Northern Gateway Pipeline KILLED

[Warhippy]

Sorry, but where in the article does it say "the BC government is applauding" this decision? Last I heard, they opposed the project. In fact, it say so right in the article posted by the OP.

If they'd had a change of heart on the matter, one would think that CBC news would have mentioned it in the article, n'est-ce pas?

Last week Clark was applauding this move saying if the conditions were met and the NEB approved it it should be as good as done. Today Polak was saying otherwise

[RAMBUTANS]

As a person who works indirectly for the oil industry while living in the lower mainland, I applaud this decision. More jobs for Canadians is always a good thing. If there's no pipeline the oil will get to the BC coast by train anyway,

[DIBdaQUIB]

When you talk about trespassing on first nations land without first nations approval, they ARE the ultimate law on their land.

end of story, no argument needed or persuasive enough to change that

Honest question - have you ever dealt with first nations? Have you ever negotiated with them in regards to how they view "First Nations Lands or what this constitutes?

Terrible wrongs were don't to many of these people in the past, many wrongs continue, some of the worst by their own "leaders" against their own people. If you think giving them the authority to decide on matters of national or provincial interests is some kind of panacea for the woes of our society, you are sadly mistaken!!

[RUPERTKBD]

Last week Clark was applauding this move saying if the conditions were met and the NEB approved it it should be as good as done. Today Polak was saying otherwise

Hmmm....

I would have thought that such a statement would have been big news in BC. I also would have expected a flood of Christy slamming from the resident Liberal/Conservative haters here on CDC...

...strange days indeed....

[RAMBUTANS]

Hmmm....

I would have thought that such a statement would have been big news in BC. I also would have expected a flood of Christy slamming from the resident Liberal/Conservative haters here on CDC...

...strange days indeed....

Money changes everything. Way of the world.

[Blackberries]

Sad day for BC.

Guess what Alberta and China wants, Alberta and China gets.

Id take a healthy environment over 20,000 non permanent jobs any day.

[Langdon Algur]

As a person who works indirectly for the oil industry while living in the lower mainland, I applaud this decision. More jobs for Canadians is always a good thing. If there's no pipeline the oil will get to the BC coast by train anyway,

It's not it going to the BC coast I object to, its going to Kitimat harbour. Having large scale oiltankers traveling through the narrow channels to get to Kitimat is just asking for disaster. If you want to get oil (or Bitumen in this case) to the BC coast why not just twin existing pipelines like the Transmountain. As for jobs what about all the people (fishermen, tourist operators) who depend on a healthy coast for their jobs?

[I'm Your Huckleberry]

If we keep doubling down on oil to grow our economy, what motivation will Canada have to pursue alternatives? Oil might be a necessary evil right now but greener technologies will begin phasing it out. If we don't pursue these alternatives and be leaders in green energy, we are going to be way behind the 8-ball down the road.

Doubling down on oil is a very short sighted move to line the pockets of certain corporations and individuals as quickly as possible. All while they keep telling us "it's good for the economy".

[Warhippy]

Honest question - have you ever dealt with first nations? Have you ever negotiated with them in regards to how they view "First Nations Lands or what this constitutes?

Terrible wrongs were don't to many of these people in the past, many wrongs continue, some of the worst by their own "leaders" against their own people. If you think giving them the authority to decide on matters of national or provincial interests is some kind of panacea for the woes of our society, you are sadly mistaken!!

I am actually a first nations individual. I carry a card or status id. I have ancestral lands in Manitoba and a recognized band.

If in fact you think the federal government can push a pipeline through first nations land, you are the one who is sadly mistaken. Federal and provincial law are all well and good, but without first nations consent, unanimous consent from the many bands along the proposed route, nothing gets done

[aGENT]

If we keep doubling down on oil to grow our economy, what motivation will Canada have to pursue alternatives? Oil might be a necessary evil right now but greener technologies will begin phasing it out. If we don't pursue these alternatives and be leaders in green energy, we are going to be way behind the 8-ball down the road.

Doubling down on oil is a very short sighted move to line the pockets of certain corporations and individuals as quickly as possible. All while they keep telling us "it's good for the economy".

[Warhippy]

If we keep doubling down on oil to grow our economy, what motivation will Canada have to pursue alternatives? Oil might be a necessary evil right now but greener technologies will begin phasing it out. If we don't pursue these alternatives and be leaders in green energy, we are going to be way behind the 8-ball down the road.

Doubling down on oil is a very short sighted move to line the pockets of certain corporations and individuals as quickly as possible. All while they keep telling us "it's good for the economy".

This exactly. As a resource nation we lose out on tens of billions of dollars a year in refining and resale monies.

