West-east pipeline part 2

Following recusals, NEB names new bilingual Energy East hearing panel

The National Energy Board, Canada's federal energy regulator, has announced a new three-member panel to review the largest pipeline project ever proposed in Canada.

Ontario's Don Ferguson and Carole Malo, along with Marc Paquin from Quebec, were officially tasked on Monday with assessing TransCanada Corp.’s proposed 4,500−kilometre Energy East pipeline — a controversial project that, if built, would ship more than a million barrels of oil per day from Alberta to New Brunswick.

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What you need to know about the new panelists:

• Don Ferguson is a public servant with 35 years of experience, and the current chief strategy officer at the New Brunswick Institute of Research, Data and Training. He holds a bachelor of science in geology from the University of New Brunswick and an honorary doctorate in public administration from the Université de Moncton.
• Carole Malo has worked in the development, procurement, and implementation of large energy and infrastructure projects — including pipelines — for 25 years, both in Canada and internationally. She currently runs her own consultancy firm, but has held senior roles in both the public and private sector for Hydro-Quebec, Project Finance, Infrastructure Ontario, and others.
• Marc Paquin is a seasoned lawyer whose career has focused on sustainable development, environmental assessments, environmental law, public hearings, and corporate social responsibility. Since 2002, he has served as CEO of the UNISFÉRA

..from a facebook page

All charges are dropped for these beautiful humans for shutting down Enbridge's Line 9 pipeline on December 2015!

Bad River Band votes to eject Line 5 pipeline from their territory

The Council of Canadians expresses solidarity with the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and their opposition to the Line 5 pipeline.

The pipeline transports up to 540,000 barrels per day of light crude oil, light synthetic crude oil, and natural gas liquids. The pipeline, built in 1953, runs beneath the Straits of Mackinac where Lake Huron and Lake Michigan meet.

A University of Michigan Water Center study released in March 2016 found that 1,160 kilometres of shoreline in the U.S. and Canada are considered potentially vulnerable to a Line 5 spill. The National Wildlife Federation says, "A large oil spill in the Straits of Mackinac could potentially spread across vast areas of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. A far-reaching oil slick that spread into Lake Huron could also affect Georgian Bay, one of the most vibrant freshwater ecosystems on the planet."

The pipeline also bisects the 124,000-acre Bad River Band reservation located on the shore of Lake Superior in Ashland and Iron counties in Wisconsin.

The Globe and Mail now reports, "In Wisconsin, a Chippewa band passed a resolution this week to refuse to renew Enbridge’s permits for its 65-year-old Line 5 to cross rivers in the Bad River Band’s territory. The band wants Enbridge to decommission the aging line – which carries 544,000 barrels a day of Western Canadian crude through Wisconsin and Michigan to Ontario – and could pursue litigation if the company refuses to comply, tribal councillor Dylan Jennings said in an interview. Enbridge was taken off guard by the band’s determination to see the pipeline shut down."....

Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion Responds to NEB Decision to Restart Energy East Review

January 27 2017, Turtle Island—The newly named National Energy Board (NEB) panel tasked with reviewing TransCanada’s Energy East tar sands pipeline application has just announced that it had no choice but to restart the review process at square one due to the bias shown by the previous panel, just as many First Nations that are part of the Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion - www.treatyalliance.org - had demanded in submissions made to the NEB.

“Kanesatake has said from the beginning that the NEB process is a sham and the NEB decision today confirms that,” said Grand Chief Serge Simon, Mohawk Council of Kanesatake. “But the meeting in question with Jean Charest that led to all of this was just the tip of the iceberg – the NEB is a biased and broken institution that has been rubber stamping tar sands pipelines for years.”

As we learned this week, United States President Trump is trying to pressure federal agencies, through the issuance of executive memos, to rush through the reviews of two other pipelines that the Treaty Alliance is fighting: the fracked oil Dakota Access Pipeline that Enbridge is still seeking to purchase 27% of, and TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. But on the Canadian side, we have had our own rushed, illegitimate pipeline review process for years which led to the approvals of the Canadian portions of the Keystone XL project and Enbridge Line 3 replacement project, as well as the approval of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Expansion project.

“The fact that the NEB process leaves absolutely no room for First Nations, nor for any consideration of the extreme threat that we face from climate change, led the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs to recently file legal proceedings against the Line 3 project on the basis of our Constitutionally protected rights but also our own laws, namely the Great Binding Law,” said Grand Chief Derek Nepinak of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs.....

