This will end because the taxpayers/ratepayers will be tapped out.
Just what form the break-up takes, we’ll have to wait and see, but as sure as God made little green apples, she’s a goner.
Here is the crunch: Mike Harcourt will not be to blame and nor will Glen Clark, Dan Miller and Ujjal Dosanjh. Nor will it be because of some unforeseen world market.
This catastrophe belongs to Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark alone. They forced BC Hydro into making huge “sweetheart” deals with private producers to whom they now owe some $50-60 BILLION; the entire sordid affair happened on their watch with their blessing.
Christy Clark and the Liberals, on May 14, 2013, inherited their own tailor made dunghill, the only challenge being to clean it up without accepting responsibility. And with economists like our own, the truth will emerge every inch of the way.
The following is an open letter by independent economist andCommon Sense Canadian contributor Erik Andersen to the leaders of BC’s four major political parties on the eve of the May 14 provincial election.
Dear Ms. Clark, Mr. Dix, Ms. Sterk and Mr. Cummins,
I am writing to all of you political party leaders in the midst of the BC provincial campaign, as a senior economist who is very concerned that the proposed construction of Site C dam on the Peace River may push our provincial indebtedness beyond its already critical level.
The disclosed total liabilities of the province a year ago, according to government’s own figures, were $70 billion. In addition, the Auditor General confirmed that as of a year ago BC’s “Contingencies and Contractual Obligations” totaled another $96.374 billion. By the time the dust settles, the fiscal year just ended (2012/13) will likely have the provincial total liabilities closing in on $200 billion. The bulk of the nearly $100 billion of contractual obligations come from the IPP contracts to which Hydro has committed us.
Site C represents the addition of at least $8 billion to the already seriously bloated debt load directly associated with BC Hydro and its exaggerated expectations from industrial “want-a-be’s”.
Over the course of the past four decades the need for a Site C generation facility has been part of the larger and exaggerated demand narrative BC Hydro has been telling. The demand exaggeration theme goes as far back as 1961. It is no different today.
Where is the evidence of future need? It is certainly not from residential and commercial customers in BC (which has actually decreased on average since 2008). The future need, as stated repeatedly by the Liberal government of late, is strictly industrial, specifically the proposed LNG plants.
But the irony, not missed by many, is that by the design of the rate structure, we are expected to shoulder the financial burden that is created when Hydro contracts/builds at costs of +$100,000 per GWhr per year yet plans to sell to their new “best friends” at $35,000 per Gwhr per year. This is not new for Hydro . Hydro’s narrative of greater future need is just as before, a fiction created to be the cover for a ‘borrow and build into financial oblivion’ strategy. Site C is one important element in this flawed narrative.
One must consider the “market” prices for electricity are in the western part of North America. These are the best indicators to determine whether electricity is currently in surplus or shortage. While Hydro has been buying electricity from IPPs at $100,000 per GWhr or greater, Powerex has reported selling, on average, at $20,000 per GWhr in the past three years.
In 2011, the volumes indicated a large regional imbalance between electricity generation capacity and regional demand. In such circumstances, it is a very high risk strategy to build more capacity until there is evidence of sustained higher prices, indicating demand has tightened. We are a very long way from this condition, making the Site C plan irrelevant for a long time to come if not permanently, as new energy technologies are integrated in the future.
On the evidence there seems no case for the development of Site C. Hydro is financially crippled because it not only produced fictional narratives about future demand, but worse, acted on these exaggerations with tens of billions in contractual long-term obligations with IPP’s. Secondly, to knowingly build a new generation facility that needs to sell at $100,000 per GWhr or more in order to break even – when the regional demand for electricity is decidedly weak and expected to remain so for a long while, is absurd. I don’t see Hydro customers, i.e., the voting public, thinking that is a good idea.
Clearly, it’s time to “draw a line in the sand” and say no to Site C.
Sincerely,
Erik Andersen, Economist
——————————————————————————-
References:
BC Hydro audited reports for the past 12 years
Annual BC Hydro demand forecasts for the past 12 years
Annual Reports by the BC Auditor General
Personal correspondence between Erik Andersen and the Auditor General of BC, Feb 19, 2013
“White Gold: Hydroelectric Power in Canada,” Karl Froschauer
The Northwest Transmission Line (NTL), a 344-kilometre, 287 kilovolt transmission line currently being built by BC Hydro between Skeena Substation (near Terrace, B.C.) and a new substation to be built near Bob Quinn Lake, is expected to be in operation by spring 2014. The NTL runs through rugged, avalanche-prone terrain. During construction, cost estimates for the first phase of the NTL have ballooned from $404 million to $617 million.
