Tag Archives: Oil and gas

If I was a BC Tory Under Harper, I’d Resign

July 5, 2012Canada, Energy and Resources, Oceans, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers, Politics, Salmon Farming and Aquaculture, Western CanadaAquaculture, BC Oil Pipelines and Supertankers, Enbridge, KinderMorgan, Oil and gas, Politics, SalmonRafe Mair

I have received a lot of feedback on my recent blog on John Weston, MP.

Let me say that this was directed to Weston because he is my MP and it applies with equal force to all Tory MPs from British Columbia.

I’ve been asked if I would resign were I in John’s position and I say YES. Now, I realize that’s easy to say – he who has not sinned has not been tempted. I have no doubt, however. I sat in a cabinet that had half a dozen ministers who would have resigned under these circumstances. Premier Bill Bennett recognized this and it was taken into his consideration, I’m sure.

Now, under our system – such is the measure of its idiocy – all elected members on the government side must often compromise, otherwise the government couldn’t function. There were occasions where cabinet passed policy that I had spoken out against in the past and I told the press that when cabinet makes a decision all must support it. But these were areas of policy, not matters that go to the root of your commitment to your voters and your constituency. They were not matters of conscience. Any who have sat on the board of, say, a golf club will readily get the distinction between matters of business and matters of conscience. Premier Bill Bennett understood the distinction – Stephen Harper, no doubt also understands but he knows his backbenchers well and knows that there is almost nothing that goes to the conscience of his MPS because they have none.

Let’s be clear what issues we’re talking about here.

The environment of BC as a whole is not merely threatened but is on the brink of disaster from policy decisions already taken by the Harper government. I refer, of course, to its support of the Enbridge pipeline and expansion of Kinder Morgan’s pipeline to Vancouver; its open support of tankers loaded with deadly bitumen from the Tar Sands; its ongoing support of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to promote fish farms while their statutory basic raison d’etre is to protect our salmon; and its utter abandonment of protection of fish habitat as demonstrated in its gutting of the DFO in BC.

These, I contend, are not merely matters of policy but go the very root of what British Columbia is and as such simply cannot be supported by any Member of Parliament from our province.

Ask yourself this: if in the past election Tory candidates were asked if they support the above policies, I suggest that not one of them would have answered yes. If they had been and they replied that they were for these policies they would never have been elected and they know that.

I pick on Weston because, as I say, he’s my MP. In fact, the entire BC Conservative caucus ought to resign en masse. That they haven’t and won’t brands them as they are – lickspittles and toadies who put their parliamentary seat before their duty.

My prediction is that Weston will be rewarded with a cabinet seat in the next major shuffle – after all, he has been faithful to Harper and he’s moved his family back to Ottawa, which move could well have come from a nod or a wink from Harper.

After all, if sacrificing your constituency and your province for personal gain is to mean anything, there must be a reward and in my view it will come.

Former Conservative Environment Minister Prentice Warns Harper Govt. on Ignoring First Nations

July 3, 2012Canada, Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers, PoliticsBC Oil Pipelines and Supertankers, Enbridge, Oil and gas, Politics, Stephen HarperCommon Sense Canadian

Read this column from The Georgia Straightby Charlie Smith on former Conservative cabinet minister Jim Prentice’s veiled warning to the Harper Government on the consequences of ignoring First Nations’ opposition to major resource projects. (July 1, 2012)

Sometimes, you stumble across an intriguing article where you least expect to find it.

This weekend as I was perusing a Vancouver Sun special section on energy, I spotted the byline of Jim Prentice. He’s the senior executive vice-president and vice-chairman of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.

Prentice also happens to be the former Conservative environment minister who announced his resignation from the Stephen Harper government in 2010 because he wanted to spend more time with his family. Coincidentally (or not), this came shortly after he visited Haida Gwaii with environmentalist David Suzuki.

Prentice was a Progressive Conservative before his party was taken over by the more right-wing Canadian Alliance. Its roots were in the old Reform Party of Canada.

Harper, a former policy director of the Reformers, likely went a bit berserk at the sight of his environment minister hobnobbing on The Nature of Things with Suzuki.

