her photos.  She wanted to show the condition of the 60-year old tanks to the National Energy Board.

Askin was spotted by Kinder Morgan security and they, in turn, set Canada's secret police apparatus on her.

Kinder Morgan says it reports all potential threats to police to "ensure the security and safety of our facilities and the surrounding community is maintained."

"It is our security protocol to record and file an internal report of any suspicious activities surrounding our facilities and to inform the RCMP of the incident," the company says.

Ten days later Askin had RCMP officers on her doorstep demanding answers.

In a statement, a spokeseperson for E-INSET confirms they did visit an individual who was seen taking photographs of Kinder Morgan's storage terminal.

"The protection and security of critical infrastructure falls within the mandate of E-INSET. Any and all tips reported to us are followed up on to the fullest extent." But, in Askin'scase: "there were no issues and the file was concluded with no further action taken."

Askin has filed an access to information to try and find out what is in her police file.

"I am now in the INSET’s database and I will be there, I guess, until I drop dead," she said. 

When dealing with a state secret police agency, they're never entitled to the benefit of the doubt. Never.  They're thugs who operate in the shadows, in service not to the country but to powerful, immensely wealthy corporations who could easily do their own security.  But those corporations lack the intrusive powers of the state, they lack the professional spy apparatus, the very service that INSET serves up to them on a platter.

My father and my uncles went to war, sacrificed enormously, to fight this sort of thuggery.  We're damned poor Canadians if we fail to stand up to it in our own time.

I have an idea.  Let's catalogue Kinder Morgan and Enbridge facilities.  Then let's organize groups of people to individually visit those facilities, monitor them, record licence plate numbers, and take plenty of photographs.  20 or 30 monitors a day, new faces rotated in daily.  Nothing remotely illegal.  No trespassing, no obstruction, no heckling. Just maintain a vigil at a safe and legal distance, letting Kinder Morgan and Enbridge and the Canadian Stasi and our despotic government know that we will not be intimidated and we will respond in kind in keeping with our democratic and constitutional right of dissent.

They want to gather intelligence on us.  We should gather intelligence on them, every scrap we can collect.  To the Stasi, being exposed was like the noonday sun to a vampire.

They can intimidate us, one by one, but they'll have a hell of a hard time doing it if they have 20 or 40 or 100 new names each and every day, a list that could quickly grow into many hundreds, perhaps even thousands.  Watch, we can make them stand down, crawl back into the slime beneath their rocks. 

The RCMP has served notice that it is quite prepared to criminalize democratic dissent.  I won't have it.  No, not in my Canada.  What about yours? 

And if the goons demand your name, tell them "Leslie Askin."

If We're Already Seen as the Government's Enemies, Why Do We Think They Might Listen to Us?

Of the many dark farces of the Harper government, the best one is that there'll be a full and fair environmental assessment of the Northern Gateway pipeline initiative and the claim that the government remains open-minded.   The Victoria Time Colonist pundit, Jack Knox, writes that's sheer bollocks:

Emails released this week show a cosy relationship in which CSIS, a section of the RCMP, our pro-pipeline federal government, the National Energy Board and energy companies are inside the club, while those who oppose Enbridge’s proposal are treated like woolly headed radicals working against the national interest.

Which leads to the obvious question: If that’s what Ottawa thinks of British Columbians who worry about oil tankers doing an Exxon Valdez in the tricky inside waters of our coast, how seriously will it listen to them?

The emails came to light through an access to information filing initially reported in the online Vancouver Observer. They showed communications between the RCMP, CSIS, the National Energy Board and its security chief before and during the regulatory hearings into Enbridge’s proposal to pipe Alberta bitumen to a tanker terminal at Kitimat.

The messages talk of using social media and other sources to monitor everything from the Idle No More movement to the Victoria-based Dogwood Initiative to the annual all-native basketball tourney in Prince Rupert. One of the emails, a security summary prior to January’s hearings in Kelowna, refers to a gathering at which Elizabeth May — the Saanich-Gulf Islands MP and Green Party leader — and Victoria-Swan Lake MLA Rob Fleming were to speak.