BC is a prime example of that via the softwood issues. We now just export raw logs and have lost billions in this province alone because we now have few mills, few logging jobs and even fewer refining or manufacturing jobs.

The all mighty pursuit of oil pushed by this federal government is beyond foolish. In Alberta with all of their vaunted oil wealth they're running an ever increasing deficit, have closed some schools in some parts of the province form 5 to 4 days a week and actually have hospitals laying off staff and in 2 incidents closing their doors. Yet they still give money over to billion dollar profiting oil companies. This is an unhealthy business model.

now if we listen to the claims that oil will save this country and take into account both venezuela supplying more oil, the USA our largest purchaser becoming self sufficient in the next decade and now Iran playing ball and dumping oil onto the market, easily produced cheap oil we see an inevitable glut.

Added the new massive fields opened in Russia by Gazprom and the massive fields in North eastern Australia, this will drive the price of oil even further down.

The sad thing is that they will push ever more oil out of this country at ever lower prices and tell us it is a good thing. As a moderately educated person I cannot look at this in any way where I don't scratch my head and ask wtf are you thinking.

This is not a good thing in any sense of the world. They are risking the environment, the livelihoods of thousands of fishermen, the great bear sea and the great bear rainforest and have lied to us about both the rewards and the benefits.

I am all for a pipeline if built properly, I am all for economic benefits to this country, but not with a single minded economy lacking anything even resembling diversification where one 10 cent drop spells unemployment for tens of thousands of people

[goalie13]

I was in Vancouve rlast week and had the pleasure(?) of watching the thousands upon thousands of vehicles all day coming and going/commuting around the city. The amount of oil/gas required to fuel this lifestyle is mind-boggling. Yet, when the oil companies suggest increasing piping capacity to send these product to the lower mainland, everyone is up in arms :not in my back yard".

To all these people, what is your solution? Should everyone buy a horse? Will you be happy when farmland for food becomes grazing land for those horses? Most of the "anti" crowd are as much consumers of these products as everyone else but they are incapable of connecting the dots as to where the power and fuel that sustains their lifestyle comes from. They would rather import oil and gas from the Middle East, destroying their lands and risking the oceans transporting it than see anything in their own backyard.

Maybe I am out to lunch on this, but I was under the impression that the oil we are talking about here isn't about fueling vehicles, but more for raw materials for all the stuff that gets shipped back to us.

Don't all of our iPods, cell phones, computers, TVs and millions of other products require oil to make the plastic that is used in production?

[DonLever]

If we keep doubling down on oil to grow our economy, what motivation will Canada have to pursue alternatives? Oil might be a necessary evil right now but greener technologies will begin phasing it out. If we don't pursue these alternatives and be leaders in green energy, we are going to be way behind the 8-ball down the road.

Doubling down on oil is a very short sighted move to line the pockets of certain corporations and individuals as quickly as possible. All while they keep telling us "it's good for the economy".

What greener alternatives? There is none that is enough that will meet the needs of a growing world population. Wind and solar power won't do it. Hydro Electricity may enough but environmentists oppose that as well. Look at the Cite C demand and the opposition to it.

Going to the pockets of corporations? How about the other view? Like Billions of dollars of Royalties to fund health care and and social programs.

[Warhippy]

What greener alternatives? There is none that is enough that will meet the needs of a growing world population. Wind and solar power won't do it. Hydro Electricity may enough but environmentists oppose that as well. Look at the Cite C demand and the opposition to it.

Going to the pockets of corporations? How about the other view? Like Billions of dollars of Royalties to fund health care and and social programs.

You mean the health care and social programs the federal government just offloaded onto the provinces there by absolving them of any fault if it all goes bad?

[inane]

Like I said, this is not 'approved'.

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Northern+Gateway+project+likely+doomed+despite+National+Energy+Board/9307493/story.html

So the breathlessly awaited verdict on the Northern Gateway pipeline project is in, at long last. Net effect? Far less than it may seem. Despite the National Energy Board joint review panel’s green-lighting the controversial project, with a whopping 209 conditions, Northern Gateway is running out of time and probably doomed. Within six months the federal cabinet will render its own verdict. By then the interminable lawsuits and protests will be in full swing. And industry attention will have further turned toward projects with more attractive cost-benefit profiles. This may not be a terrible outcome. In any case, it now appears locked in.

Northern Gateway has been a political minefield from the start, because of geography. Its proposed route snakes 1,177 kilometres westward from Edmonton, Alta., to Kitimat, B.C., passing through traditional aboriginal territories. From Kitimat, Asia-bound bitumen is to be shipped down the Douglas channel by tanker, to the ocean. The proposed volume is 525,000 barrels a day. That’s a lot of tankers – 220 per year – with a lot of moving pieces, conferring a risk profile different from that of any other North American pipeline plan currently on the books, that I know of. In the post Exxon Valdez era, selling this was never going to be easy. In the post-Lac-Megantic era it looks nigh impossible.