Now in his role with the bank, Prentice writes that the objective of developing and exporting Canada’s hydrocarbon deposits is a “defining moment” for the country. He used the same language in a speech last month to the Business Council of B.C.

In the article, Prentice never mentions the proposed Enbridge or Kinder Morgan pipelines by name. However, he acknowledges that “the constitutional and legal issues surrounding west coast energy corridors, terminals and shipping are extraordinarily complex”.

One section of Prentice’s piece is worth repeating verbatim:

To begin, however, the constitutional obligation to consult with first nations is not a corporate obligation. It is the federal government’s responsibility.

Second, the obligation to define an ocean management regime for terminals and shipping on the west coast is not a corporate responsibility. It is the federal government’s responsibility.

Finally, these issues cannot be resolved by regulatory fiat—they require negotiation. The real risk is not regulatory rejection but regulatory approval, undermined by subsequent legal challenges and the absence of ‘social licence’ to operate.

There are billions of dollars at stake for Corporate Canada in the efforts to export raw bitumen through Kitimat and the Port of Vancouver and ship this product via supertankers to Asia.

In the article, Prentice is, in fact, appealing to the Harper government to modify its approach of not seriously negotiating with First Nations.

Rafe Takes his MP John Weston to Task on Pipelines, Tankers, Fish Habitat

July 2, 2012Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and SupertankersBC Oil Pipelines and Supertankers, Enbridge, KinderMorgan, Oil and gas, SalmonRafe Mair

Dear John Weston, MP,

A short time ago you held a meeting in Lions Bay to announce that through your sterling work and doggedness we will soon have a National Health and Fitness Day…or is it a whole week? Well done, I’m sure.

The thought may occur to some that this is a little dollop given to backbenchers to see that they are busy little bees and not doing the devil’s work like raising real issues that concern an MP’s constituents and home province.

I invite you to answer a few questions on the minds of, dare I say, most British Columbians who want you to listen to them, then take a public stand. I certainly understand, as I’m sure most people do, the need for party solidarity under our system. This must, however, surely take a back seat to forthright and courageous deeds when the very essence of your constituency and province are at issue as they are in BC today. The Harper government, with steady support of the Victoria Liberals, have implemented policies that will destroy us.

Do you know that Enbridge, which wishes to construct a 1,100 km twin pipeline through our northern wilderness, averages a spill a week? That they’ve had hundreds of spills over the past decade?

Do you know that the pipeline traverses the Rockies, then the Coast Range, thence through one of the most important and beautiful wilderness areas in the world?

Do you know that bitumen, the substance being transported, is different than conventional crude oil in that it is virtually impossible to clean up and that it has a “shelf life” of 100 years? That its viscosity means it clings to everything it touches? Have you studied the Enbridge spill into the Kalamazoo River, a location easy to access, and seen that two years later what the company described as ”not a major spill” has not been cleaned up yet and likely never will?

Have you done your thinking and reasoned that pipelines in this region would produce spill after spill in terrain that even a helicopter would have trouble getting to?

Have you examined the tanker traffic issue carefully or, indeed, at all? Do you not accept the fact that despite all efforts, there will be a spill? That bitumen, unlike regular crude, sinks like a stone? That where ordinary crude can be surrounded by rafts, closed in then scooped up, that bitumen sinks and, thus, for all intents and purposes, can not be recovered?

Have you ever been to Douglas Channel and assessed the challenge to a tanker? Do you not know that double hulling, while helpful, scarcely solves the question of human error, nor does it remove the certainty of a spill which will make the Exxon Valdez look like a non-event? That in recent years there have been four major accidents with double hulled tankers on within the last year and that these were collisions with other ships?

Do you not realize that the Kinder Morgan line poses a huge threat to the Port of Vancouver and entire south coast, much of which you represent?

John, your government has just approved, through the notorious Bill 38, of the rape of fish habitat. Because you voted for it you must have approved this monstrous act. That, for example, salmon spawning rivers are now all but unprotected? Do you not understand The Pacific salmon and their habits? Did you know, for example, that Coho spawn in creeks and ditches, and that Municipalities often approve development in the area because they’re told the creek or ditch has no fish values?

One day you should go down to the Musqueam Nation and look at Musqueam Creek, where I fished when I was a boy, and see that thanks to the Band it still has a Coho run. It’s a tiny creek, yet is very important as are other small streams throughout the province.

