Category Archives: Oil&Gas

Dix Fails to Call Clark on ‘Debt Free BC’ Whopper

Economics, Energy and Resources, LNG, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers, Politics, Western Canada
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On the side of the Christy Clark bus are the words “Debt Free BC”.

This could mean one of two things – we are now debt free or we will be. Either way, this statement stands as the all-time whopper in BC history and that covers a hell of a lot of territory.

I do not rely on politically-oriented think tanks for my information, rather noted independent economist Erik Andersen. If you add the $70 Billion in direct debt projected in Clark’s latest Budget to secret “taxpayer obligations” relating to private power contracts and public-private partnership (P3) infrastructure deals, you get – wait for it – over $170 BILLION, that’s with a “B”.

What is important to know about the debt is that in 2001, when the Liberals took over, every man, woman and child owed a shade over $8,000. Today we each owe $40,000 – five times what we owed before this so-called business-oriented, fiscally careful bunch of cheats and hypocrites took over.

No matter how you crunch the numbers, the NDP governments in their decade look like misers and skinflints next to this bunch.

Assuming that Premier Clark is referring to her “Prosperity Fund”, this is pie in the sky and cow pie at that.

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You may remember that the Premier first announced this as imminent. Now it is after the 2017 election! It might be added that by then, BC will be in even deeper financial trouble than today.

There is little, if any, certainty that the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) will ever come on stream. There must be markets for it offshore, since the domestic market is flooded in natural gas from “fracking”. To give you a bit o f a feel for this, only a few months ago, the industry and government flacks were talking about the huge Asian need for our gas in LNG form, then recently learned that our biggest potential customer, China, was sitting on some of the world’s biggest unconventional gas reserves. Russia has the largest supply of gas in the world.

The plain truth of the matter is that a large scale LNG industry in BC is speculative at best.

Let’s look at a couple of natal difficulties faced by companies.

A long-term market demand such as would justify LNG from BC just isn’t likely to be there in four years’ time.

Secondly, the LNG industry faces huge environmental hurdles. Two major questions in that regard are:

  1. Where will the massive amount of water needed come from? We simply don’t have “free water” available.
  2. After this water is laced with highly toxic chemicals, where will if go? Into the water table?

These two matters only touch some of the environmental issues – which include the climate impacts of all the greenhouse gases associated with this industry.

The underpinning of the industry is hundreds of millions of dollars in pipelines and port facilities. Premier Clark wants voters to brush aside these and many collateral concerns, thus convince voters that in four or five years all these issues will be resolved, including air-tight contracts with Asian customers to take this LNG. (It should be added that if, say, China, signs such a contract, the minute they no longer need our product they will vanish into the atmosphere.).

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It surprises me that Adrian Dix is playing softball with these issues. This is looking like ’09 all over again.

Mr. Dix, your position on the Kinder Morgan tanker port proposal was nice but marred by the delay. I told you many months ago that if you were opposed to Enbridge that logic should make you opposed to Kinder Morgan as the issues are the same.

Your position favouring LNG plants is puzzling, if only because you seem to be following Clark’s pied piper’s seductive path to supporting a dream that is almost certain never to come true.

To you, Mr. Dix, there is no way this government can win on its merits – you have to give it to them and you seem to be trying your best to do just this. What is truly troublesome is your amiable Adrian approach, with an endless stream of small policy announcements – sort of a fart a day.

I realize that people tell you that they want a politer politics in BC. That’s what Bob Skelly tried in the 80s and you know what happened to him.

Politics is a blood sport and your nicely, nicely approach is letting Premier Clark get away with murder. Despite a fivefold increase in the provincial debt, she’s painting you as wastrels and her government as  careful money managers!

Your best issue, the appalling fiscal policy of the Campbell/Clark government, is being used as a positive thing for them and you are responding rather than attacking. We’re seeing a tactic similar to when agents acting for George W. Bush, a draft dodger, denigrated the much-decorated John Kerry’s war record so they could lay claim to being strong on national defence. You’re becoming the essence of John Kerry, reacting weakly on issues that should have you on the attack!

On environmental issues you seem to be passive and non-threatening! These issues, along with the dismal Liberal record on money matters, ought to have you leading firmly, not cowering behind a cloud of good manners.

Mr. Dix, it’s yours to win and to quote the Baseball manager Lou Durocher, “nice guys finish last”.