The economic case in favour of a new pipeline to the Pacific has always been compelling. For starters, demand from Asian nations is soaring. Between now and 2035, the International Energy Agency predicts, emerging economies will account for 90 per cent of net energy demand growth, with China, India and Southeast Asia leading the way. Meantime, U.S. requirements for energy

imports are on the wane. As early as 2020, due to new extraction technologies such as fracking, the United States may be energy-self-sufficient.

Moreover, market need for new pipeline capacity is immediate and pressing. Alberta crude already trades at a steep discount to the global price, simply because its product is bottlenecked to the west, east and south. Crude is moving, but not in sufficient quantities to ease a growing glut east of the Rockies. That discount – up to $25 off the price of a $100 barrel of oil – doesn’t just hit Big Oil’s bottom line; it hits the federal treasury. Over the next roughly two decades, the Conference Board has estimated, total tax proceeds from the oilsands and related industries will total $80 billion. Of that, more than half is federal.

As well, Northern Gateway opponents have undermined their own argument by citing climate change as a reason to nix the project. For, as with Keystone, the ultimate net effect on carbon emissions, whether crude moves one way or another, through this pipeline or that, or by ship or rail, is nil. If we assume the 173 billion barrels of crude in the oilsands will be extracted, one way or another – which is a safe assumption, given the projected skyrocketing of global demand for all forms of energy over the next 25 years – the carbon footprint doesn’t change. That’s because the primary energy cost is in the extraction. A heavy investment in new nuclear power plants in Northern Alberta could dramatically cut the oil patch’s carbon footprint; killing the Northern Gateway pipeline won’t.

And, as a final argument in its favour, Northern Gateway has proposed environmental safeguards that would make it a standout in pipeline and tanker safety. These include land-based radar, new beacons, buoys and the like; provisions requiring that every tanker be escorted by two tugs, one tethered, to lessen the risk of a tanker running aground; requirements that each tanker be double-hulled, and less than 20 years old, and a two-pilot rule, to mitigate the risk of human error.

But set against all that is this single, powerful, incontrovertible fact: There is no way to reduce the risk of a tanker spill in the Douglas Channel to zero. Human error or equipment malfunction can always be a factor, as they have been in so many recent industrial tragedies. Such a spill would be beyond catastrophic; the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989, which spilled 210,000 cubic metres of oil into Prince William Sound, established this.

Together with strong aboriginal opposition (exacerbated, it must be said, by the federal government’s refusal to entertain a separate First Nations consultation), this guarantees that, whatever the NEB says, and whatever the cabinet eventually says, there will be intense, prolonged opposition on the ground, and in the courts. That is a project-killer. It is not the case with Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, which has the virtue of being an expansion to something already built. Nor is it the case with Keystone XL, which has passed its local hurdles and now merely awaits approval from the Obama administration.

All of which leaves one with the sense that this NEB judgment, and the hue and cry to follow, are flash and fire, after the battle. This green light looks more like amber, on an indefinite clock.

[bolt]

Time to buy Enbridge shares

[DonLever]

You mean the health care and social programs the federal government just offloaded onto the provinces there by absolving them of any fault if it all goes bad?

The provinces have jurisdiction over health care and social programs. The feds have cut transfer payments to the provinces. That first started under the Liberals under Chretien.

[Warhippy]

The provinces have jurisdiction over health care and social programs. The feds have cut transfer payments to the provinces. That first started under the Liberals under Chretien.

But has been accelerated and now completely loaded onto the backs fo the provinces. It's kinda scary. now with the CPP lies it looks even worse

[ilduce39]

If we keep doubling down on oil to grow our economy, what motivation will Canada have to pursue alternatives? Oil might be a necessary evil right now but greener technologies will begin phasing it out. If we don't pursue these alternatives and be leaders in green energy, we are going to be way behind the 8-ball down the road.

Doubling down on oil is a very short sighted move to line the pockets of certain corporations and individuals as quickly as possible. All while they keep telling us "it's good for the economy".

Agreed 100%... people see making a quick buck as "progress" but I can't help but see it as a regressive and archaic form of energy. We all know if fossil fuels dried up we would have viable alternatives and infrastructure up and running in months (and subsequent jobs created and profits to be made) but since necessity is the mother of invention - the unnecessary is relegated to being a fad.

[DonLever]

But has been accelerated and now completely loaded onto the backs fo the provinces. It's kinda scary. now with the CPP lies it looks even worse

Yes, what you say is correct. That is how the Feds are balancing the budget; by cutting transfer payments to the provinces.