I close with this question: didn’t we send you to Ottawa to represent us and work on our behalf? Don’t we have the right to expect you to fight our battles in public, not tamely accept huge and permanent damage to your province? Why do we need you – to look after late pension cheques and send birthday cards to elderly constituents?

In reality, you clearly put your duty to your leader and your party ahead of your obligations to fight our battles and you might just as well be a fencepost with hair.

John, you support fish farms, support the BC government’s raping our rivers (indeed you’ve given grants to these bastards), you support legislation to all but eliminate federal protection of fish habitat, you approve of the environmental desecration of our salmon spawning grounds, pay no attention to the sure carnage which will, as night follows day, destroy our God-granted environment if pipelines and tanker traffic are approved.

Come to think of it, John, just what the hell have you done for our constituency? More importantly, what have you and your fellow Tory lickspittles done to save our province from being environmentally trashed by your corporate friends?

I’m reminded of Oliver Cromwell’s words to the Rump parliament: “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately…Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”

New York Times Blog Picks Up on Enbridge Cartoon Controversy in BC

June 29, 2012Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and SupertankersBC Oil Pipelines and Supertankers, Enbridge, Oil and gasCommon Sense Canadian

Read this blog from The New York Times on the recent controversy in BC over The Province newspaper’s decision to pull a cartoon from its website which mocks Enbridge’s new ad campaign – allegedly under pressure from the company. (June 28, 2012)

OTTAWA — Like many political cartoonists, Dan Murphy at The Province, a tabloid daily in Vancouver, British Columbia, supplements his traditional drawings with online animations.

But an online parody of a pipeline company’s television commercial drew an unusual amount of attention in Canada after the decision of the newspaper to remove it, according to Mr. Murphy, because of pressure from Enbridge, the pipeline company.

Enbridge is currently running a advertising campaign to promote a controversial pipeline proposal to move oil from Alberta’s oil sands to ports in British Columbia for shipment to Asia.

After an existing Enbridge pipeline in Alberta developed a leak, Mr. Murphy took an Enbridge commercial that features bucolic watercolor animations of life after the new pipeline and interrupted it with repeated splatters of animated oil. During the parody video, an off-camera voice, a spoof of an Enbridge executive reviewing the commercial, can be heard saying, “It’s O.K., we’ll clean this up; we’ll be as good as new” as an animated hand squeegees away the oil.

But not long after the video was posted last Friday, Mr. Murphy wrote in an e-mail that he and Gordon Clark, the editorial page editor, met with Wayne Moriarty, the editor in chief of The Province, which is owned by PostMedia, a national chain.

Mr. Murphy said that they were told by Mr. Moriarty “that he’d had a call from PostMedia’s chief digital officer, Simon Jennings, and been told that if the Enbridge parody didn’t come down from our Web site, Enbridge was going to pull their ads from our Web site and papers.” In an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which first drew attention to the animation’s removal, Mr. Murphy said that he was told that the resulting revenue loss would be measured in “millions” and that he also understood that Mr. Moriarty would be fired if the cartoon remained online.

In an interview, Mr. Moriarty said, “I believe what Dan said is what Dan took out of the conversation.” But he added: “My intentions have been so completely misconstrued in all of this.”

Mr. Moriarty said that he reviewed the animation after being contacted by the newspaper’s advertising sales department. An advertising buying agency working for Enbridge, he said, had contacted the paper to complain that the animation was “a misappropriation” of the pipeline company’s advertisement. Enbridge, he added, did not contact the paper nor did he consult anyone at PostMedia’s head office in Toronto. The newspaper then contacted Enbridge to apologize.

The removal of the video, Mr. Moriarty said, was not related to legal concerns or threats that advertisements would be pulled. Although he added of the meeting with Mr. Murphy: “Did the subject of potential loss of advertising come up? How could it not?”

A earlier animation by Mr. Murphy mocking the pipeline plan and featuring Enbridge’s logo remains on The Province’s site, as does a second one featuring snippets from a television commercial by a pro-oil sands group.