This beer fights pipelines

The beer will be labelled Coule pas chez nous! and will carry the French tagline: “A beer for our rivers.” It will be available on tap in over 20 locations, and 12,000 bottles will be distributed to stores across the province. The session IPA is a limited release, and the beer will be available only for the month of March, making those pretty bottles an instant collector’s item.

Coule pas chez nous! is a coalition of 14 grassroots community groups from all parts of Quebec. It rose to national prominence in 2014 when author and ex-student leader Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois donated his $25,000 Governor-General’s award to the group and invited Quebecers to join him. Within a week, he had raised over $400,000 for the fight against Energy East.

The group is hoping that the novelty of a unique beer will help raise awareness of the threat posed by the Energy East pipeline to the province’s supply of fresh water, pointing out that a pipeline spill would be devastating not only for the agricultural sector, but for sectors of the economy such as brewing, which rely on clean water.

By partnering with the booming microbrewery industry, Coule pas chez nous! is hoping to send a message that many sectors of the economy oppose the pipeline....

First Nation poised to sue Husky Energy for damage caused by spill last summer

The ice has not yet thawed on the North Saskatchewan River, but Chief Wally Burns is sure there's damage below.

Last summer, a Husky Energy pipeline ruptured near Maidstone, Sask. spilling more than 200,000 litres of heavy oil and diluent into its waters. The disaster forced three municipalities to enact emergency water restrictions, and covered the banks of the James Smith Cree Nation with dead crayfish and an oily sheen.

The lasting impact of that contamination may not be visible now, said Burns, but once the snow and ice start to melt, he suspects the damage will be clear: tar-covered logs, lower fish yields, and scant wildlife along a river that once supported all kinds of critters, big and small.

Visible or not, however, the damage has led the central Saskatchewan nation to start negotiating with lawyers. Chief Burns said the community may soon be suing Husky for damages to their cultural and economic resources....

..from the wpg coc chapter

Drill for Heat not Oil

The fossil fuel industry has left behind thousands of abandoned wells in Alberta. The wells have the potential to produce enormous amounts of geothermal energy that is clean, green, and sustainable. Using abandoned oil wells to reach some of Canada’s abundant geothermal energy means producers wouldn’t have to pay for expensive drilling: the wells are already there. They’re a nearly perfect transition tool, a made-to-order piece of the reject, reduce, reuse, recycle puzzle that clean energy advocates are assembling from the wreckage of fossil fuel use.Chapter member and scientist Dennis LeNeveu explains the basics of geothermal energy and how it could work here in Canada.

D.M. LeNeveu - 16 December 2016

Imagine an affordable, inexhaustible electrical power source with an over 90% capacity factor, minimal environmental impact and a tiny surface footprint. This source is geological heat reservoirs, something Canada has in abundance. In 2011, Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN) released a Geological Survey of Canada report that looked at geothermal potential in Canada. The report is clear: despite obstacles to developing many of the sources, deep geothermal power is available and would offer a significant benefit for Canada’s transition to clean energy.

• “Canada's [deep] geothermal power exceeds one million times Canada's current electrical consumption, although only a fraction of this can likely be produced.”
   
• “As few as 100 projects could meet a significant fraction of Canada’s base load energy needs.”....

Big business wants to nix climate from regulator's Energy East review

Canada's largest corporations want to stop a federal panel from investigating how a cross-country oil pipeline would contribute to global warming.

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce and other industry stakeholders raised their objections in a series of letters sent to Canada's pipeline regulator, the National Energy Board (NEB), over the past few weeks.

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Emissions analysis "completely redundant"

Lawyers wrote that an analysis of greenhouse gas emissions for the proposed 4,500-kilometre Energy East pipeline would be "completely redundant and unnecessary," given that such analysis falls within the purview of the federal government. The details are in the Canadian government's Interim Measures for Pipeline Reviews, they said.

In the letter dated May 17, they further argued that NEB panelists have previously declined to consider upstream emissions in their review of pipeline projects, and the NEB "strives to achieve continuity, consistency and a degree of predictability."

"There has been no change in law or government policy or regulatory policy that would justify departing from the previously stated (and judicially endorsed) approach to dealing with upstream and downstream GHG emissions," the lawyers wrote.

The letter was provided to the NEB in English only, and the NEB has confirmed that it has no plans to translate the letter into French. In the past, TransCanada has failed to provide timely French versions of its official documents on the project — a delay that many concerned Quebec residents have amounted to discrimination.....

