Canada approves oil pipeline to the Pacific Coast

a reply to: Ancient Champion

CALNG

With more groups getting together and putting aside their differences to acknowledge that we are being used as pawns by the present Harper regime ,some of his group are looking to distance themselves .I think it's getting harder for him to whip other conservative members into silence .If the party line continues we may end up seeing the party to go the way of the old Mulroney regime .It was only the principals of the reform party for past members to regain and re-institute the present Conservative party . I am hearing voices from that base they have, finally considering that King Harper might only exist on paper and not in reality . 2015 is not that far off and there is lots of dirty laundry that regular means of cleaning wont get it cleaned enough for the party to survive .should be interesting to see how they work their way out of this one . a reply to: loveguy

Trudeau is making the issue a major part of his platform, promising, if elected, to veto the plan.

I would be a lot more inclined to support it if the market target wasn't China and everything that comes with that.

a reply to: canucks555

With the major obstacle will be the Native peoples. I was reading in Macleans last week that the Harper gov't was pretty much going to ignore them. Don't think King Steve won't? This is hardly an easy "no".

a reply to: intrepid

It's not primarily the Native populations... there's also the BC government with their 5 'wants', including a share of the revenues and that isn't going to be an easy sell to Alberta. Besides that, there's the rest of the BC population which predominantly opposes the Gateway project.

Those 15 Conservative sitting MPP's must be getting a little nervous.

a reply to: masqua

Yes but the MAJOR hurtle is the Natives, which I agree with. If he's going to poopoo that what chance does the rest have? Moot point anyway imo. He's done next election.

a reply to: intrepid

I agree with you. The Harper Government is definitely on their collective heels and stand to lose in October 2015 if they don't start listening to the courts.

The court challenges responding to the announcement are piling up as we type and, as you say, the Natives are already out of the gate on that one.

a new pipeline would include new technology and building techniques to ensure a safe and efficient midstream operation

You're optimistically looking at half the picture

What about the dangers involved after the oil leaves the pipeline and is in the tanker?

Can you or anyone else tell the forum that there is a 100% percent chance that the technology in these ships will keep the oil off our coast?
-What about human error? You cannot guarantee that every crew and every captain of every tanker will keep my province safe.

I've traversed the Hecate straight many times in my life. I was actually born there. (Kitimat) True story. We had a 40' sailboat. (just about ran into big trouble once as the engine quit in a storm and there was a diesel leak.) Anyways It's a damn scary body of water. I used to puke my guts out every time we went there. It's shallow, that's why the waves can reach 50ft easy.

The marine environment at the surface can be equally brutal. Some tankers would traverse Hecate Strait, which Environment Canada ranks as the fourth most dangerous body of water in the world. Waves in South Hecate Strait have reached 26 metres – the height of a seven-storey building.

www.theglobeandmail.com...

It's packed with shoals and reefs and small islands that have taken down many, many vessels. It's been deemed one of the top four most dangerous bodies of water on earth.
-Would you be willing to stake your reputation and your pocket book on the gamble that no oil tanker will ever make a mistake traversing nautical Hell?

a reply to: canucks555

You're right: Anyone who is a true British Columbian will fight it. Add in the B.C. First Nations groups that have been winning land claim cases from top to bottom. The Natives aren't just winning their land claims, they are also becoming self governments. They are empowering themselves. With the rising knowledge about the Canadian genocide of the first peoples they simply aren't going to take it anymore. We had Idle No More last year that petered out but I believe the awareness of what is possible is still simmering - it just has to be brought back to life.

Harper is having secret meetings, without informing Canadians, about deals with China. Does anyone on this forum buy anything from China and not expect it to break? I would hope anyone that has done any reading would know not to buy any food products for themselves or their pets. It's simply not safe. China treats their own people with disregard as to safety and concern about their land and resources and we think they are going to care about our land any better? They will eat us alive if we give them any kind of power.

And so we need to inform ourselves and fight the government. We didn't elect our leaders to hold secret meetings so that we get dirty money. We have too much to lose. The salmon from the ocean hatched in the rivers of B.C. The bears eat the salmon and drag the bodies to decompose in the forest which feeds the great trees. It's all interconnected. And it is our responsibility to ensure that just for the sake of a quick convenience of turning on a light or having the biggest house on the block doesn't impact our surroundings. We are all a circle and all connected to each other. This is what Harper and his oil will destroy.

Again I'm not trying to be a hypocrite - we need oil. But there are ways of using less oil and of using it responsibly. Let's look at options and not sell Canada and our people out.