Robyn Allan on What Enbridge’s $5 Million Ad Campaign is Hiding

June 29, 2012Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and SupertankersBC Oil Pipelines and Supertankers, Enbridge, Oil and gasCommon Sense Canadian

Read this op-ed in TheTyee.ca by economist Robyn Allan on Enbridge’s glitzy, new ad campaign, designed to mollify British Columbians concerns about the company’s proposed Northern Gateway pipelines. (June 28, 2012)

Enbridge’s multi-million dollar advertising campaign praising the Northern Gateway pipeline project is sweeping through British Columbia. Animated pastel dream sequences promise economic prosperity, thousands of jobs, world-class safety standards, low environmental impact, and kids who know how to jump rope.

Vast economic gain with minimal risk sounds wonderful, but when you look deeper, there’s quite a different story.

Few jobs for a short time

Enbridge’s job claims are suspect. In their ads the company says Northern Gateway creates “3,000 construction jobs at the peak of construction.” But in their report, the peak of construction is a three month period in the third year of a five year project and they aren’t jobs — they are person years of employment. A more accurate claim, using Enbridge’s published data, would be 1,000 construction jobs.

Even then, Enbridge has indicated PetroChina — probably using the Temporary Foreign Workers Program which allows imported workers to be paid 15 per cent less than Canadians — would “love” to build the pipeline.

Your bills will rise

For almost two years Canadians were led to believe the economic benefit from Northern Gateway would arise from higher prices paid in Asia for crude oil shipped along the pipeline. What we weren’t told is that these higher prices would be passed onto Canadians. When I filed my critique of Enbridge’s benefits case with the National Energy Board Review Panel earlier this year, the company confirmed this is the intent of the project.

Consumers and businesses faced with limited budgets must adjust to higher oil prices. This impacts economic activity in other areas. Spending and investment declines — downsizing and layoffs result. None of the negative impact of higher oil prices have been built into Enbridge’s rosy scenario.

History of failed monitoring

The ads also tell us Enbridge has “World-class safety standards… the pipeline will be monitored 24/7.”

On July 25, 2010 in Marshall, Michigan, Enbridge’s Line 6B ruptured releasing more than 20,000 barrels of dilbit. Dilbit is a mixture of heavy oil sands crude called bitumen mixed with a toxic diluent which enables it to flow through a pipeline. This is the oil planned for the Northern Gateway pipeline.

In Michigan, as diluent evaporated into the air affecting the local community, remaining bitumen made its way into the Kalamazoo River. Enbridge’s corporate standard for identifying a spill is 10 minutes with an additional three minutes for pipeline shutdown. It took more than 17 hours for the Kalamazoo spill to be detected and the pipeline shut down. Line 6B was monitored “24/7.”

Exxon Chief Acknowledges Global Warming From Fossils Fuels, Insists Humans Will Adapt

June 29, 2012Climate Change, Energy and Resources, Oil&Gasclimate change, Oil and gasCommon Sense Canadian

Read this Canadian Press story, via TheTyee.ca, on Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson’s recent statement covering global warming, fracking, and other controversial aspects of his company’s business. (June 28, 2012)

ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson says fears about climate change, drilling, and energy dependence are overblown.

In a speech Wednesday, Tillerson acknowledged that burning of fossil fuels is warming the planet, but said society will be able to adapt.

The risks of oil and gas drilling are well understood and can be mitigated, he said. And dependence on other nations for oil is not a concern as long as access to supply is certain, he said.

Tillerson blamed a public that is “illiterate” in science and math, a “lazy” press, and advocacy groups that “manufacture fear” for energy misconceptions in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations.

He highlighted that huge discoveries of oil and gas in North America have reversed a 20-year decline in U.S. oil production in recent years. He also trumpeted the global oil industry’s ability to deliver fuels during a two-year period of dramatic uncertainty in the Middle East, the world’s most important oil and gas-producing region.

“No one, anywhere, any place in the world has not been able to get crude oil to fuel their economies,” he said.

In his speech and during a question-and-answer session after, he addressed three major energy issues: Climate change, oil and gas drilling pollution, and energy dependence.

Tillerson, in a break with predecessor Lee Raymond, has acknowledged that global temperatures are rising. “Clearly there is going to be an impact,” he said Wednesday.

