The location of Taseko’s proposed New Prosperity Mine, west of Williams Lake
VANCOUVER – The company behind a proposed B.C. gold and copper mine that was rejected twice by the federal government is asking the Federal Court to quash the environment minister’s decision.
Taseko Mines Ltd. (TSX:TKO) says it’s filing a second application for judicial review of the decision against the New Prosperity mine, which is proposed near Williams Lake, B.C.
Taseko’s Brian Battison says the federal environmental review process was unfair and led Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq to make the wrong decision when she said no to the mine.
Court documents to be filed in Federal Court claim changes made by the government to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act two years ago are unconstitutional, because they go well beyond weighing the environmental impact of a project.
The B.C. government has approved the proposal, but Ottawa first rejected the proposed $1.5-billion mine in 2010, because the plan involved draining a lake of significance to local First Nations for use as a tailings pond.
The company says the revised plan will save the lake, but the environmental assessment found it would still cause significant adverse affects and cabinet rejected the proposal again last month.
Money, money, money. Just like the ABBA song says; it makes the world go round. Our garbage is the newest target for those who love only money and lots of it.
A decade ago some of those sharpest guys in the room, runaways from bankrupting Enron, secured legal authority from President Bush over all the production and distribution of electricity in North America, yes even Canada. The “North American Electricity Reliability Corporation” (NERC) came into being. It was given the “authority to monitor and enforce compliance” of electricity to over 334 million people; installed production capacity of 1,200 gigawatts ; 211,000 miles of high voltage transmission lines and more than one trillion of assets value.
Your Provincial government has legally embraced this model because the corporate interests outside of the province wanted it so. Knowing this might help your understanding of how BC Hydro has become such a financial basket case and blatantly indifferent to its BC customer needs and wishes.
Privatizing paper, garbage, recycling
The newest model of this concentration of taxing power over the citizens of BC, and an abdication of responsibility and accountability by our provincial government, is “Multi Material British Columbia” (MMBC). This “non-profit” enterprise says it “will assume responsibility for managing residential packaging and printed paper (PPP) on behalf of industry in May 2014”. It is an artificially constructed monopoly designed to give private and privileged interest unearned premiums that invariably come from an exaggerated unnecessary amount of economic concentration.
[quote]BC Recycling Regulation was updated in 2011 to shift responsibility for managing the residential recycling of PPP from local governments and their taxpayers to businesses that produce these materials.[/quote]
Don’t like it? How about a $200,000 fine!
Now have you ever read such lovely piece of self-serving propaganda? This is published on behalf of an unelected Board of Directors who are all from large corporations headquartered in Ontario. Just so you know, these people have a big hammer; they will have the legal authority to fine those who are in non-compliance up to $200,000 per event.
So where does this all lead you may well ask? The design is simple. Your Government does not want to have local governments continue to be in charge of garbage disposal because it is too democratic. It wants to enable those who lust after building large incinerators and want the ability of imposing large processing fees for 35 years or more on all of us, to get their way.
By this design, the government is deliberately substituting investment capital for labor, which is ironic given the continuing propaganda by the Premier about job, jobs, jobs. It must be one of those occasions where cabinet members failed to connect the dots; or maybe not.
WHITING, Ind. – BP says it is assessing how much crude oil entered Lake Michigan following a malfunction at its northwestern Indiana refinery.
BP spokesman Scott Dean says crews have placed booms across a cove at the company’s Whiting refinery where workers discovered the oil spill Monday afternoon.
Dean says BP believes the oil released during an oil refining malfunction has been confined to that cove.
He says the oil entered the refinery’s cooling water system, which discharges into the lake about 20 miles southeast of downtown Chicago.
Indiana Department of Environmental Management spokesman Dan Goldblatt says an agency staffer reported seeing a large sheen on the lake about 2 a.m. Tuesday. Dean says that sheen was in the cove and was no longer visible several hours later.