While AltaGas has contributed $180 million to the NTL, and $130 million comes from the federal government, BC Hydro is responsible for the extra costs, which have grown to over $300 million. In the future, it’s likely that B.C. residents can expect skyrocketing hydro bills to help pay the growing financial burden of NTL construction.
To help fund the NTL, the B.C. Government received $130 million from the federal Green Infrastructure Fund. The contract between the two parties states that the Province was obligated to deliver plans for an extension of the NTL to Iskut – to get the community off diesel power – by June 30, 2012, or risk being in breach of contract and defaulting on the funding agreement.
B.C. did not deliver the plans in time. In fact, it wasn’t until March 2013, almost nine months after the deadline, that Imperial Metals and BC Hydro announced that the mining company would build a 93 km extension of the NTL to Tatogga Lake and its proposed Red Chris mine. BC Hydro agreed to buy this NTL extension for $52 million, and to build a smaller power line from Tatogga Lake to Iskut.
The line to Red Chris will not require a new environmental assessment, and is exempt from reviews that would normally be required to determine if it was necessary or if construction costs have been properly assessed. In other words, the power line to Red Chris is being fast-tracked.
If allowed to proceed as planned, the open pit Red Chris mine would destroy prime wildlife habitat for Stone sheep and grizzly bear, and leave a tailings impoundment that would pose a long-term risk to fish habitat and water quality at the headwaters of the Iskut River. It’s hard to see what’s “green” about that.
Apart from connecting Iskut (population 350) to the grid, little about the NTL would seem to qualify for green funding. According to the Federal Government website, the Green Infrastructure Fund supports “projects that will improve the quality of the environment and…that promote cleaner air, reduced greenhouse gas emissions and cleaner water.” It’s a stretch to say the NTL does any of those things.
In reality, the transmission line could be the catalyst for an unprecedented wave of industrial development in northwest B.C., including up to 11 new mines in the Unuk, Iskut and Stikine River watersheds. These transboundary watersheds – flowing from B.C. into Alaska – are some of the last remaining largely intact watersheds in North America, sustaining robust populations of wild salmon and wildlife such as Stone sheep, grizzly bears, wolverine, and migratory birds.
If built, the new mines would bring open pits, industrial roads, greenhouse gas emissions, tailings ponds, and the risk of acid mine drainage throughout the watersheds. Red Chris would be the first of these mines to be developed.
Impacts are already occurring. Contractors clearing the right-of-way for the NTL have piled the cut trees into giant fifty foot tall tipi-shaped piles. Instead of selling the wood – some 490,000 cubic metres are being cut to clear the NTL right-of-way, enough wood to fill 16,000 logging trucks – the trees are simply being burned, with towers of flame turning the once living forest into smoke and ash.
As independent MLA Bob Simpson points out in the Vancouver Sun, the clear-cut and the wood-burning may put the province in violation of two of its own laws: The Clean Energy Act, which sets targets for carbon emissions reductions, and the Zero Net Deforestation Act, which contains a pledge to replace tracts of forest removed from the land base with plantings elsewhere.
In the name of “improving the environment”, the federal government gave $130 million of Green Infrastructure funding to the NTL, a project that could lead to the construction of multiple open pit mines in the transboundary watersheds. In order to receive the funding, the Province of B.C. was contractually required to deliver plans for the NTL extension by a certain date, but missed the deadline for delivering the plans. They still took the cash. Now it turns out they need a lot more money.
B.C. is quietly piling on the debt at BC Hydro as the cost of the NTL balloons – costs that may ultimately be paid by ratepayers in increased energy fees. While proponents tout the NTL as a “green” project that will provide cleaner energy and economic stimulus to a depressed region, in reality, it is a massive subsidy to industry, opening the region to large-scale mining and the subsequent destruction of wildlife habitat, and increased threats to water quality and wild salmon habitat in the transboundary rivers.
Tadzio Richards is Rivers Without Borders’ Transboundary Conservation Campaigner.
In the lead-up to the BC election, Common Sense Canadian co-founders Rafe Mair and Damien Gillis are travelling to four BC communities – Kamloops, Merritt, Williams Lake and Prince George – to discuss key issues shaping the future of our province. The multi-media presentations, titled “WATER + POWER: The Future of BC’s Energy, Environment and Democracy,” will include video clips from filmmaker Gillis, a speech by Mair and an audience Q&A session.