Those revelations follow a series of stories in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, which reported that the Canadian government has an extensive spying program aimed at domestic environmental organizations. Since 2005, twice-a-year meetings involving energy companies, police, CSIS and other federal agencies have been convened to discuss threats to the energy sector, including challenges from green groups. The Guardian produced the agenda for one such meeting in May: sponsored by Natural Resources Canada, it was held at CSIS headquarters in Ottawa, with breakfast, lunch and coffee provided by Enbridge and a networking mixer paid for by Bruce Power and Brookfield Renewable Energy Partners.

...security arrangements bordered on the absurd when the regulatory road show came to the Delta Victoria Ocean Pointe for eight days in January. Hotel doors were guarded by a contingent of Victoria police officers working on overtime (the bill was ultimately paid by Enbridge, as the applicant was responsible for all costs related to the pipeline review). Members of the public could only watch online or on a big screen at the Ramada three kilometres away. Even the people scheduled to testify (they had to wait at least 15 months for the privilege) were herded into a holding room down the hall from the hearing room. Never mind that they looked less like wild-eyed anarchists than a United Church prayer circle, a bunch of grey-haired retirees in fleece vests and Gore-Tex.

That betrays a troubling mindset by a federal government that starts with the assumption that anyone who disagrees with the Northern Gateway plan is by definition a kook, a fringe character hiding behind a balaclava or one of those moustachioed Occupy Everything masks. Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver infamously ranted about “environmental and other radical groups” blocking pipeline proposals. The feds poured $8 million into a witch hunt targeting environmental charities that it blamed for bogging down the approval process. In Ottawa, green is the new black.

Here's the thing.  When your government treats you as an enemy of the state, no good will come from ignoring that warning.  That's when you have to start asking if the state hasn't become your enemy.

And We Thought All We Had to Deal With Was Enbridge.

Nexen, the Chinese Communist Party's anchor in Athabasca, is urging Canadian National Railways to start shipping bitumen by rail car to Prince Rupert where it can then be loaded on supertankers for transport to the Peoples' Liberation Army and other users.

Apparently China is getting impatient with Comrade Steve's inability to make headway on the Northern Gateway pipeline to Kitimat and so they've taken matters in their own hands.  For some strange reason, opponents of the Northern Gateway aren't mollified by the proposal to ship bitumen across B.C. by rail.   This will give you some idea why:

Much of northern British Columbia is mountainous.  We don't build rail lines over mountains but around them, through the valleys.  Really scenic stuff.  Something else runs through those valleys - rivers.   You can blame that on gravity.  That's the same gravity that would send a bitumen spill in the same direction, downhill, right into those rivers as they wend their way inexorably to the sea or, as the Harper government calls it, "tidewater."

Now a little bit of bitumen goes a long way.   Just ask the people of Kalamazoo, Michigan.   The river in the picture isn't like the Kalamazoo River.   In Michigan, spill workers were dealing with a slow moving, soft-bottom, shallow river surrounded by open, level ground with easy road access.   As the photo above reveals we have very fast moving, very rocky bottom rivers, that are extremely hard to access and may not have a road anywhere nearby.   What the photo doesn't reveal is that these rivers are where our salmon come from.   They feed the spawning beds.

In oil spill recovery, rapid containment is the name of the game.   How in hell do you contain a bitumen catastrophe in a raging, mountain river in the wilderness of northern B.C. at all much less rapidly?

The totalitarian government's attitude (China, not Ottawa) seems to be 'just get the stuff to a northern port and our supertankers will take it from there'.   We're still back to the same supertanker threat as the Kitimat proposal but that's obviously no problem for the Beijing Politburo.   Like the Harper government, his Chinese masters could care less about coastal British Columbia.