Art Sterritt and Coastal First Nations remain strongly opposed to Enbridge
VANCOUVER – Opponents of any increase in oil tankers off the B.C. coast are marking the 25th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill by launching a renewed campaign against two major pipeline projects.
Coastal First Nations are running newspaper and radio ads about the impacts they fear from oil spills at sea from Enbridge’s (TSX:ENB) Northern Gateway and Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipelines.
The coalition of aboriginal communities along the B.C. coast are asking residents to support a ban on oil tankers in their traditional territories.
The Sierra Club says Prince William Sound on the Alaska coast has still not recovered from Exxon Valdez spill on March 24th, 1989.
The two projects proposed in B.C. would mean more than 600 additional tankers a year transporting diluted bitumen from the Pacific coast to Asia.
TEXAS CITY, Texas – The cleanup of an unknown amount of thick, sticky oil that spilled into the Galveston Bay blocked traffic Sunday between the Gulf of Mexico and one of the world’s busiest petrochemical transportation waterways, affecting all vessels, even cruise ships.
A barge carrying nearly a million gallons of marine fuel oil collided with a ship Saturday afternoon, springing a leak. Officials believe only one of the barge’s tanks — which holds 168,000 gallons, was breached, though Coast Guard Petty Officer Andy Kendrick said Sunday it wasn’t clear how much oil spilled.
Crews were skimming oil out of the water and containment booms were brought in to protect environmentally sensitive areas of the Houston ship channel, Kendrick said. The ship channel is closed from the mouth of the Houston ship channel, between Galveston Island and Bolivar Peninsula, Coast Guard Lt. Sam Danus said.
“Unified command is aware of the situation and is communicating with the cruise ship companies,” Danus said.
Area home to fish and wildlife
The area is home to popular bird habitats, especially during the approaching migratory shorebird season, but Kendrick said there have been no reports of wildlife being impacted.
The Texas City dike, a popular fishing spot that goes out into the Gulf for a few miles, is also closed. Lee Rilat, 58, owns Lee’s Bait and Tackle, the last store before the access road to the dike, which was blocked by a police car on a breezy, overcast Sunday. If it weren’t for the spill, Rilat’s business would be hopping.
[quote]This would be the first spring deal, the first real weekend for fishing.[/quote]
Rilat said. He says ships and barges have collided before, but this is the first time — at least this year — that someone has sprung a leak. His wife, Brenda Rilat, said sea fog was hanging over the bay Saturday.
Rilat, who’s lived in the area most of his life, doesn’t think the spill is too big of a deal.
“It’ll be fine. Everything’s going to be lovely. Mother Nature takes care of its own,” he said.
The collision was still being investigated, the Coast Guard said.
The captain of the 585-foot ship, Summer Wind, reported the spill just after noon Saturday. Six crew members from the tow vessel, which was going from Texas City to Bolivar, were injured, the Coast Guard said.
Kirby Inland Marine, which owns the tow vessel and barge, is working with the Texas General Land Office and many other federal, state and non-profit agencies to respond to the spill, The Coast Guard said. Tara Kilgore, an operations co-ordinator with Kirby Inland Marine, declined to comment Saturday.
“Sticky, gooey, thick, tarry stuff”
Jim Suydam, spokesman for the Texas’ General Land Office, described the type of oil the barge was carrying as “sticky, gooey, thick, tarry stuff.”
“That stuff is terrible to have to clean up,” he said.
Richard Gibbons, the conservation director of the Houston Audubon Society, said there is important shorebird habitat on both sides of the ship channel. One is the Bolivar Flats Shorebird Sanctuary just to the east, which Gibbons said attracts 50,000 to 70,000 shorebirds to shallow mud flats that are perfect foraging habitat.
“The timing really couldn’t be much worse since we’re approaching the peak shorebird migration season,” Gibbons said. He added that tens of thousands of wintering birds remain in the area.
Monday marks the 25th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez spill off the coast of Alaska. Suydam said that spill spurred the creation of the General Land Office’s Oil Spill and Prevention Division, which is funded by a tax on imported oil that the state legislature passed after the Valdez spill.