On the agenda is a web of proposed energy projects which represent the vision of both our provincial and federal governments for the economic future of BC – all with profound impacts on our vital freshwater and coastline. The discussion will cover everything from proposed oil and gas pipelines to fracking, Site C Dam, Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and private river power projects – to an alternate vision for managing BC’s resources and economy to the benefit of the public and environment.
The non-partisan events will scrutinize the BC Liberals’ economic and environmental record over the past decade, while examining the NDP’s policy positions on issues the like the proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion to Vancouver and the nexus of Site C Dam, natural gas “fracking” and the plan to build a massive LNG industry on BC’s coast.
“Our goal is to provide the public with accurate information and connect the dots between interrelated projects of enormous environment, social, cultural, and economic significance,” says Gillis. “We’re furthering a much-needed dialogue about the future of our province at a key moment politically.”
The details for the upcoming events are as follows:
April 23, 7 pm: Kamloops, BC @ Desert Garden Seniors’ Centre (540 Seymour St. – Mojave Room)
April 24, 7 pm: Merritt, BC @ Merritt Civic Centre (1950 Mamette Ave.)
May 8, 7 pm: Williams Lake, BC @ Williams Lake Secondary School (640 Carson Dr.)
May 9, 7 pm: Prince George @ UNBC (stay tuned for room information)
The Kamloops and Williams Lake events are co-hosted by the local Council of Canadians chapters. All events are by donation.
Machiavelli would approve. So would Stalin, Mao Zedong, the ayatollahs of Iran, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Bashar al-Assad of Syria. George Orwell would proudly place the audacity of information control in the Ministry of Truth, the agency in his dystopian 1984 novel in which Big Brother uses the Thought Police as the instrument that determines right from wrong, good from bad, wise from foolish, fact from fiction, reality from illusion.
Reality is shaped by information. Control information and reality is controlled. Eliminate information and the blank slate of public consciousness is vulnerable to suggestion and manipulation. Reality is, in effect, an immensely valuable but incredibly fragile commodity, forever changing as information changes. Little wonder, then, that those with a special interest in power also have a special interest in controlling information.
This would be an academic subject befitting a university class on ethics, philosophy or politics if it were not surfacing in Canada because of the Privy Council’s muzzling of scientists associated with the federal government through employment or grants. The strictures on what scientists can publicly say or publish, put in place by the Prime Minister’s office, have been tightening in recent years. In 2011 scientists protested and collectively complained that they could not speak openly to Canadians about their research and findings without receiving prior approval from the upper echelons of government—a dramatic break from the traditional freedom that is an assumed liberty in an open, modern and democratic society. Now the strictures are tightening further.
“As of February 1st this year,” writes Elizabeth May inIsland Tides, (Feb. 28/13), “new rules were put in place requiring that scientists working on projects in conjunction with DFO in the Central and Arctic Region to treat all information as proprietary to DFO and — worse — await departmental approval before submitting research to any scientific journals.” A week later, on February 7th, additional rules were imposed requiring that “now they must obtain prior consent before applying for research grants” (Ibid.).
In Elizabeth May’s assessment of the tightening controls on scientists and their research, the process and its intent is obvious. “The tightening of control over science must be established far earlier in the process. Stop research from being submitted to journals. Stop scientists from collaborating with others. Stop scientists from applying for research grants. Stop science from happening at all” (Ibid.). This tragedy is compounded by strictures that constrain scientists from complaining about the constraints placed on them.
An American scientist, Dr. Andrew Muenchow, who has been doing important collaborative research with DFO in the Eastern Arctic since 2003, has refused to accept the new conditions, politely calling them a “potential muzzle”. The dissemination of crucially important information fromDr. Kristi Miller on viral diseases arriving in Canadian waters from salmon farming has been obstructed by the government authorities. Scientists researching ozone depletion, Arctic ice melt, pollution and species loss have been silenced. These are typical examples of the control of information by the Privy Council, an adjunct of the Prime Minister’s office. And it contrasts dramatically with the earlier protocol in which, “Data and any other project-related information shall be freely available to all Parties to this Agreement and may be disseminated or published at any time” (Ibid.). The Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall have appeared in Canada as a blackout on any scientific studies that may conflict with the direction of government’s agenda.
This is not a mere scientific issue. Although science should be the basis upon which governments make many important legislative and policy decisions, open and free scientific research is the most obvious measure of an open and free society, one in which evidence is given precedence over ideology, and decisions are weighted and made as rationally and intelligently as possible from the best available information. Control information and decisions can be shifted toward ideology, the unexamined opinions that drift away from enlightened guidance toward blind bigotry.