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Video: Vancouver Musician Takes on Kinder Morgan Pipeline, Tankers

Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers
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Check out this new song and music video from Vancouver artist CR Avery, produced by the Sierra Club of BC. According to the organization, which released the video on its youtube page this past weekend, “With riveting spoken word and striking images, CR Avery connects the dots between pipelines, oil tankers and climate change. He is unsparing in speaking truth to power about the companies leading us down the path toward climate catastrophe and the movement building against them.”

The video and song, titled “Thief Behind the Mask”, offer a poetic, uncompromising perspective on Texas-based pipeline giant Kinder Morgan’s plans to turn Vancouver into a major shipping port for the Alberta Tar Sands, among other controversial, interconnected fossil fuel projects. The Sierra Club notes, “These pipelines would drive expansion of the tar sands and spike the impacts of global warming everywhere”

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Enbridge Review Panel’s Skimpy Insurance Requirements Fail to Reassure Public

Economics, Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers
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The news out of the Joint Review Panel looking into the Enbridge pipeline should have a profound effect on us all.

One of the conditions is a requirement that Enbridge carry close to $1 billion in insurance, plus $100 million on hand to cover losses from spills.

I find this interesting, since normally an assessment of future damages covered is accompanied by an assessment of the risk to be covered. What is the size of the risk and how big a part of that risk will be taken? This so in every kind of insurance – be it life, casualty, automobile, what have you. This means not only must there be an assessment of the risk – i.e. is there likely to be a loss – but how much is a loss going to cost? This is especially true of casualty insurance, as the Joint Review Panel is dealing with here.

The second critical point is whether or not the insurer will continue to cover Enbridge after a loss has occurred? Can they cancel, leaving Enbridge’s further damages up to us the people?

This story will be seen (Enbridge hopes) as an encouraging sign, because opponents will be shut up now that these big numbers are involved.

I am not impressed – indeed quite the opposite – for this indicates that the Joint Panel thinks that there’s a risk involved. There is in fact acertainty. Dealing with this as simply “a risk” and announcing the coverage required is asking us to accept that “risk” because the damages are prepaid. Moreover, the amount of insurance involved is nowhere near what the ultimate cost will be and ignores the question: what will the long range cost to our environment be and how do you comopute that loss?

If one uses, as an example, the Enbridge spill into the Kalamazoo River, two years later they had used up all of their insurance of $650 million. The cleanup continues and the cost is expected to be over a billion dollars and much of the damage is forever.

Enbridge will be required to demonstrate insurance coverage at $950 billion – roughly equivalent cost of the Kalamazoo spill. BUT, the Kalamazoo spill was easily accessed. There were no mountain ranges like the Rockies or the Coast Range; no Rocky Mountain Trench; no Great Bear Rainforest to contend with. Let us, for God’s sake, ask a key question: How does Enbridge have access to spills on land? How does it get labour and heavy equipment to the spill? Doesn’t the Kalamazoo spill demonstrate that there can never be a total cleanup?

The BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has cost, so far, about $36 billion and rising.

Another critical question is who insures oil tankers, especially when many of them will be owned by companies flying a flag of convenience like Panama, the Cayman Islands and the like?

How is a coastal spill to be cleaned up and at whose cost?

What the people of British Columbia are certainly to have are spills on land and sea for which they will pay much of the cleanup out of their taxes. What we are also certain to have is enormous environmental damage forever.

Finally, the pronouncement of the Joint Review Panel should be assessing the frequency and probability of damage and laying that before the public for a decision as to whether or not these pipelines should be built in the first place.

This won’t be done and the Harper government is on record giving its approval of these pipelines no matter what the National Energy Board recommends.

Given the Kalamazoo experience, how does Enbridge control and clean up a spill when the only access is by helicopter? Every way one looks at this case shows huge costs – much paid by the public – with permanent damage to our environment.

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Ten Oil Spills in Two Weeks

Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers, Politics
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Last week I published a story titled “Five Oil Spills in One Week: ‘Accidents’ or Business as Usual”. Within an hour of publication came the news of a sixth spill from a CP derailment in nothern Ontario. As the story made the rounds on social media in the ensuing days, readers provided updates as new spills continued to unfold. One week later, the tally stands at 10.

News of the latest – a biodiesel spill from Suncor’s plant in Port Moody, BC – came in this morning. Said Ben West of ForestEthics Advocacy upon learning of the spill, “At the time we were working on some campaign materials reminding candidates for the upcoming BC provincial election that they should be paying close attention to the nine oil industry spills, leaks, derailments and disasters that have taken place in North America in the last two weeks. And then this happened right here in BC — amazing.”