Growing industry interest in the offshore oil resources of Canada’s Arctic is forcing northerners from east to west to confront hard questions about development.
No actual drilling is likely to happen for years.
But major decisions are being taken now as projects enter the regulatory system.
Governments, aboriginal groups and Arctic communities are considering issues such as how to plug possible blowouts, who benefits from development and whether some waters should remain closed.
“The first time this process goes forward, it’s going to set a template for others to follow,” said Louie Porta, science and policy adviser with Oceans North, part of the Pew Environmental Trust.
Plans for the eastern and western Arctic
In the western Arctic, an aboriginal regulator is setting up hearings into a plan led by Imperial Oil (TSX:IMO) to drill exploratory wells in the Beaufort Sea in 2020. The wells would be about 175 kilometres offshore from Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T., in water up to 850 metres deep, and are so complex and difficult to drill that the company estimates it would take at least two seasons to complete one.
In the eastern Arctic, the National Energy Board is considering a proposal for seismic tests off Baffin Island that has sparked fierce community opposition. In response to that proposal, the federal government has begun a strategic environmental assessment to consider which parts of a huge swath of ocean all the way down the island’s eastern coast could be opened up for exploration and which might stay closed.
The Beaufort project is being carefully examined by the Inuvialuit, the aboriginal group that has a land claim and self-government agreement in Canada’s northwest corner.
The group has long experience with the oilpatch on land. But this project is different, said Nellie Cournoyea, head of the Inuvialuit Regional Corp.
“When it’s onshore the benefits are much easier to grab ahold of, and the risks are less,” she said. “When you go offshore you have higher risks and less benefits because of the high infrastructure investment you have to get involved.
[quote]Plus, people are still concerned about the risks of oilspills or having a blowout.[/quote]
Relief wells
The National Energy Board has said companies working offshore in the Arctic must have the capability to drill a relief well in the same season to release pressure and stop oil flow in case of a blowout such as the one that happened with BP in the Gulf of Mexico. But the board said other equally effective methods would be considered.
Imperial has said it’s simply not possible to drill a same-season relief well in that region.
Cournoyea said the Inuvialuit are waiting for more information on how the company would respond to a blowout.
“We’re dealing with that right now, to see if we can get more information on what that option might be,” said Cournoyea, who added that Inuvialuit representatives have travelled to the Gulf of Mexico.
Regulatory decisions on Imperial’s plans to stop a blowout and limit the release of oil will be crucial for subsequent proposals, said Porta.
[quote]There’s this ideology that we can prevent our way out of spills.[/quote]
“But there’s a logical miscue to suggest that prevention technologies equal meaningful response when things go wrong. I think it establishes a dangerous precedent as Canada continues to figure out how to drill safely in an Arctic context.”
The effects on animal activity
“The proposed seismic testing and the resulting oil and gas drilling it would bring are not balanced development,” the hamlet wrote to the energy board. “The (hunters and trappers organization) and hamlet council are firmly opposed to seismic testing in Davis Strait and Baffin Bay.”
Aboriginal Affairs says no decisions have been made about whether those waters ultimately will be opened to oil and gas drilling, even if the energy board approves seismic testing.”The strategic environmental assessment for potential offshore oil and gas exploration in Baffin Bay/Davis Strait will recommend to the minister if, where and when the region should be opened for exploration activities,” say government documents.
Porta praises Ottawa for the attempt to get out in front of potential industry activity in the eastern Arctic.
“It’s a great way to look at a broad question and understand and deal with some of the big-picture issues,” he said. “To deal with those up front — things like what areas should be open for rights, what does a meaningful royalty package look like for Inuit — it’s the best way to make big, important decisions.”
It will be years before northerners see offshore drill rigs, if ever. But now is when the decisions about how that return will be managed are being made, said Porta.
“You don’t go from something to nothing quickly with Arctic oil and gas. The decisions happen now.”
As the publisher of an online journal focusing on Canada’s environment and resource economy, the issue of what to call Alberta’s oil patch is an increasingly, um, sticky subject.
