no pipeline, no tankers, no problem 2

Canada leads G7 in oil and gas subsidies: new report

Canada provides more government support for oil and gas companies than any other G7 nation and is among the least transparent about fossil fuel subsidies, a new report reveals.

“Fossil fuel subsidies undermine carbon pricing, work against the achievement of Canada’s climate targets, encourage more fossil fuel exploration and production, and allocate scarce public resources away from other priorities like health care, education and renewable energy,” says the report, which ranks the progress of G7 countries in meeting their pledge to phase out fossil fuel subsidies by 2025.

quote:

The exception was Alberta — the heart of Canada’s oil and gas industry — where people polled were concerned about the economic impacts of removing government support for oil and gas corporations.

Even so, 48 per cent of Albertans polled disagreed with public subsidies for oil and gas companies.

“We need to be attentive to these perspectives and concerns of the workers and the communities that are most impacted by efforts to reduce carbon pollution,” said Patrick DeRochie, climate change and energy program manager for Environmental Defence, one of the groups that sponsored the new poll.

quote:

“Canada has refused to open up its books to the Auditor General himself,” DeRochie pointed out.

Auditor General Michael Ferguson noted in his May 2017 annual report that he was unable to obtain key documents and budget analyses from Finance Canada to determine what progress had been made toward Canada’s commitment to eliminate subsidies to fossil fuel companies.

“Canadians should be able to know what the government is using their money for, especially when it goes to something like oil and gas companies that are polluting, that are causing climate change and that are becoming a real liability in terms of tar sands cleanup in the future,” DeRochie said.

Germany and the U.S. scored the highest on transparency out of the G7 nations, while Canada is the least transparent nation after Italy.

Aisha Badru - Fossil Fuels

..looks like at least 100 people not 50. noisy bunch to boot. :)

WATCH: Canadians protest at MP's office against Trans Mountain pipeline

About 50 protesters gathered outside federal Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould's constituency office in Vancouver on Monday to oppose the federal government's offer of $4.5 billion to buy pipeline assets from Texas-based energy giant Kinder Morgan.

They were among protests that Jolan Bailey, one of three LeadNow campaigners who organized a Day of Action, said were aimed at showing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau his Liberal party is in danger of losing tens of thousands of voters next election. Protesters also gathered at MPs' offices in Calgary, London, Ont. and other cities.

Outside Wilson-Raybould's office, 18-year-old Khalid Boudreau said he expects pipeline opponents to make a difference in the next election.

"Come 2019 every one of these people is registered to vote, and they're going to vote... we're going to turf (Trudeau) out of office," he said.

Premier Notley’s claimed $15 billion annual benefit from Trans Mountain exposed as false by her own budget

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley has consistently repeated that the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is worth “about $15 billion a year” — a figure her office says she picked up from a Scotiabank report released last February.

The Scotiabank figure has been discredited. The bank ignored how the industry actually works to develop its claim and Ms. Notley knows it.

quote:

Shortly after adopting the $15 billion a year mantra last February, Ms. Notley issued her annual Budget: Alberta's 2018-21 Fiscal Plan.

If Ms. Notley’s claimed benefits from Trans Mountain’s expansion were credible, it would be reasonable to expect that her formal budget document would provide more insight into how the figure was developed. So I checked. It does not.

Instead, Ms. Notley’s Budget says the exact opposite of what she claims will come from Trans Mountain’s expansion. According to the Budget, Trans Mountain’s expansion will produce no benefit at all — that’s right, no benefit.

The Budget explains that the reason why Trans Mountain’s expansion will deliver no economic benefit to Alberta, or the rest of Canada, is because any potential pricing gain from increased pipeline capacity will be swamped by significant heavy oil pricing problems that are looming on the horizon.

quote:

Alberta’s Budget identifies that the price impact of IMO 2020 will be about $8 US per barrel. What this means is that instead of the promised narrowing of differentials from Trans Mountain’s expansion, Alberta actually expects none.

Ms. Notley is deliberately misleading Albertans into a false belief about the importance of Trans Mountain’s expansion. The problem is that, at the very time Ms. Notley’s government should be focused on policies that direct its economy to safe harbour in the market chaos that is climate change, her contrived narrative on the importance of tidewater access is leading the Alberta economy into the perfect storm.

..more from the above piece

quote:

According to the researchers, two gathering global forces are eroding the foundation of the once-unassailable fossil industry.