But he questioned the ability of climate models to predict the magnitude of the impact. He said that people would be able to adapt to rising sea levels and changing climates that may force agricultural production to shift.

“We have spent our entire existence adapting. We’ll adapt,” he said. “It’s an engineering problem and there will be an engineering solution.”

Andrew Weaver, chairman of climate modeling and analysis at the University of Victoria in Canada, disagreed with Tillerson’s characterization of climate modeling. He said modeling can give a very good sense of the type of climate changes that are likely. And he said adapting to those changes will be much more difficult and disruptive than Tillerson seems to be acknowledging.

Steve Coll, author of the recent book “Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power,” said he was surprised Exxon would already be talking about ways society could adapt to climate change when there is still time to try to avoid its worst effects. Also, he said, research suggests that adapting to climate change could be far more expensive than reducing emissions now. “Moving entire cities would be very expensive,” he said.

Enbridge’s Attempt to Kill Spoof Backfires as Censored Cartoonist Goes Public

June 27, 2012Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and SupertankersBC Oil Pipelines and Supertankers, Enbridge, Oil and gasDamien Gillis

Province newspaper cartoonist Dan Murphy went public on CBC yesterday to confirm suspicions that his publication had pulled a spoof he created last Friday, under pressure from Enbridge Inc.

The cartoon, which mocks Enbridge’s new ad campaign designed to mollify concerns about its proposed twin pipelines from the Alberta Tar Sands to Kitimat, was posted on The Province’s website Friday morning, only to be pulled several hours later.

Online magazine backofthebook.ca obtained a response from Province Editor-in-Chief Wayne Moriarty on Monday, confirming the company had pushed for the removal of the cartoon:

Wayne Moriarty, The Province‘s Editor-in-Chief, says the animation was removed at the request of Enbridge “because it contains copyrighted material.” He admits that use of the material might be protected under fair use laws, but says the newspaper chose not to pursue the matter. He points out that The Province has run editorials critical of the pipeline, and insists that the decision to pull the satire has nothing to do with the $5 million campaign, which is running in his paper and The Vancouver Sun, both of which are owned by The Pacific Newspaper Group, among many other media outlets.

But Murphy contradicted parts of Moriarty’s statement on CBC Tuesday evening. The cartoonist said he was called in for a meeting with Moriarty, who told Murphy that the chief revenue and digital officer for Postmedia, The Province’s parent company, was upset over the parody.

Said Murphy, “The information he gave us there was Simon Jennings was very upset over this video, that Enbridge was very upset, that Enbridge was going to pull a million dollars worth of advertising out of Postmedia newspapers if it didn’t come down. And also if it didn’t come down that Wayne Moriarty was going to be fired.”

Murphy said Moriarty later told him, “Enbridge was mostly upset because we had taken their material and turned it into a parody.”

The CBC story included reaction from Langara University journalism professor Ross Howard, who dismissed Enbridge’s alleged concerns under the principle of “fair comment”, noting, “When you’re commenting about what that corporation is doing, what it stands for, it’s the same as using their own name and putting their symbol on it. That’s why they have logos and symbols.”

Enbridge released a statement yesterday denying it had demanded the removal of the video or threatened to pull a portion of its $5 million ad campaign from Postmedia papers. According to company spokesperson Todd Nogier, “Enbridge Inc. did not request the Province or Post Media pull the video…Enbridge has not discontinued this campaign, nor its investments as a part of that campaign, nor did Enbridge threaten to discontinue that campaign.”

And yet, the company later confirmed in a conversation with CBC that “…the company had a conversation with Postmedia and they apologized for the parody…any further conversation would be inappropriate.”

Regardless of Enbridge’s claims, the controversy over the cartoon has only served to increase the attention it has received. The video was promptly reposted by citizen journalists on youtube, with one posting generating over 12,000 hits as of this writing. A story The Common Sense Canadian ran yesterday on the subject was picked up by several other online publications and has generated over 1,600 “likes” on facebook in a day and close to 10,000 hits on our website. Blogger Laila Yuile has generated significant traction covering the story on her website as well, as the story has been all over the blogosphere and social media since Friday.