And so, Canadian National, should they decide to accept Beijing's overtures, is as much a threat to British Columbia as Enbridge.  Just another fight.

A Tar Sands Compromise, One They'll Have to Refuse

Today's bitumen trafficking contemplated by Enbridge, Redford and Harper is beset by indefensible problems.   The proponents are making it far worse than it needs to be.

A huge part of their problem is dilbit, the stuff that still lines the riverbed of the Kalamazoo River in Michigan.  It's truly noxious stuff.   Just to be able to be pumped through a pipeline, Alberta bitumen must be diluted.   It's mixed with dilutents to become what's commonly known as dilbit, diluted bitumen.   This dilbit is then pumped across Canada's borders for export to world markets.

What happens to dilbit once it reaches Asia or Texas?   The dilutents are refined out.   Then the crud is refined out of the bitumen to leave a functional, synthetic petroleum that can be further refined into conventional fuels such as gasoline, jet fuel, etc.

The really nasty nature of dilbit is that, when it is spilled, it creates a hell of a mess.  It's laced with heavy metals, acids and carcinogens.  If spilled on land, the soil usually has to be dug out.   If spilled  in waterways, like the Kalamazoo River, the dilutent separates out, rises to the surface, vaporizes into a toxic cloud, while the remainder, the bitumen, sinks to the bottom and contaminates the river bed or lake bed or seabed.

Regular oil tends to float or so we believed before the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico.   But a good deal of it does float and can even be broken up and dispersed by wave action.

So, why do Enbridge, Redford and Harper insist on trafficking in dilbit at all?   Why not do the upgrading/refining in Alberta and export, instead, synthetic crude oil - the stuff that floats?  

That's right.   Build the infrastructure, hire Canadians, and refine the bitumen into its safest form right on site in Alberta.   More economic activity for Alberta, more revenue, a product that they don't have to desperately shop around the globe.  No need to import costly dilutents into Alberta, far less volume to pump out.  That also translates into fewer tankers needed to ply British Columbia's coastal waters carrying far less hazardous cargo.   That sounds like win, win, win, win.

So what's wrong with that idea?   Plenty.   That would mean having to reveal that Athabasca bitumen is a major, sub-prime asset that, in refined form, can't compete on world markets.   That would invite scrutiny of the Athabasca Con game.

Exposed, the marketable price of Athabasca synthetic crude, would invite sober scrutiny of other aspects of the venture - the subsidies, tax deferrals, and minimal royalties; the true viability (or myth) of carbon capture and sequestration; the massive energy and water consumption for extraction and upgrading;  postponed costs of environmental remediation; environmental impacts, current and future including the tailing ponds; the havoc of inevitable "boom and bust" cycles resulting from having to market the world's most expensive petroleum; the corruption of governments, federal and provincial; perhaps even the contribution to climate change and the sullying of Canada's reputation.

And that's why this simple compromise would be a non-starter for Enbridge, the Calgary Petroleum Club, the Athabasca operators, Redford and Harper.   They haven't cloaked this venture in so many blatant lies so that they can be smoked out into the light of day.

Yet it's a good and reasonable policy alternative for the Liberals or New Democrats.  Be a good neighbour to British Columbia, only ship the clean stuff, not that rank bitumen or dilbit.   Keep those refining jobs in Alberta.   Keep that refining infrastructure and income in Canada.  Cut down on dangerous and unnecessary tanker traffic.  It sells itself.   What could be more reasonable?

Force Harper and Redford and Enbridge to say that it's such a lousy, high-carbon product that it's not viable if we have to refine it here before export.   Force them to show that Athabasca bitumen is a sub-prime asset.   Make them show how reckless and short-sighted their bitumen obsession has made them.

Canada's Sub-Prime Disaster Waiting in Harper's Wings

One sector known for being a holdout on climate change is the financial community.   Some of the most outlandish denialist journalism has come (and too often still does) from once credible outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and Financial Post.

