Watch this new CTV First Story investigation of the debate over the proposes Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline, “Crude Awakening.” The 23 min documentary examines the conflicts within coastal communities over the promises of jobs from the pipeline vs. the very real threat of an oil spill disaster.
Watch “Crude Awakening”: http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120321/bc_ctv_first_story_1404_crude_awakening_120322/20120325?hub=BritishColumbiaHome
The resignation of John Van Dongen from the Liberal caucus to become an instant one-man Conservative caucus has, for me at any rate, put the focus on John Cummins.
Let’s look at Mr Cummins’ record and positions.
Mr. Cummins’ claim to fame is his integrity – his record of standing up for BC and his constituency in the House of Commons and paying for this integrity by permanently putting himself offside with Stephen Harper thus disqualifying himself from cabinet.
What was the issue that came up time after time in Cummins’ parliamentary career?
No prize for saying BC’s wild salmon. He flouted the law in the cause, risking jail. He fought against First Nations accusing them of illegal fishing. Whenever the subject of BC salmon was raised you would find John Cummins fighting for the symbol and very soul of our province – our wild salmon. I shared platforms at protests with him. On the question of fish farms Cummins stated that there were serious problems that had to be addressed.
This raises two questions – the first was raised by Charlie Smith in the Georgia Straight in the March 27 edition which I sent in a mail-out and is posted on Facebook, namely, how does Mr. Cummins welcome to his new caucus a man who was so steadfast in his defence of fish farmers he even warned them when the enforcement officers were coming and had to resign in consequence?
Is that the Cummins integrity we hear so much about?
I go further, why didn’t either Cummins or Van Dongen deal publicly with this apparent major conflict on a huge issue – why was it left to Smith?
This is small potatoes and will no doubt be brushed aside by noting that fish farms are now a federal matter.
Let’s go to the main issue that will keep Cummins contained within the boundaries of the far right – the Enbridge pipeline and the consequent tanker traffic down our beautiful yet extremely hazardous coast as well as through Vancouver.
Some questions for Mr Cummins:
With our family’s 80 plus years of fishing in the Whale Channel area we have firsthand knowledge of tides, weather, types of fish and bird life. The area from Kitamaat to Hecate Straits is designated Area 6, by Fisheries and Oceans Canada and is the most consistent salmon producing region in British Columbia with runs in the odd and even years.
In Area 6 there is:
If a ship enters Laredo Channel from Hecate Straits at McInnes Island the tanker would have Lenard Shoal and Moody Bank at the bottom of Aristazabl Island. On the east side of Aristazabl Island there are 2 very dangerous rocks known as Wilson and Moorhouse. Campania Sound is also a very treacherous body of water from Dupont Island to Hecate Straits.
There are many rocks and to name a few, Bortwick, Cort, Ness, Evans, Cliff and Janion also Yares Shoal. This area is a minefield of reefs. These rocks are spread out between Rennison Island, Banks Island and Campania Island. This route would be extremely dangerous to tanker traffic. Using the Otter Pass route, Nepean rock becomes a very prominent problem for ships’ travel.
On the question of damage Mr Brajcich says:
Should a major oil spill occur I feel an oil boom would not be able to contain it because of the velocity of the current in this area and the oil could travel 20-50 miles in one 6 hour tide. This area is not the Mediterranean or a lagoon.
If a spill occurred in Laredo Channel the herring spawning area at Kitasu Bay to Price Island could be totally destroyed, possibly forever. The eel grass which the herring need to spawn on could be wiped out. Some years over 10,000 tons of herring spawn in this area.
A spill at freshet time would be the most devastating. Due to the differences of its viscosity, salt water is heavier and would be lower and the fresh water being lighter, becomes a shallow layer at the surface. The juvenile salmon live in this fresh water layer as they migrate to sea. The juvenile salmon jump like raindrops and if they were migrating in a spill area the oil could wipe out an entire run. Some streams could become barren of salmon.
Do you accept that evidence, Mr. Cummins? If not, where do you quarrel with your fellow commercial fisherman’s evidence?
Let me be blunt.
With the forgoing, how can you possibly support the Enbridge pipeline and tanker traffic of more than 200 per year out of the port of Kitimat?
How can you possibly expect the public of BC to vote for a man and a party that approves the certainty of massive damage to our beautiful wilderness accompanied by huge, irreparable damage to our coast and destruction of hundreds of thousands of BC wild salmon – likely permanently.