The problems with Kitimat - RE: LNG
Gale-force winds. Thick fog. Crushing snow. Landslides. Waves the height of office buildings. The northern coast of British Columbia is a nexus of nasty elements that descend upon a place abundant in marine life - humpbacks, orcas, a buffet of shellfish - and coastal creatures, including the much-celebrated white Kermode bear, or spirit bear.

No one denies the severity of the region, not least Enbridge, which has laid in place sophisticated plans to manage it, including tugboat support for tankers, new navigation aids and even an expensive tunnelling operation that would send pipe directly through a mountain, rather than around its landslide-prone slopes. The company's plans recently won a major stamp of approval from Transport Canada, which reviewed plans for the marine routes - where tankers would sail, how fast and under which conditions - and declared them sound.

Yet those who live in the area say it is home to natural forces so violent that even the best-laid plans are prone to founder. Navigation
A recent Transport Canada study concluded the water is deep enough and the passages are wide enough. But residents are concerned about the margin for error. In four places, the route goes through channels less than two kilometres wide. At a minimum, supertankers need nearly half a kilometre in width for safe travel. They need 33 metres in depth; in one area, the route passes over a spot 35 metres deep.

Northwestern British Columbia is home to a seismically unstable landscape assaulted by incredible amounts of rain and snow - Kitimat, for example, averages 2,387 millimetres of precipitation a year. That often creates problems. A 2005 study found 38 "large, catastrophic landslides" in northern B.C. in three decades, and noted that "the frequency of large landslides in northern British Columbia appears to be increasing, suggesting a link to climate change." The study specifically names pipelines as a type of infrastructure "at risk from these large landslides."

Underwater earthquakes are another hazard, causing localized tsunamis that have been recorded along the B.C. coast. One in Kitimat Inlet, in April, 1975, produced an 8.2-metre-high wave.

There is only one place in the entire series of coastal marine routes that can adequately accommodate proposed 320,000-deadweight-tonne supertankers. Kitimat Harbour does not meet minimum anchorage requirements, and would require tug support for supertankers. Another, called the Coghlan Anchorage, is "not suitable to anchor vessels of the design vessels size, on a single anchor," according to Enbridge documents.

If the project is approved, oil tankers will first have to navigate a series of island-pocked, reef-strewn channels famous for heavy currents that change direction every six hours with the tide. After running this narrow, 105-kilometre gauntlet, the tankers will cross Hecate Strait, described by Environment Canada as "the fourth most dangerous body of water in the world." This is due to the hurricanes that drop in with little notice, on water so shallow the ocean bottom is often exposed in the troughs between waves. Few ships could sail away from a bottom strike.

In the next 30 years, at least 6,600 oil tankers - some twice as big as any that have come before are expected to cross between Kitimat and Hecate Strait. The problem? This route provides only one emergency anchorage big enough to harbour an oil tanker in the certain event of a surprise storm.

This is the land of the Only: the only place on Earth where wolves still feed on salmon, where black bears are sometimes white, the only place on earth where five species of salmon fertilize the forest with their bodies hauled in by wolves, bears and birds who leave the half-eaten carcasses of coho, chinook, sockeye, chum and pink salmon to rot into the moss and feed the trees (Salmon-specific isotopes have even been discovered in the uppermost needles of these conifers). The trees here are among the world's oldest. Combined, oceans and woods harbour the greatest biomass density of any ecosystem on Earth.

Enbridge has promised Kitimat 52 jobs - total.

a reply to: ccseagull

I guess you could call Harpers plan a Pipe Dream.





I kill myself sometimes hahah

a reply to: canucks555
Ha, ha! I laughed out loud at that one!

At first I thought the First Nations were opposed to the Alberta Tar Sands Project because of the damage it would do to the environment, but from what I've seen their main concern is getting remunerated by the oil companies.

About as much to do with their culture as casinos.

These aboriginal and native-born peoples have firsthand experience, and the evidence is there for all to see, what Enbridge's main concerns are - profit over environment. I wish the native peoples and their supporters success in the fight to save their lands and waters.

Enbridge’s Northern Gateway tanker and pipeline project exposes all communities from Alberta to the Pacific Coast to the undeniable risk of pipeline and supertanker oil spills. First Nations and the majority of British Columbians believe this project poses an unacceptable risk to the environment, the health, the safety and livelihoods of all peoples throughout this province.

yinkadene.ca...

Will you help 'Hold the Wall'?

www.holdthewall.ca...

a reply to: InTheLight

Signed and posted to Facebook!