Granted, governments make decisions and devise legislation based on their particular ideological bent. But this ideology must be guided by credible information. And a substantial portion of this information now comes from scientific research, collaboration, study and findings. Opinion untempered and unguided by science lacks credibility because it isn’t connected to an empirical measure of circumstances. Ideology that is untested and incompatible with evidence is medieval, for it bears little relationship to reality. Government strategy and legislation founded on uninformed opinion will invariably be flawed and dysfunctional. Even worse, the result is a burden of liabilities, faulty strategies, defective laws and missed opportunities that can be incredibly costly to a country, to its citizens and to the environment that sustains them.
The laws of science don’t change to suit political and economic agendas. Pretending that greenhouse gas emissions are not changing weather, that the Arctic is not warming, that pollutants don’t harm ecologies, and that crucial ecosystems are not under threat is denial bordering on the delusional and pathological. Scientists don’t invent what is happening to our world; they measure, witness and report to us. Muzzling their effort silences evidence and increases our vulnerability to environmental ruin.
As Elizabeth May so eloquently concludes, this suppression of the free exchange of scientific information in Canada “is the 21st Century equivalent of the Dark Ages. This is book burning and superstition run rampant. This is the administration of a steady, slow drip of poison to a weakening democracy” (Ibid.).
Yesterday, I joined several thousand British Columbians in submitting my comments to the environmental assessment process for the proposed Site C Dam in northeast BC. While it will likely take a few days for the most recent submissions to be registered on the government website for the process, judging by early indications, this was one of the largest-ever responses by the BC public to an environmental assessment – a clear sign of how much this issue matters to British Columbians.
The Sierra Club and civic engagement driver LeadNow teamed up to facilitate online submissions and are reporting over 3,400 comments filed by yesterday’s deadline – none of which appear yet on the official review panel website. That’s on top of the close to 1,000 comments already logged prior to that campaign, which kicked in during the final couple days of commenting. So we can expect to see a final tally of well over 4,000 submissions, comparable only to the highly contentious Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline proposal.
Herewith my own letter, addressed to Linda Jones, Panel Manager for the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency:
Dear Ms. Jones,
As someone whose family settled in the Peace Valley a century ago, before losing our home, Goldbar Ranch at 20 Mile, to the first big hydro project on the Peace, I take very seriously this latest threat to the valley – Site C Dam.
Peace country is home to some of the best agricultural land in the province and critical fish and wildlife habitat. The unique soil and topographical conditions of the valley yield one of the longest growing seasons in BC. My family grew all manner of fruits, vegetables and grains there decades ago – until that sustainable way of life was taken away from us. I never got the chance to work my family’s land.
Today, we face a food security crisis in BC, producing just 40% of our total needs. We do not have an energy self-sufficiency crisis. I direct you to the work of my colleague, the independent economist Erik Andersen, who has clearly demonstrated that we have plenty of power for the foreseeable future…Unless, that is, we ramp up fracking operations, mines, and build 5-6 massively energy intensive Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plants on BC’s coast.
For evidence of this, you need look no further than our own premier’s recent comments. Ms. Clark told Global TV last week, “You can’t power up these huge [LNG] facilities without more power, so BC Hydro’s going to have to build Site C – we’re in favour of making that happen.” Last year, she acknowledged to a crowd in Fort St. John that just one of these proposed plants – Shell’s joint project with three Asian partners – would eat up the entire load of Site C, that being 1,100 megawatts.
Incidentally, how is the public supposed to take seriously this process when the outcome has clearly already been decided by our political leadership?
Despite the premier’s Orwellian assurances to the contrary, fracked natural gas, converted to LNG, then shipped halfway around the world to be decompressed and burned is not in any way, shape or form “clean energy”. Nor is a massively ecologically destructive mega-dam to power this gas development. In this era of climate change and drought conditions, I do not support using taxpayers’ and ratepayers’ dollars to subsidize the fossil fuel industry – nor to divert, contaminate and destroy billions of litres of precious fresh water, which is what these projects will do.
I respect Indigenous peoples’ rights and voice, as I respect the farming families still tilling the yet unspoiled land of the valley. I take very seriously the unified, unambiguous opposition of the Treaty 8 First Nations and farmers in the region to this project.
Moreover, I take the forced removal of the BC Utilities Commission from its role as the public’s watchdog in evaluating this project as patently undemocratic.