But now they're being overtaken by reality.  Denialism, no matter how loud and influential and constant, cannot stop the steady advance of climate change and that makes it ultimately self-defeating.   The flat-earthers learned that in their day.  Wishful thinking and denialism are losing strategies.

A new day may be upon us as even the Financial Times seems to acknowledge the writing on the wall:

A new project has asked more than 1,000 of the world’s biggest asset owners to say what their exposure is to climate risks and what they are doing about it. 

Julian Poulter, executive director of the Asset Owners Disclosure Project, says it is becoming more important that institutions understand and disclose the impact that climate change could have  on their portfolios.

There is increasing certainty that climate change is happening and that its impacts are going to be profound. The International Energy Agency says that the world is on course for average temperature rises of at least 4C, not the 2C targeted by policy makers, adding that if we are to stay within the 2C target, two-thirds of fossil fuel reserves must remain in the ground.

“The year ahead will be dominated by growing tension between ever-stronger evidence of climate change and the inadequate policy response,” says Nick Robins, head of the climate change centre at HSBC. Awareness of the severity of climate impacts is likely to be further strengthened in September, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) publishes its fifth review of the science of climate change.

This implies that high-carbon assets will face increasing regulatory constraints and a growing risk of becoming stranded assets. Yet the average pension fund portfolio has 55 per cent of its assets invested in high-carbon sectors or sectors greatly exposed to climate change, Mr Poulter points out.

The range of sectors he highlights – such as oil and gas, energy, transport, manufacturing and the financing that funds these activities – gives a good idea of how affected most portfolios will be.

“As universal owners, they are exposed to the impacts of climate change in all regions, asset classes and industries,” he says.

“The only realistic method for asset owners to manage climate risk is to hedge their portfolios – to invest in low-carbon assets so that when carbon is re-priced, either directly or indirectly, the destruction of value in their high-carbon investments is offset by an increase in value in their low-carbon investments.”

The first step in this rebalancing of portfolios is for institutions to find out how exposed their current investments are, and then to tell people about it.

This is a significant leap for the sector, which has a tendency to be secretive. “There is a crisis of transparency in this industry,” Mr Poulter says.

“Asset owners have never been put on the spot before.”

And there, laid bare before you, is the folly of Stephen Harper and Canada's bitumen traffickers.   "...two-thirds of fossil fuel reserves must remain in the ground - the destruction of value in their high-carbon investments"   There it is, in a nutshell.

When business recognizes that two-thirds of fossil fuel reserves must remain in the ground that guts the value of the world's carbon-filthiest and most expensive petroleum resource, bitumen.   Investors are already waking up to the looming destruction of value in their high-carbon investments - bitumen or, more to the point, the companies that produce, refine and export the stuff.

Asset owners, i.e. investment funds, are now on the spot and they've never been put on this spot before.   They have to be realistic about the reality and impact of climate change not only on the environment but on the portfolio they're selling to their investors.   It's their asses on the line now.

There is a major campaign now underway to force academic institutions to divest holdings in high-carbon resources.   When the investment community follows suit, as it will, all the King's horses and all the King's men in Ottawa and Calgary and Edmonton will no longer be able to mask the reality that Athabasca bitumen is a horribly sub-prime asset on which they have been recklessly gambling the economy and fiscal stability of our country.

The fact that bitumen is unjustifiably expensive to produce and transport coupled with the fact that it's the highest-carbon variety of ersatz petroleum on the planet should be enough to persuade any rational, responsible leader to act prudently.   Add to that all the other factors - the tax deferrals; the subsidies and grants; the resources squandered on extraction including energy and water;  the ecological devastation, existing and potential;  the deferred (perhaps permanently) remediation; the carbon emissions associated with extraction, processing and transportation; the devastatingly overheated Alberta "boom and bust" economy; this may be the biggest and costliest blunder in Canadian history.