City officials have confirmed the leak of approximately 220 barrels of biodiesel from a storage tank at the facility.

Other spills not covered last week’s article include:

I want to be clear that these spills involve a range of fossil fuels – from diluted bitumen to hydraulic fluid to Tar Sands waste ponds and petrochemical products. It’s not just the range of materials and situations in which these malfunctions have occurred, but the broad geographic distribution of these spills that give one pause. We’ve now seen spills in BC, Alberta, the Northwest Territories, Ontario, Newfoundland, Minnesota, Michigan, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas.

No matter their size or nature, none of these are healthy for the airsheds and watercourses into which they spill, nor the people and animals subjected to their toxic effects. They all serve as a reminder of the systemic danger of an economic system dependent on fossil fuels – particularly in the era of “extreme energy”, where we’ve already got to the good, cheap, easy stuff and what remains is, to quote Barack Obama, “dirty, dwindling and dangerous.”

“The oil industry, it seems, has been in total disarray over the last couple of weeks,” remarks Ben West, on the eve of a BC election in which energy issues should figure prominently.

“This election is a key moment for political leaders to step forward to defend our coast and our local communities. We hope these incidents are a wake up call for all BC politicians.”

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Video: Eco-Footprint Founder Dr. Bill Rees on Resources, the $7 Billion and You

Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas
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Throughout this fascinating hour and a half SFU-sponsored discssion, Dr. Bill Rees, the founder of the “eco-footprint” concept, poses the question: Can the world really support the future population? Drawing on well-researched ecological, historical and sociological evidence, Rees suggests that the combination of human nature, technology and access to cheap fossil fuels has led to “a four-fold compounding of human numbers in just a hundred years.”

“What we have become accustomed to – this inordinate period of growth – is the single most abnormal period in the history of humankind. There has never been anything like it,” Rees told the audience at SFU Harbour Centre last month.

With human demand for resources fast outstripping supply, can the world address issues like poverty in developing nations and accommodating a further predicted 2.5 billion people by 2050 – all while reducing total consumption of energy and materials to sustainable levels?

In this must-watch presentation, Rees calls for “a new cultural narrative that shifts the values of society from growth (getting bigger) to development (getting better) – from competitive individualism, greed and narrow self-interest toward community, cooperation and our collective interests in repairing the earth for survival. We need to begin to exercise those uniquely human qualities of high intelligence, forward planning and moral judgement.”

“Why should we do this? Because we’ve reached the point in the history of our species where our individual interests have essentially converged with our collective interests. No individual, no nation can be sustainable on its own in a world entrained in climate change, ocean acidification and a dozen other trends. We need to come together to exercise our almost infinite capacity for cooperative arrangement to solve these problems is ways is which all of us can survive into the future.”

Rees sees the “contraction of the human enterprise” by conscious choice, deliberate planning and working together as the only logical conclusion – resulting in a “well-planned, orderly and cooperative descent toward a sustainable, steady-state economy of sufficiency for all. It’s just a question of whether we have the intelligence and the capacity to plan together to live within nature’s capacity.”

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Five Oil Spills in One Week: ‘Accidents’ or Business as Usual?

Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers, Water and Hydrocarbons
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UPDATE: Since publication of this story this morning, yet another oil spill has come across the wire – a CP Rail spill from a derailment in northern Ontario – raising the total of spills this past week to SIX.

It’s been another appallingly bad week for proponents of pipeline safety and new oil infrastructure. If the industry’s woeful historical record – from the Exxon Valdez to BP’s Gulf of Mexico catastrophe to Enbridge’s trashing of the Kalamazoo – isn’t enough to turn people off of new pipelines and tanker routes, this slew of recent spills should seal the deal.

These incidents couldn’t have come at a worse time for the oil and pipeline industries, as US President Barack Obama prepares to announce his final decision in the coming months on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline from the Alberta Tar Sands to Port Arthur, Texas.