Emerging disruptive technologies are already reducing global oil demand. China is replacing the equivalent of the entire London diesel bus fleet every five weeks with electric battery buses in an effort to improve wretched air quality in Chinese cities. This single example has already removed 233,000 barrels of fuel per day from global energy demand, propelled by plunging battery prices that are declining by 20 per cent per year.

The other death knell for Alberta’s expensive oil is carbon-limiting public policy from more principled governments elsewhere in the world. Technology alone will disrupt the oil economy, but public interventions are also speeding this transformation. Looking at almost 100 countries worldwide, the authors found that over three-quarters of global emissions are targeted by various climate plans.

Three years ago Vancouver adopted a little-noticed policy to derive all of the city’s energy needs from renewable sources by 2050. While that seems a long way off, this commitment is already affecting infrastructure, procurement and planning decisions decades into the future. All around the world, similar efforts are beginning to gain traction.

As these forces move global energy markets to a tipping point, oil-producing nations may rush to get their reserves to market before it is worthless — a scenario the researchers termed the “sell out.”

Orca pod cruises through Victoria's Inner Harbour during hour-long visit

A pod of killer whales made a rare appearance in Victoria’s Inner Harbour Thursday, frolicking not far from the British Columbia legislature.

The group of four or five orcas, including a large male and what appeared to be a calf, brought vessel traffic to a near standstill and delayed floatplane activity during the roughly hour-long visit.

Jackie Cowan lives aboard a boat in the harbour and says she was listening to marine radio chatter about a pod of killer whales in Juan de Fuca Strait and then suddenly heard the Transport Canada patrol vessel ordering the harbour cleared.

“I realized, oh my gosh, they are coming down the (seaplane) takeoff and runway lanes, which is straight down into the Inner Harbour,” she said.

Cowan, a member of Victoria’s Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue Station 35 and a captain for a local whale-watching company, identified the pod as T49A, a family group of transient orcas which mainly eat seals and sealions....

When all the trees have been cut down, when all the animals have been hunted, when all the water has been polluted, when all the air is unsafe to breathe, only then you will discover you cannot drink OIL.

Autumn Peltier w/ Ireva Photography — at Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory.

Kinder Morgan Bait & Switch: Backdoor pipeline to Washington State refineries could save Trans Mountain Expansion

quote:

But instead of urging that the Trudeau government stop this controversial purchase, Gunton stated this: “Ironically, their purchase of the pipeline may provide them with one last chance for changing course. If they insist on building TMX they could appoint a multi-stakeholder task force including First Nations to consider redesigning the project to reduce its worst impacts by scaling down the size of the expansion and directing increased shipments to refineries in Washington State. This would avoid tanker exports from Vancouver, reduce the number of Alaskan tankers through Georgia Straight, and allow for the phasing out of the higher risk aging pipeline.”

This suggested “redesign” to benefit Washington’s major refineries may have been the plan all along, or at least since November 15, 2016 when Gunton’s former boss – B.C.’s former premier Mike Harcourt – suggested that Kinder Morgan and the federal Liberals “consider an alternate route” to avoid Kinder Morgan’s Westridge Terminal in Burnaby. Even before Trudeau had given federal approval to Kinder Morgan’s expansion project, Harcourt was here urging that the tarsands diluted bitumen (dilbit) be shipped “to either Deltaport or just across the B.C.-Washington state border to the Cherry Point refinery” in order to avoid “insurrection” in B.C.

The Trans Mountain pipeline has a southern leg – called Puget Sound Pipeline – which splits off at Kinder Morgan’s Sumas Terminal in Abbotsford, B.C. and delivers tar sands dilbit to several refineries in Washington State, including the Ferndale Refinery (owned by Phillips 66), the Cherry Point Refinery (owned by BP), the Andeavor Anacortes Refinery (now owned by Marathon Petroleum), and the Shell Anacortes Refinery (owned by Shell Oil).

The Puget Sound Pipeline currently has a capacity of 170,000 barrels per day (bpd), but in the documents filed for its IPO in May 2017, Kinder Morgan indicated that they want to significantly increase that amount, according to Sven Biggs of Stand.earth’s Bellingham, Washington office.

That finding seems to have been part of the reason that the local council of Whatcom County (located in the northwest corner of Washington State), voted 6-1 in June 2017 to effectively put a moratorium on the export of unrefined oil and coal from their area. But refined oil products are allowed in order to protect the hundreds of highly-paid refinery jobs in the state.