Little wooden cards to map impact of potential Energy East oil spill

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Cards deployed in three provinces

Data from the simulation will be used to produce a report on Energy East's likely spill trajectory, and compiled with data from sister simulations already underway in northwestern Ontario, other waterways in the Ottawa River watershed and the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick, where Energy East aims to transport oil by tanker.

Some wooden cards from those simulations have already been picked up, either on land or caught in shoreline vegetation, said Environmental Defence's national program manager, Dale Marshall.

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A growing list of adversaries

Energy East, proposed by the Calgary-based TransCanada Corp., is the largest pipeline proposal in North American history. If built, it would cross some 3,000 lakes, rivers, streams and aquifers, as it carries up to 1.1 million barrels of oil per day from Alberta, Saskatchewan and North Dakota to refineries and marine ports in Quebec and New Brunswick.

Opponents argue the pipeline would put the drinking water of millions at risk, violate Indigenous sovereignty and push climate targets out of reach. Supporters say it will create thousands of jobs and get Canadian resources to tidewater safely under stringent regulatory frameworks.

The pipeline's list of adversaries grew this month, as La Fédération québécoise des municipalités (FQM) announced its opposition, based on TransCanada's failure to meet a list of its demands, and a lack of confidence in the National Energy Board's ability to assess the project thoroughly and objectively. FQM includes 1,000 urban and county municipalities representing 3.8 million citizens.

Supreme Court quashes seismic testing in Nunavut, but gives green light to Enbridge pipeline​

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"Justice has prevailed," Nader Hasan, Clyde River's lawyer, said. "The NEB process is broken, the NEB never met a pipeline project or an oil project it didn't like, and that's reflected in decades of jurisprudence. Clyde River was successful, but what about the next Clyde River? That community might not have the ability to take their case to the courts."

The court rescinded the NEB's 2014 decision to grant a five-year permit to the companies to conduct seismic testing or "blasting," which sends sound waves to see if there are reserves under the sea floor.

In a similar decision released Wednesday, the top court ruled unanimously that Enbridge could proceed with its reversal of the Line 9 pipeline in southwestern Ontario, arguing the Chippewas of the Thames were given enough say ahead of the project's construction.

The court sent a shot across the bow in its ruling, warning the NEB and energy project proponents that "any decision affecting Aboriginal or treaty rights made on the basis of inadequate consultation will not be in compliance with the duty to consult."

But the ruling said consultations are a two-way street and Indigenous Peoples alone should not be given the final say on whether a project should proceed. Aboriginal rights must be balanced against "competing societal interests," the court said.

Where did all the data go?

One year after a pipeline spill contaminated the North Saskatchewan River and cut off drinking water supplies for tens of thousands, the company at the heart of the catastrophe says it never wants this to happen again.

But as Husky Energy attempts to turn the page on the disaster, those attempting to look back at what went wrong may actually find that some pages were deleted....

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An 'urgent' update for the PM

Husky Energy's oil spill had such an impact, Trudeau's office requested “talking points” on the subject ahead of his official visit to China in September 2016, where he met Li Ka-shing. Li, 89, is a Hong Kong billionaire who controls more than two thirds of the shares at Husky Energy, The Globe and Mail reported last year.

As a result, the Husky oil spill made it into Trudeau’s briefing package for the trip, released to National Observer through access to information legislation. The prime minister's notes list Li's extensive credentials, noting that the business executive "has been engaged in commercial developments in Hong Kong for more than 60 years."

Internal email correspondence between two federal departments — Global Affairs Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada — also reveal that officials deliberated what to tell Trudeau about the federal government and Husky Energy's recent interactions with the James Smith Cree Nation. James Smith is an Indigenous community more than 350 kilometres downstream from the spill, whose shores had been littered with dead crayfish, insects and oily sheen after the pipeline buckled.

“Husky has apologized for the oil spill publicly and would like to work with FN on the clean-up. The point to note is to determine whether there are impacts on the James Smith Cree Nation due to the oil spill,” reads an email from Environment Canada to Paul Bears of Global Affairs Canada on Aug. 29, 2016.

Leaky pipeline near Montreal still moving oil despite warnings from regulator

Sylvie Rozon and Guy Coderre had just finished preparing a report on the threat of oil contamination in the Montreal region's drinking water when they decided to investigate a potential risk. It turned out to be serious.

Rozon and Coderre are teachers at a training school for water treatment infrastructure workers, and they had submitted their report to the Bureau d'audience publiques sur l'Environnement (BAPE), a government organization that conducts public hearings to investigate the impacts of industrial projects.