Let me tell you this, Mr. Cummins – you are a man I’ve long admired for the courageous stands you have taken on the preserving and enhancing of our BC salmon.
But that’s before you looked just like the political phoneys you used to fight so hard when you had a halo.
Eleven year-old Ta’Kaiya Blaney of the Sliammon First Nation sings her hit song “Shallow Waters” to some 2,000 people outside the Vancouver Art Gallery. She tells the audience one year ago on this day she was chased from Enbridge’s Vancouver office when she tried to present her song to company officials.
World renowned climate activist Bill McKibben of 350.org lent his voice to the “Our Coast, Our Decision” rally in Vancouver Monday. McKibben told the crowd of close to 2,000 outside the Vancouver Art Gallery, “This is one of these great moments in human history and you guys are absolutely at the white, hot centre of it.”
Read this letter by celebrated environmentalist and author Sandra Steingraber – published on the Orion Blog – on the story that’s been sending shock waves through the American environmental community over the past month. Steingraber takes her once beloved Sierra Club to task for accepting $25 million in secret donations from major unconventional gas player Chesapeake Energy. (March 23, 2012)
Dear Sierra Club,
I’m through with you.
For years we had a great relationship based on mutual admiration. You gave a glowing review of my first book, Living Downstream—a review that appeared in the pages of Sierra magazine and hailed me as “the new Rachel Carson.” Since 1999 that phrase has linked us together in all the press materials that my publicist sends out. Your name appears with mine on the flaps of my book jackets, in the biography that introduces me at the speaker’s podium, and in the press release that announced, last fall, that I was one of the lucky recipients of a $100,000 Heinz Award for my research and writing on the environment.
I was proud to be affiliated with you. I hoped to live up to the moniker you bestowed upon me.
But more than a month has past since your executive director, Michael Brune, admitted in Time magazine that the Sierra Club had, between 2007 and 2010, clandestinely accepted $25 million from the fracking industry, with most of the donations coming from Chesapeake Energy. Corporate Crime Reporter was hot on the trail of the story when it broke in Time.
From the start, Brune’s declaration seemed less an acknowledgement of wrongdoing than an attempt to minister to a looming public relations problem. Would someone truly interested in atonement seek credit for choosing not to take additional millions of gas industry dollars (“Why the Sierra Club Turned Down $26 Million in Contributions from Natural Gas Interests”)?
Here, on top of the Marcellus Shale, along the border between Pennsylvania and New York—where we are surrounded by land leased to the gas industry; where we live in fear that our water will be ruined, our mortgages called in, our teenage children killed in fiery wrecks with 18-wheelers hauling toxic fracking waste on our rural, icy back roads; where we cash out our vacation days to board predawn buses to rallies and public hearings; where we fundraise, donate, testify, phone bank, lobby, submit public comments, sign up for trainings in nonviolent civil disobedience; where our children ask if we will be arrested, if we will have to move, if we will die, and what will happen to the bats, the honeybees, the black bears, the grapevines, the apple orchards, the cows’ milk; where we have learned all about casing failures, blow-outs, gas flares, clear-cuts, legal exemptions, the benzene content of production fluid, the radioactive content of drill cuttings; where people suddenly start sobbing in church and no one needs to ask why—here in the crosshairs of Chesapeake Energy, Michael Brune’s announcement was met with a kind of stunned confusion.
Read full story: http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/newsfrom187/entry/6799/
Listen to this interview by Sean Holman of documentary filmmaker Damien Gillis on his recent trip to Northeastern BC to learn about some of the effects of the unconventional gas industry on farming families around the Dawson Creek area. Gillis has been working for the past year on a feature documentary film involving the controversial fracking business and recently followed independent BC MLAs Bob Simpson and Vicki Huntington to the community of Farmington to engage with local landowners on the issue. The pair have worked hard to raise in the Legislature issues surrounding the regulation of the industry and its impacts on water, health, and the province’s economy. (March 24 – 20 min)
With all the recent controversies and media attention surrounding the proposed Northern Gateway and Keystone XL pipelines, you would not be remiss in thinking that these are the only projects currently being considered to get tar sands crude to foreign markets. But you would be wrong.
It seems the Canadian government is quite serious about plans to triple production of tar sands bitumen and would not be satisfied even if they were somehow able to bulldoze public opposition to Keystone and Gateway. Although the project has not been officially confirmed, plans are in the works to pump bitumen from northern Alberta through Montreal to the Atlantic coast city of Portland, Maine, where tankers would then transport about 200,000 barrels a day of the heavy crude to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries and foreign markets.