Let’s review the record over the last week:

  • This past friday, ExxonMobil’s Pegasus Pipeline coated the streets of Mayflower, Arkansas with what CNN describes as a “smelly, asphalt-like crude” (i.e. diluted bitumen from the Alberta Tar Sands – the same kind the proposed Keystone XL would carry). These photos illustrate the effects of the spill on the sleepy Little Rock suburb – see the viral video captured by a local resident below.
  • Enbridge was back at it again last week, with the fourth recorded spill in two months along its Norman Wells Pipeline through the Northwest Territories. The company has leaked an estimated million litres of oil since February, 2011, from this one pipeline, prompting the National Energy Board to order an engineering assessment of the chronically malfunctioning line.
  • Meanwhile, back at the Alberta Tar Sands, Suncor was dealing with (and furiously downplaying) a leak from one of its massive waste ponds into the Athabasca River. This comes on the heels of a leaked memo to Conservative Resources Minister Joe Oliver, which acknowledged routine spillage from these ponds throughout the Tar Sands.
  • Over the weekend, Michigan was hit with another spill – this time up to 500 gallons of hydraulic oil spilled into the Lansing Grand River during an equipment malfunction at a local utility.
  • For those who would look to rail as an alternative to pipelines for transporting oil, there was the derailment last week of a CP Rail train, spilling an estimated 30,000 gallons of its crude cargo in western Minnesota.

This latest spate of spills should give pause to President Obama as he contemplates the Keystone XL – and to Canadian citizens and lawmakers debating several new pipeline proposals of our own.

It’s time to put to rest the notion that oil spills are “accidents”. They are, rather, a routine function of the business of extracting, transporting, and consuming oil – a good reason to spend our energy and resources on developing sustainable alternatives, not further entrenching our dependence on fossil fuels through new oil infrastructure.

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Mother Nature, US Govt Chase Shell Out of Arctic

Energy and Resources, International, Oil&Gas, Politics, Water and Hydrocarbons
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The Shell drilling rig that ran aground, The Kulluk (Greenpeace photo).
The Shell drilling rig that ran aground, The Kulluk (Greenpeace photo).

Shell Oil, the first energy company granted coveted Arctic drilling permits by the US Government, is shutting down operations for all of 2013, nearly as quickly as they began. Shell’s hand is being forced by the Interiror Department, following a scathing report which castigated the company for a series of misadventures in 2012 and early 2013.

The cancellation of this year’s drilling program represents an about-face from the confident predictions made last year by the Shell executive heading up the operation, David Lawrence. The Arctic drilling would be “relatively easy”, Lawrence told Dow Jones at the outset of Shell’s foray into Alaska’s Beaufort and Chukchi Seas.

The report by the Interior Department, released earlier this month, found Shell was unprepared for Arctic drilling and failed to properly oversee its contractors. Department Secretary Ken Salazar put it succinctly on a telephone press conference discussing the report. “Shell screwed up in 2012,” remarked Salazar, who stipulated that future drilling would be contingent on more detailed plans and an independent audit of the company’s management systems.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV4UY52FegU

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BC’s Fossil Fuel Folly

Energy and Resources, Fracking, LNG, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers
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Perhaps the big white banner with black letters at the recent American protest of the Keystone XL pipeline summarizes BC’s fossil fuel folly. “Fossil Fuels? Fossil Fools,” it declares. The “o”s are painted a hazardous yellow, and within each is an unequivocal “x”. The protest’s specific target is the pipeline intended to carry carbon-intensive crude from Alberta’s tar-sands to refineries in the US southern Gulf Coast; the protest’s broader target is the industrial development that is adding carbon dioxide to an already stressed biosphere.

People who are concerned about global climate change are watching the steep rise of global carbon dioxide emissions. While a few nations have been heroic in their efforts to cut these emissions, international efforts have been eminently unsuccessful. So BC’s strategy to export energy — massive amounts of LNG, increasing quantities of coal, and perhaps a tide-water port for Alberta’s bitumen — is generating justifiable scrutiny, criticism and concern. People are counting carbon, dreading the consequences and registering their objections.

Not surprisingly, numerous rallies are being held opposing the Keystone XL pipeline. Natural gas is also the subject of worry. Although it’s an energy that produces only half the carbon dioxide of coal when burned, some experts think that the massive drilling required, combined with the escaped methane from fracking, may make natural gas as carbon intensive as coal. Coal, too, is a target of protest. It causes ecological damage when mined, produces numerous toxic pollutants when burned, and its industrial use generates the world’s largest single source of global carbon dioxide emissions.