In today's Calgary Herald: Thursday, June 19, 2014, Page B6: B.C. First Nations unite to fight Gateway approval.

"For us, it's a rights and title discussion," Peter Lantin, president of the Haida Nation, said Wednesday. "It's not necessarily about a pipeline."

originally posted by: ccseagull
a reply to: InTheLight

Signed and posted to Facebook!

In today's Calgary Herald: Thursday, June 19, 2014, Page B6: B.C. First Nations unite to fight Gateway approval.

"For us, it's a rights and title discussion," Peter Lantin, president of the Haida Nation, said Wednesday. "It's not necessarily about a pipeline."

Very commendable...here's more about how Enbridge deals (or doesn't deal) with oil spills.

Because Enbridge failed to complete the required dredging on Morrow Lake and Delta, work will continue in 2014. The Agency is considering its enforcement options in light of the missed deadline.

www.epa.gov...

This statement comes off as rather arrogant to me, as if the First Nations communities need help to 'truly' understand.

“We will continue the dialogue [with individual First Nations communities] and help them truly understand what the project is about, and us understand what their concerns are,” she said in a telephone interview from Vancouver. The threatened lawsuits represent a “parallel track” that won’t prevent the company from continuing its consultations, she added.

www.theglobeandmail.com... 31847/

a reply to: InTheLight

Yes it does. But like the general population they probably think that our Natives are living on reservations oblivious to the world with a hand extended.

Natives these days are lawyers, doctors, musicians, working in the regular world. However there is one difference - they still retain their family roots and are seeking answers to injustices of the past. I'm not fixated on their past as simply that but I am saying that they are taking ownership and finding healing and coming together instead of being victims anymore. They were victims in the past but now they know what happened and they know they can fight back and they know there can be a future.

Just like any culture there are those that are greedy and not "growing". But the ones who want to make a difference will make a difference. They do care about the land as the ancestral family tradition AND the concept of what the future holds for future generations is of utmost importance to them. The fact that Harper has given water rights away with the Asian deal... you may as well have ripped the carpet right out from under their feet.

The Natives' response will be about the pipeline and it will be about more than the pipeline - it comes down to treaties and land claims and the fact that the government is imposing itself on their rightful land ownership - the land is embedded in Natives' very being.

I suspect we'll see lots of ignorant comments coming and I suspect many won't have a clue over how knowledgeable and how far Natives are willing to go to do what is right. What is right for all people of Canada.

Frankly I think it's a shame that the rest of us don't understand what truly is happening. The average person is so busy chasing the almighty dollar and glad to have the material possessions they have that they have disconnected themselves from the reality of what is happening under their noses.

a reply to: ccseagull

All that you say is true and there will be no backing down by the supporters of environmental causes and the land and water rights of the aboriginals. However, if Enbridge does spend the money (which is the big question) to buy and install double walled pipes, devise immediate and effective oil spill remediation, and not only ensure they will have multiple tug boats to escort each tanker through the dangerous coastal waters, but to also "prove" to everyone that the 209 conditions imposed upon Enbridge by the government are not only met, but approved by the people and further investigated to ensure ultimate health for our environment.

If the native peoples are ensured beyond a doubt that all measures taken to 'truely' protect our environment will actually do just that, then I think the native peoples should get a big slice of this black pie, which will also give a boost to our economy.

The problem now seems to be that Enbridge doesn't have the signed contracts from Asia as China seems to be pulling back. Enbridge needs to prove to our gov't that they have the demand before they can begin construction, this is one of the conditions. If this project is stalled long enough, say a decade, and it is indicated that China is moving towards using more natural gas and less crude oil, then it will not be feasible for this project to go ahead.

Ding Yifan, a senior fellow at a research centre connected to China’s powerful State Council, said the country’s oil demand growth could halt as soon as 10 or 15 years from now. That would add to the difficulty for new entrants to the market.

www.theglobeandmail.com... -asia/article19214778/

originally posted by: ccseagull
a reply to: InTheLight
The Natives' response will be about the pipeline and it will be about more than the pipeline - it comes down to treaties and land claims and the fact that the government is imposing itself on their rightful land ownership - the land is embedded in Natives' very being.

And the first nations want to be the beneficiaries from the sale of the resources on their lands.

They aren't trying to stop the tar sands project, just cash in on it like all the other short sighted greedy corporations.

If the tar sands oil is extracted and burnt, global warming and ocean acidification would reach the tipping point.

Any suggestion that Canada's Indigenous People care more for mother earth than environmentalists of other ethnicities is self-serving and disingenuous.