Photo by: Reuters
TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – A First Nation based in the lower mainland of British Columbia is amplifying its efforts to resist Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline – hailed by some analysts as the ‘Keystone of the North’.
Tsleil-Waututh Nation Chief Maureen Thomas was in New York on Thursday to beseech “dozens” of Kinder Morgan's top institutional shareholders and credit ratings agencies not to support the expansion of the company’s existing pipeline.
Kinder Morgan had proposed to add a second pipeline alongside the original 1953-built pipeline to carry oil from Edmonton to Burnaby. If approved, the twin lines would nearly triple the current capacity to about 900 000 bbl/d of crude, starting in 2018.
In the wake of Canada's National Energy Board (NEB) last month recommending the approval of the expansion project, subject to 157 conditions, Thomas embarked on a whirlwind campaign to Ottawa and New York in protest at the proposed project, arguing that the Trans Mountain proposal presented too great a risk for the Tsleil-Waututh Nation to grant its consent.
"Tsleil-Waututh has the constitutionally protected rights and the legal tools to stop the expansion and it is important that Kinder Morgan's investors and analysts understand that. A large oil spill in Burrard Inlet would set back all our environmental restoration efforts there, and the greenhouse-gas emissions will only make fires and floods around the world worse," threatened the chief of the First Nation. Tsleil-Waututh was located along the shores of Burrard Inlet, in North Vancouver, across the inlet from the Burnaby terminus of Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline.
The First Nation had also challenged the scoping of the NEB's environmental review in Canada's Federal Court of Appeal. The court’s decision could force the review to start over.
The Federal government had been given a deadline of December to make a final decision on whether the project should go ahead.
Meanwhile, Natural Resources Minister James Carr in May appointed a three-member Ministerial panel to look into the proposed expansion of Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipelines. This additional Federal environmental assessment was announced by the Liberal government in January and would follow a different mandate than the NEB review. According to the Federal government, the additional process was intended to restore public trust and confidence in Canada's environmental assessment processes.
Carr expected the panel to report its findings in November, a month before the Federal Cabinet must make a final decision on the project.
The British Columbia provincial government was also formally opposing the expansion plan, citing the company's failure to prove that it could meet modern oil spill safety standards.
For almost 60 years, the 1 150 km Trans Mountain pipeline system had been providing the only West Coast access for Canadian oil products, including about 90% of the gasoline supplied to the Interior and South Coast of British Columbia.