Since we all live on a planet with one shared atmosphere, BC cannot embark on a strategy of exporting fossil fuel energy without calculating the global consequences. So it must expect both criticism and resistance from those who are counting carbon. Indeed, BC cannot even claim the virtue that its forests are sequestering carbon because new evidence suggests that the mountain pine beetle infestation is so massive that the province’s forests are now carbon negative — they are producing more carbon dioxide than they are presently storing. Even BC’s claim that natural gas is a carbon bargain is suspect because any gains in reducing CO2 emissions will likely be lost by the energy-intensive process of compressing huge quantities of it for export as liquid natural gas (LNG). Then more greenhouse gases are emitted when transporting the LNG by ship to distant destinations.

If BC were truly interested in its carbon virtue, it might note a study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (Jane Petch, Island Tides, Feb. 28/13) which found that all BC’s energy needs could probably be met by hydro electricity. Electrical consumption in the province is flat and any increase in demand can likely be met by efficiency improvements. This ethical option is undermined by the expanding industrial demands of mining, gas production and LNG projects.

BC is attempting to justify its strategy of exporting LNG by arguing that this relatively clean fuel — a debatable claim — will displace the use of coal elsewhere, thereby reducing net global carbon dioxide emissions. But a global review of coal use suggests otherwise. And BC’s argument is further compromised by its record coal exports. A province more idealistic and less opportunistic could at least stabilize its share of global carbon dioxide emissions by cutting its coal exports to compensate for its LNG exports — something it is not considering.

Between 2001 and 2010 the US was able to reduce its coal use by 5 percent, helping it cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 1.7 percent (NewScientist, Nov. 17/12). But during that same period, global coal consumption increased by 47 percent, simply because other countries are dramatically increasing their consumption. As a fuel, coal is cheap, readily available, and its carbon dioxide output is wholly unregulated, unsanctioned and free. It now produces 40 percent of the world’s electricity. And global consumption is at record levels. China, which uses three times the US consumption of coal, is showing no signs of reducing its use. In fact, China has new coal-fired electrical plants in construction that will exceed the entire coal-fired production of electricity in the US.

According to statistics in NewScientist, the amount of coal used on the planet is staggering. “Global consumption is about 71 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, which is equal to the daily oil output of more than eight Saudi Arabias” (Ibid.). This means that any coal exported from BC will simply go to feed the voracious global hunger for energy. And any LNG exported will not displace coal; it will simply be added to the climate crisis already unfolding. And any export of LNG will will eventually compromise BC’s own energy needs.

If BC is going to export massive quantities of its natural gas, how is it to meet its own long-term energy needs? What are the environmental consequences of producing the extra energy required to power the drilling, compressing and mining of resources for export? What are the monetary and social costs of such a strategy? What are the economic traps in such infrastructure investment, considering that countries such as Australia already have 17 LNG plants in development? And what are the ethical implications of exporting fossil fuel energy to a world that is already wounding itself with excessive carbon dioxide emissions? Are these not valid questions that must be considered in BC’s energy strategy? From a considered perspective, BC is joining the march down the path of fossil fuel folly.

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Big-picture Thinking Needed to Protect Nature

Energy and Resources, Fracking, Mining, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers, Species At Risk
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Few places on Earth have been untouched by humans, according to a study in the journal Science. Satellite images taken from hundreds of kilometres above the planet reveal a world that we have irrevocably changed within a remarkably short time.

Although industrial projects like the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline or the recently defeated mega-quarry in Ontario typically grab the headlines and bring out public opposition, it’s often the combined impacts of a range of human activities on the same land base that threaten to drive nature beyond critical tipping points. Once those are passed, rapid ecological changes such as species extinction can occur.

For example, in British Columbia’s booming Peace Region, forestry, energy and mineral leases and licences are widespread and often multilayered in the same area. As various industries have exploited these “tenures”, a sprawling patchwork of large clearcuts, oil wells, dams and reservoirs, fracking operations and thousands of kilometres of seismic lines, roads and pipelines have come to dominate the landscape.

Today, more than 65 per cent of the region has felt the impact of industrial development, leaving little intact habitat for sensitive, endangered species such as caribou to feed, breed or roam. Degradation or destruction of habitat has convinced scientists that remaining herds in the region are no longer self-sustaining and are spiralling toward local extinction. First Nations, who have relied upon caribou as their primary source of food for thousands of years, can no longer hunt them. This is a clear violation of treaty rights.

This dire situation didn’t happen by accident or because of a laissez-faire approach to resource and land management. Numerous industries in the area have been operating legally and according to rules and regulations set by government.