The fallout over Enbridge’s alleged actions is indicative of the clash of old and new media. Clearly the company believes it is still operating in an old media world, wherein a company can control a story by way of advertising dollars and corporate heft. But in today’s increasingly online media world, these heavy-handed tactics pose a real risk of backfiring, as they plainly have here.

As one commenter noted on the youtube page where the video has been reposted, “It’s on youtube now. It’s not going away.”

Liberals to Reclassify Natural Gas for LNG as “Clean”

June 22, 2012Canada, Energy and Resources, Fracking, Oil&Gas, PoliticsChristy Clark, fracking, Oil and gas, PoliticsDamien Gillis

Read this blog from the Huffington Post Canada on today’s announcement from the Clark Government that it will be adding natural gas to its list of acceptable “clean” energy sources to enable proposed Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) plants in Kitimat to use natural gas to power their facilities. (June 22, 2012)

VANCOUVER – Premier Christy Clark has tweaked regulations to ensure her job creation plan that includes building three liquefied natural gas plants in northern British Columbia squares with the government’s aggressive plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Clark has previously acknowledged the plants — which are known energy hogs — could be at odds with the provincial Clean Energy Act, but she’s relying on them to create employment.

On Thursday, Clark announced she will be redefining only natural gas that’s used to power the northern LNG plants as “clean energy,” while keeping the classification of all other natural gas in the province as is.

The province’s Clean Energy Act already included cases in which burning natural gas could be considered clean, and so the altered regulation effectively brings the natural gas used to fuel the LNG plants in line.

“To make sure that B.C. can win in the global marketplace, while also doing our best to make sure we’re protecting our environment, we’ll be announcing a new regulation,” she told a conference of energy sector companies in Vancouver.

Clark added the designation will only apply to power generation that meets a set of environmental emissions standards.

More BS than Bitumen Flowing From Alberta After Third Recent Spill

June 21, 2012Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and SupertankersBC Oil Pipelines and Supertankers, Enbridge, Oil and gasDamien Gillis

A story in yesterday’s Edmonton Journal on the latest pipeline spill in Alberta, this one near Elk Point, was more full of crap than the province’s rivers and farms are full of oil these days.

This spill, from Enbridge’s 541-kilometre Athabasca Pipeline – which officials are pegging at 230,000 litres of diluted bitumen – comes on the heels of two others in less than a month, including the Plains Midstream spill just last week near Sundre and Pace Oil and Gas’ well leak near Rainbow Lake in late May. Of course, that was Plains Midstream’s second disaster since April, when its Rainbow pipeline produced the province’s largest leak in 36 years.

In other words, it’s been a bad couple of months for an industry trying to win over public opinion for two major bitumen pipelines proposed to traverse British Columbia (Enbridge and Kinder Morgan). This dizzying succession of spills has seriously complicated what was a tough sell to begin with.

But you wouldn’t know it from the stream of public relations bs flowing from Alberta politicians and industry reps in yesterday’s Journal story.

Here’s Darin Barter, spokesman for the Energy Resources Conservation Board:

Having the incidents so close together is unusual and “not indicative of Alberta’s level of safety,” Barter said.

“Given the enormous amount of oil and gas infrastructure in this province, it’s a very safe system.”

He said the recent spills are “very different incidents.”

Phew! One’s a well leak, another a burst pipeline, this one a leaky pump station. So the sheer variety of ways these things can screw up is reassuring, if I understand you correctly, Darin?

Or how about Enbridge’s official comment on the subject, from spokesman Graham White via email Wednesday:“The vast majority of the spill is on the site and there is no impact to waterways or wildlife.” No impact to waterways…really? That’s right. Because, you see, “The area affected is our pump station site, some area along the pipeline right-of-way that is also (owned by) Enbridge and part of a local field.” (A field not owned by Enbridge, incidentally).

And fields don’t have water tables beneath them, which in turn don’t connect with nearby rivers and streams. So Mr. White must be right. Nothing to see here folks.

Then again, we should not be surprised by Mr. White’s attitude. His company has, after all, been quite up front about the fact they do spill a lot of oil and will continue right on doing so.

Mike Diesling, press secretary for Alberta Energy Minister Ken Hughes, feels the same way. According to him, Alberta has a “good” pipeline system. “The problem is we have 400,000 kilometres of pipeline and occasionally, we will have a spill,” Deising said.