Nathan Cullen accuses Canada of buying 'lemon' from Kinder Morgan after estimated size of oil spill multiplies by 48 times

quote:

NEB rejected Kinder Morgan request for financial relief

Prior to the incident, Kinder Morgan had asked the federal regulator, the National Energy Board whether it could ease requirements to set aside adequate financial resources. The NEB denied this request in a letter dated April 12, 2018.

Meantime, regarding the apparent change in the estimated volume of the spill, Trans Mountain told CP that it hadn't provided an estimate to regulators when it reported the incident.

"Trans Mountain had not provided an estimate of the volume spilled, other than to confirm with regulators that it was over the reportable threshold, until cleanup had sufficiently progressed to a stage where an accurate estimation could be provided," Trans Mountain spokeswoman Ali Hounsell told CP in an email.

But the company provided the updated estimate following an onsite investigation, and is now completing the cleanup, Hounsell told CP.

B.C.'s spill reporting rules require companies to report spills of this nature immediately and that the quantity of any amount spilled should be included "to the extent practical."

The company turned off the pipeline for several hours the day of the spill, which the ministry said came from a leaking flow metre.

The spill was contained to the station property and no waterways were affected, the ministry said.

Two days later, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the government's plans to buy the expansion project and other Kinder Morgan assets in Canada.

Leaked letter reveals Kinder Morgan broke rules for months before Canadian officials noticed company put marine life in danger

quote:

Letter identifies four violations

The letter contrasts with recent assurances by the federal government that its officials have kept a close eye on the company and taken adequate measures through a "world-leading" plan to ensure that the Trans Mountain west coast pipeline and tanker expansion project will proceed without damaging the environment or public safety.

The Trudeau government approved the expansion project in November 2016, prompting fierce opposition from several affected First Nations and communities along its proposed route. But at the time, the government said that it was also imposing 157 conditions on Kinder Morgan, as recommended by the federal energy regulator, the National Energy Board (NEB), to ensure that the project would be safe. These conditions included requiring the company to obtain more than 1,000 federal, provincial and municipal permits required for different stages of the construction.

The fisheries department gave Trans Mountain permission to begin some expansion work on its Westridge Marine Terminal on Sept. 8, 2017, provided that it meet a number of safety and environmental conditions. Non compliance would contravene a major Canadian environmental law, the federal Fisheries Act, that is used to protect bodies of water inhabited by marine species.

The warning letter identifies four different violations related to pile driving during expansion work on the Burrard Inlet in the metro Vancouver region near the Kinder Morgan terminal between January and May 2018. The company exceeded safe underwater noise limits for such marine species as the harbour porpoise and the Steller sea lion as it proceeded with the pile driving activity, according to a separate email sent by the federal department to members of an Indigenous Advisory and Monitoring Committee that was set up to keep tabs on the project.

The letter also noted that the company failed to file required construction monitoring reports to the federal department and members of the special committee, including First Nations representatives, for three consecutive months, from January to March. The department said in the letter, sent to Trans Mountain vice president David Safari, that it only noticed that Trans Mountain wasn't filing its mandatory reports after email correspondence with the company on April 26, 2018.

quote:

Last fall, the federal pipeline regulator, the National Energy Board, ordered the company to stop using anti-spawning mats in streams inhabited by fish, after it had started to do this work without authorization.

“It’s part of a pattern that we’ve observed and sadly not all that surprising about Kinder Morgan not being able to even meet the minimal requirements that were the result of the NEB process and here’s another example of them violating the conditions and essentially having very little consequences, which is what DFO is saying,” Kung said in a phone interview.

DFO and didn’t immediately respond to questions about the warning letter. Trans Mountain told National Observer in a statement that it is “committed to compliance with its environmental and regulatory obligations,” and “aggressively implementing measures to avoid future non-compliance.”

The company also said it was engaging with DFO “directly, transparently and collaboratively through ongoing site inspections, information request exchanges and required reporting.”

..txs. what a creep dodge is.

quote:

While he wouldn’t speculate in an interview how fatalities might occur during the Trans Mountain expansion, he said he’s worried about what will happen among the extremist minority among the pipeline foes.

“We have seen it other places, that equivalent of religious zeal leading to flouting of the law in a way that could lead to death … Inevitably, when you get that fanaticism, if you will, you’re going to have trouble,” he said.

“Are we collectively as a society willing to allow the fanatics to obstruct the general will of the population? That then turns out to be a real test of whether we actually do believe in the rule of law.”