It's one thing for Stephen Harper to ignore reality.   He does that as a matter of course just as he ignored the alarms of the onrushing 2008 economic meltdown while ushering Canada toward U.S.-style casino capitalism.

It's another thing altogether for our Liberal and New Democrat leaders not to recognize the peril of our sub-prime Athabasca bitumen and it's cowardly of them not to stand up for the Canadian public and try to stop this from getting any worse than it already is.

Folly, sheer folly.
 

Enbridge Pulls Out All the Stops

In yesterday's paper there was a story that, contrary to eco-terrorists' claims, dilbit floats and so is quite amenable to conventional oil spill recovery efforts.   The claim, naturally, came from an Enbridge spokesman.

Guess what?   He's right.  Dilbit, the mixture of bitumen and the dilutents necessary to lower its viscosity enough for it to be able to be pumped through pipelines, does indeed float.

Dilbit floats for a while.   Then the dilutents separate out of the bitumen.   The dilutents vaporize on the surface into a toxic cloud.  The bitumen sinks to the bottom.   As in the bitumen-lined bottom of the Kalamazoo River where Enbridge is balking at demands it clean up its mess.

Here are a couple of other facts that Enbridge seems to have overlooked.   The spill recovery fleet it will deploy is capable of handling a 10,000 barrel spill of conventional oil.  The supertankers that will run out of Kitimat will carry 300,000 barrels, not 10,000.  And, while Enbridge's fleet of oil spill recovery vessels looks impressive, it can only operate effectively in calm waters.   In rough waters it can't put out to sea much less recover spilled oil much less recover sinking bitumen.   And if there's a hallmark of the northern B.C. coast it's rough water, seriously rough water.   Waves from 10 to 30-metres high.

Enbridge is playing to the gullible.   They want the public to believe fantasies such as the one about how two tugboats can keep a laden supertanker safe against the ravages of the Hecate Strait.  Two veteran Canadian Navy commanders have already testified that's nonsense.

But, still, it gets in the papers and those who are disposed to want to believe such things will point to it with righteous indignation and accuse critics of being alarmist.   And that's really what Enbridge is aiming for.

Jack Knox It Straight Out of the Park

Victoria Times Colonist scribe Jack Knox has it right.   It's not eco-hippies who will stop Harper's Northern Gateway pipeline, it's the heart of middle-class Canada who will do that job.

The panel reviewing Enbridge’s proposal to build a 1,150-kilometre pipeline from Alberta to a terminal at Kitimat will spend until Jan. 11 hearing presentations from more than 270 Victorians, all of whom signed up for the opportunity at least 15 months ago.

First up was [Bill] Eisenhauer, with a message echoed throughout the day: Northern Gateway represents a rush to sell off a precious resource in a reckless fashion, the threat to the environment outweighing the benefit. “There are many, many other less risky and less toxic ways to generate economic growth,” he testified.

Eisenhauer is not an eco-hippie. He wore a suit and tie, no hackey sack in sight. He’s a solid community guy: a 45-year-old dad who has his own communications business, sits on the Victoria Hospice Foundation board, coaches a Bays United soccer team and helped organize the local leg of the Olympic torch relay.

In other words, he’s mainstream, the kind of voter whose opinion carries weight with politicians. His is the voice — or at least a voice — of Middle Canada. “That is one of the reasons I thought it was important that I make the effort,” he said later.

He’s not alone. While the list of speakers is liberally sprinkled with environmental activists, Friday’s Ocean Pointe waiting room looked more like a United Church service than a Grateful Dead concert.

That’s not the image they get across the Rockies, where a different narrative is told. The conventional Albertan perspective is that the world needs oil, we have it, we just need to get it to market. Our traditional customers are in the U.S. heartland, but the Americans have rejected the Keystone pipeline that would take it there. Besides, the oil companies can get a much higher price from the Asians, so let’s build a pipeline to the coast and sell to them instead.