But legal experts, such as those at the nongovernmental organization West Coast Environmental Law, believe a root cause of the problem lies in laws about land, resource and water management that are “hardwired” to fail communities and the environment. The narrow focus of those laws enables industries to operate in isolation from one another.

B.C., for example, has developed numerous individual laws, like the Forest and Range Practices Act, Oil and Gas Activities Act and Mines Act, alongside the regulated industries they enable. But the province lacks a legal framework to proactively and comprehensively manage the cumulative impacts of multiple resource industries operating within the same area.

Because of this, WCEL and its First Nations partners are engaged in a multi-year law reform project that aims to overhaul the way we currently oversee and regulate cumulative impacts, ranging from declining water quality that may arise as a result of multiple industries using a common resource, to emerging threats such as climate change.

A cumulative-impacts approach to governing resource development would upend the current management paradigm. It would focus on the management needs of the land, water, air, wildlife and indigenous communities that depend on them first, rather than the resources to be extracted. In practical terms, this would mean that, rather than focusing on what we should take from nature to create wealth and employment, we should first consider what must be retained in nature to sustain both wildlife and the well-being of local communities – such as clean air, safe drinking water and healthy local food.

At a recent symposium on managing the cumulative impacts of resource development in B.C., numerous speakers – from First Nations to academics to business leaders – stressed that effectively managing cumulative impacts will require new institutions and governance mechanisms, even new legal tools. More importantly, it will require our leaders to adopt a more proactive and holistic way of thinking about the world – one that recognizes that far from just being a place to extract resources like fossil fuels, timber and minerals, nature is our home. Nature provides our most fundamental needs and dictates limits to growth and so its protection should be our highest priority.

Managing our massive, growing human footprint on this planet more sustainably will require leadership, much of which is emerging from First Nations peoples who are on the frontlines of the day-to-day realities of cumulative environmental change. We need to look at the big picture rather than individual elements in isolation.

Dr. David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Ontario and Northern Canada Director-General Faisal Moola.

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Premier’s calculations for pipelines, fish farms, Site C Dam don’t add up

Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers, Politics
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Gary Mason’s column in the March 12 edition of The Globe and Mail, on Christy Clark, is very interesting. The premier is complaining about the lack of precision in the NDP’s plans and calls upon Adrian Dix to spell it all out.

What is most interesting is Ms. Clark’s position on issues and what she deems those issues to be. (Remember that the Liberals have raised the provincial debt and other taxpayer obligations by some five fold, which should limit the generosity of both leaders).

“So not only are the people going to compare me with Adrian Dix,” said Clark, “they will be comparing leadership with an absence of courage to tell people where his party where his party stands on things. If we get into a competition of ideas in this campaign, I believe we can win that battle because I believe the things I stand for are what British Columbians want: a strong economy, smaller government, jobs for our kids, a prosperity fund, lower taxes.”

Leaving aside the prosperity fund nonsense for a moment, these words could have been attributed to all premiers I have listened to going back to my own days in the Legislature. Mindless crap, motherhood and apple pie – but predictable.

Clearly, there are a number of things Ms. Clark does not wish to debate, especially the deplorable fiscal situation and scandals galore, with two fresh ones ongoing right now.

Let’s have a look at the promise involving the chimera she calls a “prosperity fund”.

This is simple barnyard droppings wrapped in a pretty package. You will remember that in the Throne Speech this “fund” would come to pass in two years. In an interview with Justine Hunter she admitted that might be up to five years – how long will it be Ms. Clark?

How about “never”.

The plain truth is that it will never happen. Even if LNG plants (the proposed sources of funds) sprang up all over the province, which they won’t, any revenue would be required for general taxation for a province Ms. Clark’s government, and the Campbell one before it, has left broke.

It would be just as accurate for Premier Clark to promise that our economy under a Liberal government – our “prosperity” – depends upon the Easter Bunny.

Let’s turn now to what the premier is not talking about – the environment.

Readers will recall that the environment has never been a major issue in elections. The media types who conduct and participate in the traditional debate never raise this as an issue because their bosses won’t tolerate anything that smacks of being anti-Liberal.

We have had a recent environmental question arise over a refinery to be built in Kitimat by David Black. Now this is the issue in a nutshell: Premier Clark, who has raised red flags regarding the proposed Enbridge pipeline to Kitimat, has hinted at her support for Black’s alternative venture, which would see diluted Alberta bitumen refined in Kitimat before being loaded onto tankers destined for other markets.