This so-called Trailbreaker project would appear to present fewer regulatory obstacles, as it would not require construction of a new pipeline. Instead, the flow of the existing Portland-Montreal pipeline, which currently brings oil from Africa and the Middle East into eastern Canada, would simply be reversed.
According to the Portland Daily Sun, David Cyr, treasurer of the Portland Montreal Pipeline Company, is on the record recently as saying, “We do not have an active project…in terms of bringing western Canadian crude here.” While it may well be true that there is no “active” project, Cyr’s comments hardly amount to a rigorous denial and they fly in the face of active rumours I have been hearing out of Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
Indeed, as recently as last summer Mr. Cyr was quoted in The Globe and Mail as saying, “We’re still very much interested in reversing the flow of one of our two pipelines to move western Canadian crude to the eastern seaboard. We’re having discussions with Enbridge on their Line 9 and what it means to us.” Moreover, other insider industry sources have previously confirmed that discussions are underway to expand the Enbridge proposal to carry tar sands bitumen to the Atlantic.
Enbridge, the company behind both Trailbreaker and Northern Gateway, has already requested fast-track approval from the National Energy Board of their $16.9 million plan to reverse the flow of tar sands crude from western Canada to Montreal. Yet according to Dylan Voorhees, Clean Energy Director of the Natural Resources Council of Maine, this is merely phase one of a plan that would then be followed by a reversal of the Portland Montreal Pipeline. The NRC believes that by splitting the project into pieces, Enbridge is attempting to bypass full regulatory and public scrutiny.
Enbridge had secured permission in 2010 from the Quebec Commission for the Protection of Agricultural Land to build a pumping station near the town of Dunham, Quebec. Just last month, however, the environmental group Equiterre and a citizen from Dunham won a Quebec Court ruling by arguing successfully that the issues surrounding the pumping station were not fully aired at the commission. This ruling would appear to stall, for the time being, an attempt to ship oil from Montreal to Portland.
The NRC recently joined three other environmental groups in Portland to educate the public on the dangers of transporting tar sands bitumen. “The larger context is that there’s a large effort of getting tar sands crude oil out of Canada,” said Voorhees. “It doesn’t seem prudent on us to wait until there’s an application to start learning about this because it’s very clearly on the radar.”
Whether or not salmon farms continue operating in BC’s marine waters may depend more on economic than environmental factors. Despite withering criticism concerning the ecological safety of its open net-pen operations, the salmon farming industry has doggedly continued on its corporate course. However, two unforeseen factors may compromise its viability, thereby accomplishing what no amount of environmental censure has managed.
First, the US International Trade Commission has removed a two-decade 24 percent import duty levied on farmed salmon imported from Norway. This ruling may ultimately negate one of the major rationales Norwegian corporations used in 1991 to circumvent the duty by growing Atlantic salmon in BC waters. The removal of the duty now places a 24 percent disadvantage on farmed salmon exported from BC to the US, a trading handicap exacerbated by the rising value of the Canadian dollar.
And second, after the horrific 70 percent collapse of salmon farming in Chile due to the industry’s inadvertent importation of infectious salmon anemia, Chilean banks and governments are applying pressure for a re-start of operations. This will result in more farmed fish on the global market and will depress the price for salmon. Combined with the lower cost of growing salmon in Chile, the result may threaten operations in BC. The salmon farming industry in BC, critics note, is already precarious due to high operating costs. A flood of Chilean farmed fish on the world market and cheaper product from Norway may be lethal blows to the industry here. And, as everyone knows, the business of making money is not imbued with sentimentality – if salmon farming is not profitable here, the industry will politely express its ritual condolences and leave.
Oil raises more complicated and serious issues than salmon farming. And Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, that intends to move tar sands bitumen from Alberta to BC’s West Coast, may cause far more economic damage than a few salmon farms abandoning Canada. To assess this damage, we need to know something about oil pricing.
Most North Americans are likely unaware that the price of oil is determined in two ways. The Canadian and US price is set “at a confluence of pipelines at Cushing, Oklahoma, where prices are determined for a specified grade of crude termed West Texas Intermediate” (Island Tides, Mar. 8/12). WTI is presently priced at about $108 per barrel. But for the rest of the world, in regions such as Asia and Europe, their oil is priced by international markets at a higher “Brent” rate. The Brent price is presently about $126 per barrel. The price difference is important to the oil industry. And this explains the significance of the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline.