They went to visit land owned by Rozon's parents to look into how pipeline companies were taking care of their infrastructure....

Big business and big oil lose climate battle in pipeline review

Canada's National Energy Board has rejected recommendations from big business and big oil, agreeing for the first time in its history to consider both upstream and downstream greenhouse gas emissions while reviewing a major pipeline project.

The federal regulator confirmed Wednesday that "indirect" heat-trapping pollution from TransCanada's Energy East pipeline will be considered during upcoming hearings for the proposed project, which aims to ship more than a million barrels of oil per day from the Canadian Prairies to the East Coast.

That means panel members will take into account emissions that would be produced not only during the pipeline's construction and operation, but in the refining, processing and transportation of its oil as well. The NEB typically considers "direct" greenhouse gas emissions during pipeline reviews, but the impact of "indirect" emissions produced down the road is a historic first.

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On Wednesday, the NEB confirmed the list of topics that would be considered in upcoming hearings for the pipeline after a public comment period that included more than 800 submissions. Also on the list are the proposal's possible impacts on marine shipping, along with the environmental and social impacts of power lines that will connect Energy East's pump stations.

NEB grants TransCanada's request to suspend Energy East review

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But the company indicated on Thursday that it was hitting the brakes on Energy East due to the new guidelines proposed by the NEB.

"Should TransCanada decide not to proceed with the projects after a thorough review of the impact of the NEB's amendments, the carrying value of its investment in the projects as well as its ability to recover development costs incurred to date would be negatively impacted," the company said in its statement.

Privatization of water is the ultimate neoliberal's dream. One litre of oil spilled into a water supply makes 1 million litres of water undrinkable (sic.) It takes the planet about 150,000 years to break down oil in the ground so the ground can yield benefit to flora, fauna, and other species higher up the food chain.

As a result, oil pipelines are going in across North America with abandon, causing hundreds, if not thousands of oil spills annually.

As the neoliberals get their way, there will soon be no drinkable (sic.) 'free' water left in North America. We will all have to buy it from a private source, and pay whatever price the market will bear. Shares in Nestle should do quite well on this.

As some consolation, the worst of the effects of this will happen after we are dead. Hunger will kill you after 30 days, but you can't survive without water for more than about 72 hours.

If they want to cull the human species, this is a good way to go about doing it.

Michelle Rempel, Andrew Scheer and other Conservatives were basically saying today that the cancellation of Energy East is a plot against Western Canada.

Sounds like they have the Trump Fake News Syndrome!

..the notley ndp could have handled the tar sands project in a different way. they still can. the story being told that there was/is no alternative to growing that man made disaster is a false one. i've posted more than one piece in the alberta thread focusing on a better way than capitulating to the global corporations which very few on babble choose to discuss directly. instead references are made about jobs and oil being needed far into the future. and now raising national unity as if there really was such a creature. in reality there are the powers that be wanting one thing and the 99% wanting another. cancellation is a success story for the 99% on the planet.

Watchdog finds Canada 'nowhere near' ready for climate risks

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No clear plan for GHG reduction

Gelfand’s report lauded the Trudeau government for improved collaboration on climate action with provinces and territories, but noted that it had abandoned greenhouse gas emissions targets set by the previous Harper government. Canada was so far from meeting those goals, said the report, that it “was no longer working” toward its commitment to reduce climate-polluting emissions 17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020, as laid out in the 2010 Copenhagen Accord.

But Gelfand said the federal government's failures to take effective action date back to 1992.

Greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) — produced through the burning of fossil fuels — are the primary cause of climate change, which increases the world’s risk of natural disasters, forest fires and floods. Canada is the ninth-largest GHG emitter in the world, the report noted, with the oil, gas and transportation sectors as its largest contributors.

Gelfand’s reports touted the government’s recent funding of green technology through Natural Resources Canada and Sustainable Development Technology Canada as a “positive note” arising from the audits.

Instead of trying to meet the 2020 target however, the report said that Environment and Climate Change Canada, led by Minister Catherine McKenna, has shifted its focus to meeting a new target chosen by the Harper government and confirmed by the Trudeau government through the Paris Agreement: reducing Canada’s emissions 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.

Gelfand attributes failure to meet the 2020 target to the government's choice not to "pursue a number of greenhouse gas regulations." As it stands, Canada’s emissions in 2020 are projected to be 111 megatons above that national target. Environment Canada has yet to “clearly indicate” how it will measure, monitor and report on provincial and territorial contributions to meeting the 2030 target, it added.