The premier says she opposes Enbridge because it doesn’t give BC sufficient revenue to compensate for the environmental ‘risk’. Black’s alternative involves a pipeline carrying the same product from the same place, along the same route, to the same destination, where it would then be refined before being loaded onto tankers. And yet, Clark somehow seems amenable to the newer proposal.

The only apparent difference is the greater share of provincial revenue and local jobs which Black’s proposal offers and the perceived lower risk of shipping refined products vs. diluted bitumen (only for the tankers – the pipeline would be moving the same Tar Sands product).

In essence the Liberal position is we will not approve these pipelines and tanker traffic unless the bribe is sufficient to permit us to overlook the risks.

Here is the crux of the matter. Surely all would agree that in order to meet the money versus pipelines and tankers issue we must assess what that risk is. That’s only common sense.

What, then, Premier Clark, do you assess these risks to be?

Surely there must be a formula. Tell us that it isn’t just flying by the seat of our pants, or pantsuits!

What studies has your government done to assess these risks? Have you looked at the history of pipelines the world over? Have you, more to the point, assessed the risks associated with Enbridge, whose record is appalling? Black, for his part, has zero experience moving oil products – hardly any more reassuring.

But it’s more than that, for you surely agree that before making this “risk for dough” assessment you must not only deal with the possibilities of a spill but what damages would flow.

What about, say, a spill in the Rockies, or in the Coast Range, or in the Rocky Mountain Trench or in the Great Bear Rain Forest? Or by tanker. In the case of pipelines, how in hell is a company going to get men and heavy machinery to the site?

I’m sure you’ve seen by now that you must not only assess the risk of harm in various sensitive areas, be they in a fjord, Vancouver Harbour, and in all sensitive areas, which, Premier, means everywhere in the province, but what the cost will be.

Are you familiar, Ms. Premier, with the Enbridge spill in the Kalamazoo River in July 2010? There, the spill was easily accessed yet 2½ years later it has still not been cleaned up.

I shouldn’t have to ask if you know the difference between dilbit (diluted bitumen) and refined oil.

But do you? Do you know what the consequences of dilbit accidents are?

Let’s call these spills/accidents for what they really are.

They are not risks but catastrophes waiting to happen. It’s not “if”, Premier Clark, but “when”.

What you are saying to the people of BC is that you are prepared to take a certain sum of money for inevitable “accidents”, wherever they happen and whatever damage they do.

At least be honest on this score so that the voting public has a clear understanding that for money you will abandon our heritage.

There are two other issues that I will go into in depth with as the days pass.

Your government is continuing to grant fish farm licenses in spite of Commissioner Bruce Cohen’s report. Indeed, your government is the landlord for all BC’s fish farms (signing off on the tenures they require to site and operate their farms), yet you have done no policing and the only fines ever imposed came from an NDP administration and the Campbell government gave them their fines back.

The only way these farms can make a profit is by sending their sewage (fish excrement, unconsumed food, anti-lice compounds, unconsumed medicines, drugs and colourants) into the oceans as raw sewage.

Quite apart from the appalling impact these hideous farms have had on wild salmon runs, the above should have you forcing these farms on land, as a recent federal government report recommended.

Will you do this – and if not, why not?

The weasel words, “run of river” projects, have decimated our rivers and, as with fish farms, no inspection of them takes place even though there have been 1000s of broken rules. BC Hydro, the jewel of our crown would be bankrupt if it were in the private sector because of the sweetheart deals your government has forced them to pay to private companies.

This is just one of the scandalous policies that have beset your government. What are you going to do about this issue?

Finally, Premier, why Site C Dam?

Is this really a process to provide energy to gas prospectors who can use that energy to “frack” for natural gas to make energy? And to power the liquefaction of natural gas (LNG), for which, in all likelihood, there will be no customers?

(By the way, Ms. Clark, have you even the faintest idea what the fracking process is all about, and the undetermined environmental impacts?)

Yes, Mr. Dix must come clean with his program and I intend to ask him questions like these. But you are the premier. You must deal with these issues and do so in specific terms, not barfed up stale marshmallows.

I assure you that you will hear about these issues again, for many British Columbians, including me, believe our environment and the fauna and flora it creates and protects is worth more than simply a token amount that they consider, and write off, as a cost of doing business no matter how much that may be.

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