According to the Journal, the province’s premier isn’t too concerned either:

Premier Alison Redford said pipeline spills “happen sometimes” and are part of balancing social and economic factors.

“I think people have a pretty good appreciation of the fact that there does need to be a balance and it is unfortunate when these things happen,” Redford said.

Yes, we do understand that it is terribly unfortunate when these things happen, Madame Premier, but what “balance”? Balance between oil spilling and not spilling?

So, if I have this straight, when you have a whole lot of pipelines carrying a whole lot of oil, you are bound to get spills. Check. And when these spills happen, they’re not a big problem, because…well, spills happen.

The message from Alberta’s oil intelligentsia is, then: “Oil spills happen, but don’t worry, because oil spills happen.”

Are we clear? About as clear as the black sludge the keep spilling all over the place.

BC NDP Confirm Support for Fracking, LNG

June 21, 2012Canada, Energy and Resources, Fracking, Oil&Gas, Politics, Water and Hydrocarbons, Western CanadaAdrian Dix, fracking, LNG, Oil and gas, PoliticsCommon Sense Canadian

Read this story from the Vancouver Sun, reporting on the BC NDP’s support for natural gas and LNG development in BC integral to BC’s future, dismissing the mounting environmental concerns about fracking and LNG in the process. (June 14, 2012)

Opposition energy critic John Horgan sounded almost as happy as the B.C. Liberals recently when Shell Canada announced that it was moving forward on a $4-billion pipeline to transport natural gas from northeastern B.C. to a proposed liquefaction plant at Kitimat.

“Very good news,” Horgan said. “I’m pretty excited about it. Shell’s a big deal. They’ve got gas that they want to get out of the ground, and they want to get it to a market where they can get a better return than they do in North America.”

Natural gas, not oil, be it noted. Still his enthusiasm for LNG development stands in marked contrast to the national NDP’s recent doomsaying about resource exports, hydrocarbons, pipelines and tanker traffic.

When Horgan was reaffirmed as energy critic by new leader Adrian Dix last year – a position that is likely to translate into a term as energy minister if the New Democrats form government in 2013 – he made it clear that the party’s green proclivities on oil would have limited application to development of the provincial natural gas resource.

“A natural-gas proposal makes sense,” Horgan said, “because it’s a product from British Columbia, so the royalties would stay here, the jobs would be created here. And gas vents; it doesn’t stick.”

His made-in-B.C. stance even extends to the most controversial aspect of natural gas development, namely the means of extracting it.

Fracking, to use the unflattering short-hand term for the process of hydraulically fracturing shale rock to release the gas trapped within, has generated concerns about excessive water use, subsurface pollution, and seismic activity.

But would Horgan “call for a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing until British Columbians know more?” The question was put to the would-be energy minister by would-be NDP candidate George Heyman of the Sierra Club during Horgan’s recent appearance on Voice of B.C. on Shaw TV.

“No,” was the clear implication of his more lengthy reply.

“People within the NDP predisposed to green, environmental concerns were troubled that you heard from other jurisdictions where people were lighting their taps on fire because the gas had seeped into aquifers and into the water tables.

“That’s not the case in B.C. Our deposits are three and four kilometres under the ground. In Pennsylvania, the Marcellus play, which is providing gas now to much of Eastern Canada – that’s very shallow, relative to our deposits.”

He’s impressed with the B.C. industry’s experience and expertise. “We’ve been fracking in B.C. for decades and we do it fairly well. I’ve been to a number of frack sites, and I’m comfortable with the technology.”

As for water use, he maintains the provincial party has already addressed those concerns. “We’ve put in place what we consider to be a scientific panel that would review and ensure that water is disposed of appropriately, and that we reduce the amount of fresh water that’s involved in fracking.”

Seismic activity? “Not significant issues when you’re that deep in the ground. You wouldn’t want to necessarily be fracking along the Juan de Fuca fault, but in the Peace country it’s relatively safe – at least, that’s what I’m advised, and I’ve not heard of any seismic activity in the Peace.”

So green New Democrats like Hey-man should relax. But even as Horgan and his colleagues support fracking, pipelines, terminals and the tanker traffic necessary to transport the product overseas, there’s another big challenge to LNG development.