Do we use “oil sands”, capitulating to the industry’s late but valiant rebranding effort, or keep to “tar sands”, which is how we’ve generally referred to it in the past? Or, like the Huffington Post and other newer, online publications, float between the two, depending on the story and author – which is what we’re doing more of lately.
Neither oil nor tar
The simple fact of the matter is that viscous, sand-encased substance lying under the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin is neither oil nor tar. Which makes it hypocritical and disingenuous for industry advocates to dismiss their critics for using the word “tar”, while at the same time misrepresenting their product as “oil”.
One thing that substance is most definitely not is sweet, light crude. It’s bitumen. At best, after considerable refining, it will become synthetic crude (or “syncrude”) and various other fuels and petrochemical products. It is never, nor will it ever be oil.
I have always preferred “tar sands”, not because of its activist connotation, but because I believe tar more closely reflects the defining characteristics of bitumen than does oil. Of course, tar is not a single, naturally-occurring substance – rather “a very thick, black, sticky liquid…used especially for road surfaces”, as Merriam-Webster’s defines it. (On that note, a contractor I hired to patch a leaking crack between the asphalt and concrete perimeter at the rear of my building recommended a bitumen product for the job, which worked like a hot damn).
Says Wikipedia, “Tar can be produced from coal, wood, petroleum, or peat. It is black, and a mixture of hydrocarbons and free carbon.” A sticky, black substance often derived from coal or petroleum, which is used to patch roads. Sounds an awful lot like bitumen to me.
That said, I always want to reach new readers, especially with regards to the vital conversation on Canada’s energy future. And the fact is, the oil industry and Harper government, though late out of the gate, have been highly effective at marginalizing the term “tar sands” and those who use it as left-wing nuts and out-of-touch tree-huggers. I’m not saying they’re objectively right about this. Of course they aren’t, especially with the sort of polarizing language they increasingly apply to anyone who dares question the industry: “radical”, “extremist”, or the most egregious, “eco-terrorist”.
Nevertheless, the success of the oil lobby in terms of shifting the language paradigm around Alberta bitumen is a present reality which I feel compelled at least to confront.
American author stymied by oil sands/tar sands debate
Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Tony Horwitz encapsulated the issue on CBC radio’s The Current this past week while discussing his time in Alberta researching a new book. Host Anna Maria Tremonti asked, “When you got to Fort MacMurray, were you saying oil sands or tar sands?” Horowitz replied:
[quote]I was new to this topic and was sort of an agnostic on that question, but it quickly became clear to me that saying ‘tar sands’ would tar me as a hostile environmentalist. So, I began to say ‘oil sands’. Now that I’m back here in the US, I have to say most of the conversation, it’s ‘tar sands’ – but it’s a mark of how politicized this issue is that we can’t even agree on what to call this substance.[/quote]
Environmentalists frame tar sands early on
“Oil sands” wasn’t always the go-to moniker for Alberta bitumen. In a rare coup for the environmental movement, the early rounds of the PR war over Alberta’s massive bitumen deposits went to tree-hugging opponents. The term, “tar sands” stuck in the public consciousness, both in Canada and amongst a growing legion of international critics.
Peter Essick’s National Geographic photos gave the oil sands a black eye
This was the kind of rebranding exercise that is so often the province of “free market” conservatives and their pollsters – like Frank Luntz, who advised the Bush Administration to substitute “climate change” for global warming, in order to make it sound less alarming.
Sometime around the 2009 publication of National Geographic’s groundbreaking photo essay, titled “Scraping Bottom”, the oil lobby recognized it had a real branding problem on its hands. The cover story used the term “oil sands”, but the moonscape images it yielded fit perfectly into the environmental movement’s framing of the “tar sands”.
