Enbridge has some work to do

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(DALE CUMMINGS)

Enlarge Image

(DALE CUMMINGS )

Environment Minister Peter Kent last week cracked the whip over the review panel studying the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline project, which is intended to bring Alberta oilsands bitumen across the British Columbia mountains to the port of Kitimat for shipment across the Pacific Ocean. Mr. Kent directed the panel to complete its review and make its report no later than Dec. 13, 2013. This may require shortcuts and hasty conclusions from the panel.

Enbridge president Al Monaco was also heard from last week, explaining that his firm is totally dedicated to the prevention of spills. This was reassuring because Calgary-based Enbridge on July 25 spilled 20,000 barrels of oil from a pipeline near Marshall, Mich., into the Kalamazoo River. The company's poor handling of that spill reminded the U.S. Transport Safety Agency chairman of the Keystone Kops. Several other recent Enbridge pipeline spills in the U.S. have heightened anxiety about damage to salmon rivers and coastal communities along the route of the company's proposed Northern Gateway line.

The Northern Gateway line is an extremely ambitious project. Two pipelines 1,170 kilometres in length, will run side by side from Bruderheim, Alta., to Kitimat, B.C. One line about a metre in diameter will carry 525,000 barrels per day of bitumen from the oilsands westward to Kitimat. The other, narrower line will carry back to Bruderheim the solvent used to thin the bitumen so that it will flow through the line. The line will bridge over many rivers and tunnel through several mountains. The project also includes a Kitimat Marine Terminal with storage tanks and berths for two petroleum tankers. Total construction cost is estimated in the neighbourhood of $6 billion. The advantage of the line is that it gives the oil companies mining the Alberta oilsands a means of shipping bitumen to Asian customers. This may allow them to realize higher prices than those available within North America.

The project has been facing an uphill battle, especially against the Haisla, Heiltsuk, Gitga'at and Wet'suwet'en people who live near the line and the marine terminal and who stand to lose their fishing grounds, their traplines, their water supply and their homes in the event of a pipeline spill or an accident along the lines of the 1989 Exxon Valdez wreck in Prince William Sound. Lately, opinion in British Columbia has been running strongly against the project. B.C. Premier Christy Clark has complained that her province gets all the risks and none of the benefits and asked for a share of the income. She and Alberta Premier Alison Redford have exchanged intemperate remarks. Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his associates have hinted they might make it a federal project and impose it whether B.C. likes it or not -- a politically risky manoeuvre.

The three-member federal review panel announced at the end of June that it planned to hear oral statements in Vancouver, Victoria and Kelowna in January and February 2013 and then hear final argument in March and April. Based on this timeline, the panel is expected to issue its report in December 2013. Environment Minister Kent has now locked the panel into that schedule. The questions of aboriginal title to the land in question, danger to the land, water and wildlife and the technical capacity of Enbridge are, however, still far from resolution. Mr. Kent is requiring a three-member panel to resolve them in 16 months in a super-heated environment of political controversy and interprovincial confrontation. This is a tall order.

First Nations consent would make a huge difference. Manitoba Hydro improved First Nations support for new hydro-electric projects by offering the affected bands an equity stake in each dam and its output. This gives the affected First Nations both an income stream and a seat at the management table. Enbridge might improve the prospects of its project by exploring a similar approach.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 8, 2012 A10