Alberta and Ottawa freely malign British Columbians opposed to their damned bitumen pipelines as eco-radicals, extremists.  Many, perhaps even most, of us are grey-haired, lifelong law-abiding, middle class citizens for whom the British Columbia/Alberta border is a pipeline Rubicon.   It endangers us, our province and our way of life.  That can't be allowed to happen.

Enbridge Public Hearings Coming to Victoria. Public Told to Bugger Off Down the Road.

There won't be any public at the Enbridge public hearings when they reach Victoria in January.   The hearings will be closed to the public.   The hearing room will admit only registered speakers, one guest per, the media and the apparently terrified Joint Review Panel members.

Spectators will not be allowed to attend Victoria hearings into the Enbridge Northern Gateway project in January, to avoid the risk of demonstrations.

Instead, people interested in watching the proceedings will be sent about three kilometres away to the Ramada Hotel on Gorge Road, where they can watch a live video feed. The hearings are being held at the Delta Ocean Pointe.

Victoria is obviously a hotbed of radical dissent and murderous anarchy in the fevered minds of the Joint Review Panel.

Two Near Misses in Two Days

Two shipping near misses off Kitimat in two days.   Thursday the deep sea freighter, Tern Arrow, lost engine power and wound up drifting for three hours in Laredo Sound south of Kitimat.   You won't see this in any Enbridge ads but the ship was adrift in 40 knot winds and heavy seas, very far from the worst conditions that often prevail in that area.

On Tuesday night, a loaded German container ship had to alter course to dodge a fishing boat and ran aground on a sand bar south of Prince Rupert.   Fortunately it was only sand, the hull wasn't holed and the ship was able to be pulled off the sand bar by tugs.

What's important is to keep in mind that it will only take one supertanker sinking on the north coast to create truly unimaginable ecological disaster and that nobody - not Ottawa, not Alberta, not Enbridge, not our Chinese bosses - has any idea of what to do about; a spill of bitumen blanketing the rocky bottom 600 feet down.

The north coast seas are fierce.   120-knot winds can occur.   30-metre waves have been recorded.   The Hecate Strait is rated the 6th most dangerous to navigation on the planet.

Adding Insult to Injury - Northern Gateway Style

It seems Harper isn't finished working over British Columbia in preparation for forcing through the Northern Gateway bitumen pipeline-supertanker venture.

He's gutted our fisheries regulations, ditto for our marine ecosystem protections.  He's moved our emergency oil spill centre to Quebec.  He's neutered environmental assessment procedures.  He's closed down Coast Guard stations and shut down entire portions of Fisheries and Oceans, effectively eliminating the monitors and defenders of our coastline.

Now Harper is putting Fisheries & Oceans staff into service with Team Enbridge.

Enbridge Inc.'s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline project is getting special attention from the federal Fisheries Department, according to an internal email.

In what critics call an unprecedented step, the department has listed a "Northern Gateway Liaison" at a top level of its organizational chart, under a reorganization prompted by the 2012 budget's sweeping Fisheries Act amendments.

The position will report directly to the executive director of the National Ecosystems Management Branch at the department's headquarters.

"This suggests an unprecedented level of access and engagement for a specific project," said Green party leader Elizabeth May, former adviser to a federal environment minister. "This is the reality of a government that has told the bureaucracy, 'be prepared to make sure this project goes through.' "

A Free e-book You Won't Take to the Beach

Think you know what you need to know about Enbridge, the pipeline giant behind the Northern Gateway project?   Chances are, you don't.

ONEarth.org has a three part feature on Enbridge and the Kalamazoo River bitumen catastrophe that you might find interesting.   You can even get it free in e-book format.

Why Bitumen Supertankers Are Far Too Risky for BC's Coast

The Globe & Mail has published a 7-screen graphic detailing the northern BC coast Enbridge/Harper want to expose to supertanker catastrophe.

From pointing out that the Hecate Strait is considered the fourth most dangerous for navigation in the world to the proven perils and pitfalls posed to supertankers plying the Douglas Channel for the 10 to 12-hour trip needed to get from Kitimat to the open sea (Hecate Strait), the madness of this high-risk venture of virtually no benefit to British Columbia is obvious.