Somewhere in there, the industry got its act together and decided to go public with a multi-million dollar rebranding effort. This included the “Ethical Oil” concept (though you’ll never get any of them to admit a direct connection between this group, the Harper government and the oil industry). But, more importantly, it revolved around a massive advertising campaign – encompassing print, online, radio and television – dousing the Canadian public in saccharine ads extolling the virtues of improved technology, remediated wetlands and indispensable economic benefits. All emblazoned with two words: “OIL SANDS “.
A leaked 2013 Postmedia sales pitch to the industry’s leading lobby, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), offered to manufacture sympathetic news coverage across its national newspaper chain. Not long after this pitch, Postmedia demoted star national energy reporter Mike De Souza through the cancellation of its parliamentary bureau.
This on top of paid speaking engagements for two of the CBC’s most prominent on-air talents, National anchor Peter Mansbridge and pundit and radio host Rex Murphy. Neither of these newsmen and none of these outlets has seen fit to acknowledge any impropriety or ethical conflict in these situations.
So today, a survey of the nation’s leading media publications reveals that essentially all of them have chosen “oil” over “tar”. For Sun News and the CBC, “oilsands” is the most consistent choice – with the occasional “oil sands” mixed in.
The Globe and Mail prefers a space between oil and sands, as does the National Post, though parent Postmedia doesn’t appear to have a national policy on the subject yet, as The Vancouver Sun usually opts for “oilsands”. Meanwhile, CAPP itself uses “oil sands”.
Bigger than Po-tay-to/Po-tah-to
As author Horwitz noted, it’s pretty well impossible to engage in a sound debate about the oil sands/tar sands if we can’t even agree on what to call them.
Defaulting to oil sands may ensure a wider readership for our stories at The Common Sense Canadian, but in capitulating to the oil lobby’s choice of language, I recognize would be helping to legitimize its corporate, PR flack misnomer, the “oil sands.” Moreover, calling it “oil” glosses over the important differences between these two products – from the water and climate issues, to the properties which may very well make bitumen more prone to spills and more difficult to clean up. The consequences of this word choice are far more serious than po-tay-to/po-tah-to.
So how about we split the difference and call them what they really are: The Bitumen Sands?
Maybe not as catchy, but a hell of a lot more honest.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia granted conditional approval Friday to a proposed liquefied natural gas plant in Goldboro, clearing another hurdle for the terminal that’s slated to be operational in six years if Pieridae Energy Canada decides to proceed with the project.
Environment Minister Randy Delorey said the Calgary-based company must abide by 40 conditions if it goes ahead, which includes working with his department to find ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions at each phase of the project. Other conditions are intended to protect wetlands and wildlife, he said.
“I am confident any potential environmental issues can be addressed and the economic benefits of this project can be realized,” he said in a statement.
Earlier this month, an environmental panel gave conditional approval for the project, which the company said Friday is estimated to cost US$8.3 billion in capital spending.
The province’s Utility and Review Board will have the final say on whether the project can go ahead.
Company predicts 200 long-term jobs
Pieridae said it anticipates the terminal will create up to 3,500 jobs during its construction and 200 full-time workers will be needed to operate the plant.
The company said it will make a final will decision on the project in 2015 and, if it proceeds, the terminal will be operational in 2020.
“We are very pleased to receive environmental assessment approval, which is an important milestone toward development of Goldboro LNG, ” said Alfred Sorensen, the company’s president and CEO.
Power plant for LNG terminal could affect harbour habitat
In addition to the LNG facility, the project also includes a 180 megawatt gas-fired power plant, a water supply intake and pipeline for a potable water supply from a nearby lake, and a marine wharf and jetty. The jetty would extend into Isaac’s Harbour, which includes habitat for lobster, fish and sea urchins.
The company said it will work with local residents, First Nations and the Environment Department as it works to meet the conditions placed on the project, which include management plans on air emissions, greenhouse gas and wetlands. It must also establish a fisheries advisory committee.
Project would raise province’s carbon emissions by 18%
The three-member environmental panel that reviewed the project said it would result in a number of “residual effects” on the environment, such as an increase in the province’s greenhouse gas emissions by about 18 per cent above 2010 levels by 2020. It says a number of fisheries in the general area would be compromised as well.