The lack of review of the project from a meaningful cumulative effects approach is also deeply troubling – especially in light of a recent report from the David Suzuki Foundation showing that over 65% of the region has already been marred by heavy industrial impacts – dams, roads, logging, mining, oil and gas.
This process, this project, and the draconian values that underpin them are deeply flawed.
I am steadfastly opposed to the $8 Billion-plus subsidy of the fossil fuel industry, the destruction of vital ecosystems and farmland, and the trampling on First Nations and citizens’ democratic rights that the proposed Site C Dam represents.
I urge you to do the right thing and reject this project.
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.
Christy Clark argues the need for Site C Dam to power LNG on Global TV last week (screen capture).
Premier Christy Clark wants BC citizens to subsidize the oil and gas industry with a $10 Billion taxpayer-funded dam. Though she won’t put it quite like that, that’s precisely the implication of the policies she’s promoting in the run-up to May’s provincial election.
Clark confirmed her vision for powering a new, much-ballyhooed Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) Industry to Global TV last week (a must-watch). The premier has promised in recent months a $100 Billion windfall of provincial revenues from the yet-to-be-developed LNG industry, a boast which has drawn justified ridicule from pundits.
LNG requires enormous amounts of energy to super-cool gas in order to liquefy it and load it onto tankers. Numerous global energy companies – including Shell, Chevron, and a number of big Asian players – have lined up over the past year to build LNG plants in Kitimat and Prince Rupert, in order to access Asian markets which are currently paying significantly more for gas than the North American market.
Clark acknowledges the province doesn’t have enough electricity to supply the demands of multiple proposed LNG facilities. Her solution? Flood an 80 km stretch of the fertile Peace Valley in northeast BC to build a new dam. Dubbed Site “C” because it would be the third dam on the Peace River, the project would flood some 20,000 acres of high quality agricultural land and wildlife habitat.
Clark was blunt with Global TV reporter Jas Johal:
[quote]You can’t power up these huge [LNG] facilities without more power, so BC Hydro’s going to have to build Site C – we’re in favour of making that happen.[/quote]
Last year, at a press conference in Fort St. John, near the location of the proposed dam, Premier Clark spoke to the need for Site C to power LNG. She acknowledged that just one of the 5 or 6 planned LNG terminals on BC’s coast – a proposal by Shell and its Chinese, Korean and Japanese partners – would eat up the entire 1,100 megawatt output of Site C.
So even with this new dam – which won’t be up and running until 2020 at the earliest – BC has nowhere near the energy required to power the energy-hungry LNG industry. To that end, Premier Clark created a loophole in the Clean Energy Act to allow gas companies to generate power for their plants by burning their own natural gas. Which begs the question: why the continued need for Site C?
Perhaps it’s because the power from Site C would be offered to gas producers at a steep discount, which is the standard for large industrial users, who typically pay less than half what residential and small business customers pay for hydroelectricity in BC.
When pressed by Johal on the taxpayer subsidy issue, Clark brushed it off – “That’s not part of what we’re negotiating…We aren’t going to ask residential taxpayers to subsidize this.”
And yet, the dam itself, pegged at $8 Billion but sure to balloon beyond that (a study of 70 large dam projects funded by the World Bank found that the average overrun was a whopping 27%), will be on the shoulders of taxpayers and crown corporation BC Hydro – already drowing in massive debt. And unless the plan is to make the LNG industry pay top dollar for this new power (which defeats the purpose entirely), then residential hydro customers will bear the full burden through much steeper power bills.
While Site C is a looming taxpayer boondoggle, it will also destroy precious farmland at a time when we produce just 40% of our own food in BC. And as this recent report from the David Suzuki Foundation shows, it will compound the enormous industrial footprint that has marred over 65% of the Peace Valley over the past half century – making it easily one of the world’s most heavily impacted regions already.
A major source of those impacts is the natural gas industry, which relies more and more on environmentally risky “fracking” to extract the gas that would flow to these LNG plants through multiple new pipelines.
So Site C and LNG mean a major ramping up of increasingly controversial fracking.
Clark’s opposition in the upcoming provincial election on May 14, the BC NDP, are showing signs of backing away from Site C. The party’s Energy Critic John Horgan told the Vancouver Sun in February, “I’m confident that in the first two years of an NDP government we won’t be building Site C.”
For more information on Site C and tools to help you submit your comments to the environmental assessment process by the April 4 deadline, click here.
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.
Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. It looks like the gods are doing just that with the Premier and her government.