Against our will, without our consent.

Another Outrage for Coastal British Columbians

This is what you're up against when Ottawa, Alberta, Big Oil and Enbridge come to play.   The pipeline operator, gaming an already rigged system for clearance to build the Northern Gateway pipeline/Kitimat supertanker operation has released a video on its web site in which it shows the Douglas Channel these tankers will have to ply to make their way into the even more treacherous Hecate Strait.   This is how Enbridge wants you to see it.

For the purposes of public relations, however, Enbridge's depiction sweeps the Douglas Channel clean.   It removes Coste Island, Dorothy Island; Kitsaway, Gribbell and Gill Islands; Loretta, Maitland and Hawksbury Islands; Promise, Hinton and Farrant Islands;  Fin, Campania and Ashdown Islands;  South Moresby Island and Grenville Channel.   And, naturally, the Enbridge depiction shows nothing of the threacherous currents and tides that race through these narrow passages nor any of the innumerable rock features that lie just below the surface lying in wait for a passing tanker gone slightly astray.

To Enbridge, the route out of Kitimat is all clear sailing which, given the way Harper's environmental assessment process has been rigged, is probably a safe bet.   What's not safe, with the "Keystone Kops" of bitumen trafficking, is the British Columbia coast.

Note- if you compare the Enbridge screen shot of Douglas Channel with the actual map you'll see the tanker shown in black appears to have run aground on Gribbell Island.  Quelle surprise!

Northern Gateway Hearings a Stacked Deck

Those who suspect that Steve Harper has "fixed" the environmental assessment of the Northern Gateway pipeline initiative won't be surprised to learn the board reviewing the proposal has ruled the U.S. Transportation Safety Board report into the Enbridge pipeline fiasco on the Kalamazoo River in Michigan won't be admitted into evidence.

"...the board's report won't be viewed as reliable evidence and won't be considered in the panel's final ruling, a spokeswoman said Monday.

Annie Roy, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, said the board's reports can only be used as "an aid to cross-examination" during the oral questioning period.

"An aid to cross-examination is generally not considered evidence and cannot be relied on for the truth of its content," Roy said in an email.

"[The TSB Kalamazoo report] will not typically be included on the public registry and will not be considered by the panel when making its recommendations. The panel will however consider the answers provided to questions using the aid."

In other words, Enbridge gets to spin this any way it likes and that will be accepted by Harper's rigged jury.

A Glimpse of Enbridge Muscle

Enbridge Muscle in Michigan

This is what happens when you don't play ball with Enbridge.   You wind up with a couple of armed guards on your property - just in case.

Livingstone county farmer, Keith Huff, has an Enbridge problem.   He's in a right-of-way court dispute with the pipeline company.   Unbeknownst to Huff, Enbridge went to court to get a restraining order against Huff and sent a pair of gun-toting security goons on to his property, just in case.


[Huff] "maintains the company is trespassing because he has not reached a compensation settlement with Enbridge for access to his property.   He said he wants an appraisal done before workers step foot onto his property.


"Enbridge spokesman Joe Martucci says the guards were placed near Huff''s property as a precautionary measure to ensure Huff didn't interfere with the project's early work.


"He said the company doesn't believe Huff poses a physical threat."


Did you get that?   Enbridge doesn't believe Keith Huff poses any physical threat so they get a restraining order against the guy and park two armed guards on  his property.

Enbridge Shut Out Again

Ottawa, Alberta and the rest of Canada want to ram Enbridge down British Columbia's throat as operator of the environmental calamity they call the Northern Gateway pipeline but the Americans aren't so indifferent.

Following Enbridge's latest pipeline failure, in Wisconsin, the U.S. transportation secretary has ruled Enbridge won't be allowed to restart the pipeline until it can prove it's safe.   In other words, what Enbridge says about the safety of that pipeline means diddly squat.