The environmental panel said it believes the economic benefits tipped the scale in favour of the project’s development.
Its report said the Goldboro project is projected to contribute 0.5 per cent of the annual national greenhouse gas emissions for Canada and that provincial emissions and targets must be carefully considered. The panel said Pieridae argued the increase will be offset largely by foreign customer’s replacement of coal by the company’s natural gas.
In its submission to the panel, the Halifax-based Ecology Action Centre asked for the project to be “dismissed outright” by the Environment Department because its 2020 emissions would make it nearly impossible for Nova Scotia to reduce its overall emissions 10 per cent below 1990 levels by that same year.
Seawater is sprayed into clouds to make them reflect more sunlight (Illustration: Nasa)
Because nature doesn’t always behave the same in a lab, test tube or computer program as it does in the real world, scientists and engineers have come up with ideas that didn’t turn out as expected.
DDT was considered a panacea for a range of insect pest issues, from controlling disease to helping farmers. But we didn’t understand bioaccumulation back then – toxins concentrating up the food chain, risking the health and survival of animals from birds to humans. Chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, seemed so terrific we put them in everything from aerosol cans to refrigerators. Then we learned they damage the ozone layer, which protects us from harmful solar radiation.
Unintended consequences
These unintended consequences come partly from our tendency to view things in isolation, without understanding how all nature is interconnected. We’re now facing the most serious unintended consequence ever: climate change from burning fossil fuels. Some proposed solutions may also result in unforeseen outcomes.
Oil, gas and coal are miraculous substances – energy absorbed from the sun by plants and animals hundreds of millions of years ago, retained after they died and concentrated as the decaying life became buried deeper into the earth. Burning them to harness and release this energy opened up possibilities unimaginable to our ancestors. We could create machines and technologies to reduce our toil, heat and light our homes, build modern cities for growing populations and provide accessible transport for greater mobility and freedom. And because the stuff seemed so plentiful and easy to obtain, we could build vehicles and roads for everyone – big cars that used lots of gas – so that enormous profits would fuel prosperous, consumer-driven societies.
We knew fairly early that pollution affected human health, but that didn’t seem insurmountable. We just needed to improve fuel efficiency and create better pollution-control standards. That reduced rather than eliminated the problem and only partly addressed an issue that appears to have caught us off-guard: the limited availability of these fuels. But the trade-offs seemed worthwhile.
All that carbon catching up with us
Then, for the past few decades, a catastrophic consequence of our profligate use of fossil fuels has loomed. Burning them has released excessive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, creating a thick, heat-trapping blanket. Along with our destruction of natural carbon-storing environments, such as forests and wetlands, this has steadily increased global average temperatures, causing climate change.
Had we addressed the problem from the outset, we could have solutions in place. We could have found ways to burn less fossil fuel without massively disrupting our economies and ways of life. But we’ve become addicted to the lavish benefits that fossil fuels have offered, and the wealth and power they’ve provided to industrialists and governments. And so there’s been a concerted effort to stall or avoid corrective action, with industry paying front groups, “experts” and governments to deny or downplay the problem.
Enter the techno-fixes
Now that climate change has become undeniable, with consequences getting worse daily, many experts are eyeing solutions. Some are touting massive technological fixes, such as dumping large amounts of iron filings into the seas to facilitate carbon absorption, pumping nutrient-rich cold waters from the ocean depths to the surface, building giant reflectors to bounce sunlight back into space and irrigating vast deserts.
But we’re still running up against those pesky unintended consequences. Scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany, studied five geoengineering schemes and concluded they’re “either relatively ineffective with limited warming reductions, or they have potentially severe side effects and cannot be stopped without causing rapid climate change.” That’s partly because we don’t fully understand climate and weather systems and their interactions.
That doesn’t mean we should rule out geoengineering. Climate change is so serious that we’ll need to marshal everything we have to confront it, and some methods appear to be more benign than others. But geoengineering isn’t the solution. And it’s no excuse to go on wastefully burning fossil fuels. We must conserve energy and find ways to quickly shift to cleaner sources.
With contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor Ian Hanington.
Most of the oil from the proposed Energy East pipeline would be destined for export, says a new report
by Lauren Krugel, The Canadian Press
CALGARY – The proposed Energy East pipeline won’t be the boon to Eastern Canadian refineries that supporters claim because the vast majority of the oil in it would be bound for export markets, environmental groups argued in a report released Tuesday.
Alberta bitumen bound for India Europe
The $12-billion project would likely use the lion’s share of its 1.1 million barrel per day capacity to send unrefined oilsands crude to markets like India, Europe and possibly the United States, says the report, penned by The Council of Canadians, Ecology Action Centre, Environmental Defence and Equiterre.
The pipeline would run 4,600 kilometres from Alberta to Saint John, N.B., using repurposed pipe already in the ground for roughly two thirds of the way.
The company planning to build it, TransCanada Corp. (TSX:TRP), aims to file a formal regulatory application this summer and has been engaging with communities along the route in an effort to build support.
Backers in industry and government have said Energy East will help ailing refineries in the East — reliant on high-cost crude from abroad — by connecting them with a stable, low-cost supply from Western Canada. The proposal also includes export terminals in Quebec and Saint John, N.B., from which some of oil can be sent overseas by tanker, getting producers a better price.
Only 122,000 barrels a day to local refineries
The report Tuesday said the three refineries along the Energy East route — Suncor Energy’s (TSX:SU) in Montreal, Valero’s near Quebec City and Irving’s in Saint John, N.B., — have a combined capacity of 672,000 barrels per day.
Of that, the groups figure 550,000 barrels per day can come from elsewhere — offshore crude in Atlantic Canada, booming U.S. shale resources and, eventually, via Enbridge Inc.’s (TSX:ENB) recently approved reversed Line 9 pipeline between southwestern Ontario and Montreal. That leaves just 122,000 barrels per day of refining capacity that can be served by Energy East, the report said.
“It’s very frustrating to watch a company trying to convince Canadians that they should accept these massive risks based on some perceived benefit that they may receive. When you dig into it, you find that it’s an empty promise,” said Adam Scott, with Environmental Defence.
[quote]It’s just not true that Eastern Canada’s going to benefit in the way that TransCanada’s saying they are. And when you look and see that this is a project about putting vast quantities of oil onto tankers and shipping them out of the country, people who are convinced that ‘this is going to mean more local jobs for me’ are going to be very disappointed.[/quote]
TransCanada makes big economic promises
TransCanada has said the project’s economic benefits would be massive and has described it as a nation builder on par with the Canadian Pacific Railway.
A study TransCanada commissioned last September, conducted by Deloitte & Touche LLP, noted Quebec and New Brunswick refiners would see big cost savings if connected with lower-cost western crude.
On a 100,000 barrel per day basis, Quebec refineries would save between $92 million and $336 million per year, while in New Brunswick the annual savings would be between $51 million and $377 million, the Deloitte report said. That’s assuming those refineries continue to use mostly light oil.
Suncor has been considering adding equipment to its Montreal refinery that would enable it to process heavier crudes, while the Irving refinery in Saint John, N.B., has the ability to process some heavy crude.
Deloitte report predicts 1,000 direct long-term jobs
The Deloitte report predicted the equivalent of 10,071 direct full-time equivalent jobs across the country will be needed to develop and build Energy East until 2018. Once the pipeline is up and running, Deloitte sees the creation of 1,081 direct jobs.
The study also found the project would add about $35.3 billion to Canada’s gross domestic product in the development and construction phase and over the 40-year life of the project. As well, it’s expected to add $10.2 billion in tax revenues at the municipal, provincial and federal levels the over that time.
Those economic figures don’t include the impact of higher Canadian crude prices that would result from being able to sell the product in lucrative overseas markets. Nor does it incorporate the lower crude costs eastern refineries may enjoy.