What I’ve seen the past several weeks forces me to ask, Madame Premier: Is that thing on your shoulders just for photo-ops?
For starters. Is the Kitsilano Search and Rescue Centre really a bargaining chip with the federal government over the Enbridge pipeline proposal? Do you really believe that David Black’s proposed refinery is going to make things better? That 3 pipelines carrying bitumen are safer than two?
I’ve got to say it, Premier: you don’t know a damned thing about pipelines and tankers.
Do you not understand that the rupture of a pipeline or “accident” with a tanker is mathematically inevitable? That we’re not talking risks but certainties? Your friends in the business community like to call these things “risks” in order to convince people that they’re not likely to happen. Think on this, Premier – if an accident is not going to happen, why make multimillion dollar facilities to clean them up?
The theorem is not that something can be an “acceptable risk” but that an “ongoing risk” is a certainty waiting to happen. You simply must understand this, Premier, or you are selling out the Province. As they say, shit happens.
You would have laughed, as we all would have on March 21, 2006, to think that a BC Ferry would sink, yet the following day that is just what happened.
Prior to June, 2012, we would all have scoffed at the thought that a luxury liner, on a fine day, would sink, causing several deaths and injuries.
Having agreed on that, we must assess what the damage will be. With an airplane we know that. When we get on a plane we’re betting on the odds being in our favour, but the fact that there will be crashes is a certainty. We are also prepared to concede that if our jet crashes, we’ll be dead.
If we’re to be honest, Premier, what we’re asking is not what are the odds of this happening, since we know that it will. As long as human beings are involved, there will be human error. It’s not a matter if airplanes will crash but what are the odds on it happening, say, in a month.
It is the same with pipelines and tankers – we know that these calamities are certainties but today nothing will likely happen. Even if we disagree on the odds, that doesn’t alter the fact that it will happen. We are only really calculating when or how often – the same thing an insurance company does, or we do when we bet on the odds at the race track.
Knowing the inevitable, we must now consider the consequences. It’s rather like calculating how long you can put to your head a revolver with 100 chambers and one bullet and keep pulling the chamber. You know you’ll kill yourself – the only mystery being when. If, however, you don’t put a bullet in the chamber, but marshmallow instead, you don’t care, for you won’t be hurt.
We’re not talking marshmallow here.
With oil spills and tankers, we know that the result, whenever it happens, will be hideous, catastrophic. With diluted bitumen (dilbit), there is no such thing as a small accident and you and your government must begin to understand that.
Now, to cleanup. The fact is that there is little that can be done except to the stuff you can see and access and even then very little.
I hope you know about the Enbridge “accident” in Michigan at the Kalamazoo River in July 2010. This spill was described as “not serious” by the government but it hasn’t been cleaned up yet!
Where our pipelines spill, it will not be easy to access for men and machines. Look at the proposed routes. When a spill occurs in the Rockies, the Rocky Mountain Trench, the Coast Range or the Great Bear Rainforest, how the hell are you going to get there? So you are faced with the facts that spills of dilbit are catastrophic and with our proposed pipelines you can’t get to them.
Just what makes you think that David Black’s proposed refinery will make things better?
It will be bringing bitumen from the same tar sands over the same terrain as the proposed Enbridge pipeline. The only possible plus is that instead of dumping dilbit into the ocean it will be refined oil, just like the Exxon Valdez did.
It’s been said that the Kinder Morgan line has been safe. I put this to Rex Weyler, co-founder of Greenpeace and an authority on these matters and here’s what he says:
• There have been a number of incidents related to the Trans Mountain pipeline – including the spill in Burnaby in 2007. Trans Mountain Pipeline (Kinder Morgan) pleaded guilty pleas to a 21-count indictment in B.C. Provincial Court.
• In 2009, oil spilled from Kinder Morgan’s oil Westridge terminal in Burnaby.
• There was another spill in January, 2012, near Abbotsford at Kinder Morgan’s tank farm. In that case, the National Energy Board charged that Trans Mountain Pipeline operators ignored warning alarms, spilling 90,000 litres of bitumen crude oil.
• Just a few months later, the same Abbotsford facility was home to yet another spill.
That’s 5 spills in this region in the last 6 years. There have been more – over 70 spills along the whole Trans Mountain Pipeline route since it began operation in the 1950s.
Below is an interesting video that discusses the 2007 spill, and the extreme problems with Bitumen.
Premier Clark, you owe it to your province to deal with the issues raised – not with industry slogans and bullshit, but with logic and facts. It’s getting late.