Alberta crude from the tar sands would not pass through the pricing gate in Cushing, Oklahoma. Indeed, it would be destined for Asia where the Brent rather than the WTI price applies. Any corporation producing oil from the tar sands would benefit measurably from the premium value of Brent and would push for this pricing structure. At the very least, in free market conditions, the price difference between Brent and WTI would force up the cost of oil to consumers in Canada.
The same cost pressure would apply to natural gas. Its North American price is determined by the volume moving through “a confluence of thirteen pipelines at Erath, Louisiana”, the so-called “Henry Hub” (Ibid.). This price is linked to the WTI price of oil, and is presently selling at between $2 to $3 per million British thermal units (MMBtu). But natural gas in Asia and elsewhere is linked to the Brent oil price, where it commonly sells for two to four times the North American price. The huge volume of natural gas that would be diverted from BC and Alberta to several liquid natural gas (LNG) plants on the West Coast would bypass the Henry Hub on its way to Asia. Besides depleting a non-renewable resource with massive exports, the new market would force up the price of natural gas – if not for Canadians, then certainly for British Columbians.
Beyond the litany of environmental problems created by hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to retrieve natural gas from shale, and the inevitable spills associated with the pipeline and tanker movement of oil from the West Coast, British Columbians in particular – and Canadians in general – can expect to pay more for their petroleum based energy.
Globalization always has the effect of shifting prices toward a common denominator. In the case of wages, it pulls down high earnings to match lower Asian rates. In the case of energy such as oil and natural gas, it lifts prices toward matching the higher rates that apply beyond North America.
Even without considering the environmental costs and risks of producing and transporting oil and gas, opening our markets to Asia and elsewhere is an unwise strategy for British Columbians and Canadians. The oil and gas industry should be jubilant at the prospects of pipelines and tankers. But everyone else in this country should be worried. The social and economic costs of a few closed salmon farms in BC would pale beside the damage inflicted by higher energy prices.
It’s time to fish or cut bait, Premier Clark!
Our esteemed contributor Otto Langer blew it wide open when he, using a leaked document, stated that under the Harper government the protection of fish habitat would no longer be enforced against industry and that it would use an “omnibus bill” to try to sneak it through.
An omnibus bill is used to make technical changes to support major legislation. A budget will usually need amendments in various statutes and that’s natural. It might also be used to make clear provisions causing confusion in statutes. It is not intended to bring in substantive changes, thus is not usually debated. When that bill is in fact designed to make a substantial change the government shows its moral turpitude big time.
The proposal to take protection of habitat out of the Fisheries Act was especially dishonourable because at first glance it looked as if the government was taking extra care to protect salmon – but the eagle eye of Otto quickly saw it for what it was and now the fat is in the fire.
The Vancouver Sun, which has suddenly got religion, got a document through the Access To Information Act which showed that the Tories considered habitat protection as a significant “irritant” for development.
The Minister, Keith Ashfield, lamented in the House Wednesday that a jamboree in Saskatchewan last year was almost cancelled because a flooded field contained fish. This speaks volumes for this government – to trivialize the huge assault on habitat in this way shows that the federal government couldn’t care less about BC’s fish.
There is no doubt that Ottawa has the Enbridge pipeline in mind.
The critical question is one that a grade 1 student would ask: if you don’t protect where fish live what’s the point of the other protections?
The answer is, of course, that there’s no point at all. The Enbridge pipeline will cross 1,000 rivers and streams stripped bare of protection. Sensible civic bodies won’t allow building close to rivers and streams while the government will not “inconvenience industry”.
Let me tell you with certainty what two premiers, from each major party would have done with this – I refer to Dave Barrett and Bill Bennett, who will be horrified to be named together in the same sentence, such was the acrimony of their relationship.
They would have said “BC habitat and the environment in general in BC is not for sale,” and then would have had the Attorney to tell them the way to stop it.
His first answer would have undoubtedly been – make it clear that BC will use its constitutional right to protect it’s coast and ban all oil tankers. This would end the matter since there’s no point transporting oil when it cannot use a BC port and BC’s coast to take it away. Game Over.
It would be unwise, of course, not to go for the head of the snake, Enbridge while we’re at it.