"Accidents like the one in Wisconsin are absolutely unacceptable," U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement Tuesday.

"I will soon meet with Enbridge's leadership team and they will need to demonstrate why they should be allowed to continue to operate this Wisconsin pipeline without either a significant overhaul or a complete replacement."

This is, of course, the same outfit that the Alberta government, the federal government, and just about all the provincial governments other than British Columbia's argue should be allowed, without objection, to run a potentially catastrophic bitumen pipeline across remote and seisimically active British Columbia wilderness and out to Asia via supertanker traffic through insanely treacherous coastal waters.

Really.  Are you f--king serious?  This is precisely where the rubber meets the road.  This is where this nonsense ends.  Alberta is one thing but the way we see the rest of Canada and our bond to confederation will be directly impacted by the response of the other provinces.  If you allow us to be trampelled underfoot by the petro-pols in Alberta and Parliament Hill, our response will be utterly predictable.  Your choice.

Sometimes It's the Hot Button Moments that Smoke Out Scammers

And by scammers I'm referring to the Alberta and Harper governments.   When B.C. premier Christie Clark pushed the revenue-sharing hot button in opposing the Northern Gateway pipeline/supertanker proposal, the scammers showed their hand.

Oh the country would fall apart, they crowed, if provinces could erect walls against inter-provincial transport of goods.  Imagine, they said, if Alberta began levying charges on truckloads of B.C. lumber heading to eastern markets.

Yeah, imagine that?  Only imagine those B.C. trucks plying Alberta highways, not with lumber, but with loads of hazmat cargoes, the type that can wreck ecosystems.   And imagine those B.C. trucks driven by truckers with really bad driving records who just happen to be driving without any insurance.   And imagine those trucks being owned by trucking companies that have no assets to make good on losses they inflicted.   

Imagine that because the scammers won't let on that it's true.   They don't want those details messing up their perfectly lovely straw men.

But, you see, B.C. trucks transiting Alberta do have insurance.   Alberta insists on it.  And they do have to comply with Alberta safety standards and traffic regulations.   Alberta insists on that too.  And if they cause losses while in Alberta, those losses are made good.   But they don't want the same deal for British Columbia on their pipeline scam. 

The margins on this deal are slim.   Athabasca bitumen is expensive stuff.   It's expensive to extract out of the ground, expensive to put in a transportable state, expensive to transport, expensive to process into synthetic petroleum products.   So the bottom line, if it's to be kept in the black, demands corner cutting and an awful lot of looking the other way.

The proposed pipeline operator, Enbridge's safety record is well documented and speaks for itself and it's lousy.   Yet they want British Columbia to look the other way at pipelines crossing truly remote and challenging, seismically active, mountainous terrain to be pumped into the holds of supertankers that will then ply the treacherous waters of the Hecate Strait and Dixon Entrance.   And they want British Columbia to ignore the liability cut-outs they have crafted for this scam so that, when catastrophe occurs, they can get away cheap.

From the east we hear a chorus of "jobs, jobs, jobs" and the accusations that British Columbia is a greedy spoiler trying to subvert the best thing Canada has going for it.   Maybe that's the way some see it when they don't have to bear the risks and face the losses.   That's certainly the way Alberta and Ottawa see it.   But they've opened a delightful window that lets us see through them.   We can see this thing is a set up.   Is it really our fault if we don't play along?

The Northern Gateway Liability Trap

A major part of Harper's perfidy lies in the way the Northern Gateway is structured with liability cut-outs to let the major players escape liability.   IslandTides.com has an eye-opening feature on how coastal B.C. is being hung out to dry.   In another column, retired CBC journo Patrick Brown outlines the truly diabolical nature of the diluted bitumen Harper and Enbridge want to bring to British Columbia and our coast.

Read these reports.   Read how badly we're being set up.   Then explain what kind of government would do this to its own people.