BC has a shared environment jurisdiction and under this could protect non-migratory fish and place a habitat protection zone around all of the 1000 rivers and streams to be crossed by Enbridge. I have no doubt they could also protect the animals that use the area by setting up preserves.
Let’s cut to the chase here: this will no doubt bring lawsuits which I say all the better – by the time the matters make their way slowly and unsteadily through the courts, including appeals on rulings, Enbridge will have to make a move somewhere.
Barrett and Bennett would have said we will use our powers to prevent tanker traffic on our coast and, if the Enbridge people get their way, then we will bring the Coast Protection Act in.
Why wait for the Enbridge decision?
That would delay the start of any litigation on that initiative so that time absorbed in court re: the pipeline would have finally passed and a new court case started. In other words, the cases would not be concurrent but consecutive.
Is it ethical to use these tactics?
Of course it is – the unethical people are the feds. We would simply be protecting our glorious province which Premier Clark and her caucus are sworn to do. Buying time is perfectly proper.
What should Premier Clark do?
Simple – state that the foregoing is the position British Columbia will take and it would be wise both in moral, legal, and fiscal terms to give Enbridge the hook now.
Premier Clark is in a lot of trouble and this move could only benefit her because it would leave John Cummins as the only party in favour of the Enbridge/tanker traffic plan and would clearly leave him with only Fraser Institute bred and fed hard right wingers which Clark has lost anyway.
I’m willing to bet the ranch that she hasn’t got the guts to stand up to the Feds. Much of this cowardice relates to the money BC has to return to Ottawa under the bungled HST fiasco.
At this point, as I’ve said, we must go after the snake’s head, thus a very good time to demand protection of the province by our federal Tory MPs – to remind them and demand that they represent our interests not those of Enbridge.
As a bit of assistance – here they are:
Ed Fast Abbotsford ed@edfast.ca
Dick Harris – Cariboo – Prince George Harris.R@parl.gc.ca
Mark Strahl – Chilliwack – Fraser Canyon mark.strahl@parl.gc.ca
Kerry Lynne Findlay – Delta – Richmond East MP Kerry-Lynne.Findlay@parl.gc.ca
Nina Grewal – Fleetwood – Port Kells Grewal.N@parl.gc.ca
Cathy McLeod – Kamloops – Thompson – Cariboo McLeod.C@parl.gc.ca
Ron Cannan – Kelowna – Lake Country ron.cannan@parl.gc.ca
David Wilks – Kootenay – Columbia David.wilks@parl.gc.ca
Mark Warawa – Langley Warawa.M@parl.gc.ca
James Lunney – Nanaimo – Alberni Lunney.J@parl.gc.ca
Andrew Saxton – North Vancouver Saxton.A@parl.gc.ca
Dan Albas – Okanagan – Coquihalla http://www.danalbas.com/contact-dan.html
Colin Mayes – Okanagan – Shuswap Mayes.C@parl.gc.ca
Randy Kamp – Pitt Meadows – Maple Ridge – Mission Kamp.R@parl.gc.ca
James Moore – Port Moody – Westwood – Port Coquitlam Moore.J@parl.gc.ca
Bob Zimmer – Prince George – Peace River Bob.Zimmer@parl.gc.ca
Alice Wong – Richmond Wong.A@parl.gc.ca
Russ Hiebert – South Surrey – White Rock – Cloverdale Info@RussHiebert.ca
John Duncan – Vancouver Island North Duncan.J@parl.gc.ca
Wai Young – Vancouver South info@waiyoung.ca
John Weston – West Vancouver – Sunshine Coast – Sea to Sky Country Weston.J@parl.gc.ca
Read this update from CBC.ca on a week-long rig fire at a Suncor fracking operation in Northeast BC. (March 14, 2012)
A fire at a drilling rig near Hudson’s Hope in northeastern B.C. has been burning for six days, following a blowout Friday night.
Suncor spokesperson Sneh Seetal said while the fire continues to burn, the situation is under control.
“We’ve brought in well control specialists. We’re conducting daily aerial fly-overs by helicopter. The fire has been contained to the site and the site is secure,” she said.
Seetal said “a handful” of employees were working at the site at the time of the explosion, but no one was injured. She also said air quality is being monitored and is not a concern at this time.
In February 2010 fire broke out at a Suncor oilsands upgrader, north of Fort McMurray, Alta.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/03/14/bc-suncor-oil-rig-fire.html