Tag Archives: TransCanada Corp.

Nov 27 2014
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Economy, Energy, Oil and Gas

The perils of East Coast pipeline politics

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On the energy front, perhaps we should not have been so quick to assume that Maritime economic priorities neatly dovetail with those of Ontario and Quebec. After all, when have they ever?

Indeed, if there was a time when political leaders in New Brunswick considered  TransCanada’s eastbound pipeline project a slam-dunk, that time is over, which leaves the province’s new Liberal premier Brian Gallant with yet another post-election migraine.

According to a Globe and Mail report last Friday, “Quebec Environment Minister David Heurtel sent a letter to (TransCanada) chief executive officer Russ Girling laying down seven conditions (the company) must meet to win the province’s support for the (Energy East) project. With his letter, Mr. Heurtel established conditions similar to those adopted by British Columbia Premier Christy Clark for Enbridge Inc.’s controversial Northern Gateway pipeline that would deliver oil sands bitumen to Kitimat for export to Asia, though his tone was somewhat more agreeable than Ms. Clark’s has been”.

Specifically, “Mr. Heurtel’s conditions include the need for public acceptance of the project, for proper consultations with First Nations, and for clear economic and fiscal benefits for Quebec, as well as assurances to gas customers. Mr. Heurtel also cited a National Assembly resolution demanding the government assess the impacts of ‘upstream”’GHG emissions – those produced by extracting the oil – for the pipeline that would carry 1.1 million barrels a day of western crude to market. But he was vague on whether the government will assert the right to block the pipeline.”

Ontario, too, wants environmental assurances and pledges from TransCanada that its newfound interest in shipping western bitumen through its territory en route to Saint John’s refinery will not overwhelm priorities to make supplies natural gas available to central Canadian industry.

Meanwhile, Premier Gallant is scrambling to put the new developments in the best possible light. “I will meet with Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard to talk about the fact that we are certainly behind the project,” he told reporters on Friday. “For us, what’s important is to assure when we can do it in the most safe and secure way possible. It’s one of the reasons why I read about the project at length two years ago. When we put the project into motion, I was already aware that we can do this in a secure way.”

Of course we can. But that’s not really the point. These days, pipelines are symbols of industrial rapacity and environmental carelessness. As such, they are marvelous for galvanizing public opinion against any expansion of the fossil fuel industry, as Maude Barlow, no shrinking violet on the subject, demonstrated last year.    

Regarding the Energy East proposal, the national chairperson for the Council of Canadians, told her interviewer from the North Bay Nugget,  “I want to let communities know not to be pressured to make a decision or risk not getting the benefits of the pipeline. I can tell you there are no benefits. There’s no argument for this pipeline. It’s an export pipeline and we don’t need it. . .We get the risk and (oil companies) get the reward,” adding “I would like to know what are the big jobs, because this pipeline is for export. It’s about greed. They’re playing with a potential environmental catastrophe that environmentalists have been warning about. . .It’s so much more dangerous (than any other oil) and it’s crossing watersheds and many waterways around the Great Lake Region that are already being threatened. We certainly don’t need to add to that threat.”

Naturally, TrabsCanada couldn’t let that go. It responded with its own statement:

“Quebec and New Brunswick currently import more than 700,000 barrels of oil every day – or 86 per cent of their refinery needs – from countries such as Algeria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. At current oil prices, this is over $75 million drained out of the Canadian economy – every single day. Energy East proposes to connect Western Canada’s resources to Eastern Canada’s needs. Greater supplies of domestic crude would improve the financial viability of eastern Canadian refineries by giving them access to less-expensive, stable domestic supplies.”

Of course, for Mr. Gallant, it could be worse. He could start talking enthusiastically about shale gas.

Let the protests commence.

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Mar 12 2014
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Energy, Environment, Idiocracy, Oil and Gas

The roiling tale of two imaginary pipelines

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In one hand, New Brunswick grips the key to its putative economic salvation; a pipeline spanning the better part of the second-largest landmass on the planet, from the oil fields and tar sands of Alberta right into little, old, plucky Saint John where the Irving refinery awaits, with bated breath, another profitable lease on life.

In the other, the picture-perfect province loosens it grip on everything its forebears allegedly designed (a healthy, self-sufficient, environmentally pristine part of the world) in the backwash of a curtailed and stolen future; a pipeline that would foul the ground, incinerate communities and spoil the water; a horrible industrial project that would return fleeting boons to short-term-thinking politicians, their confederates in commerce and not much else.

It’s odd how deliberately these opposing views manage to express themselves in New Brunswick’s print and broadcast media – as if never the twain shall meet, as if we, the sidelined majority, have nothing useful to lend to the debate over the province’s energy providence except, of course, our taxes and (sigh) our ears.

“Putative” and “alleged” are good words to describe the cases for and against a pipeline that does not, in fact, yet exist.

There are, of course, several ways to build a permanent way into a community. None of these, however, should have anything to do with terrorizing the citizenry or fictionalizing the landscape.

When Colleen Mitchell, president of Atlantica Centre for Energy, boosts on the front page of the Saint John Telegraph-Journal the benefits of an East Coast pipeline (without, I will note, a word of reasonable rebuttal), her kite flew so low, her hot air claimed its tail. She both terrorized the citizenry and fictionalized the landscape.

Here she is on her extraordinarily well-written rant:

“Five years (after the Great Recession of 2008) the gap between Atlantic Canada and the rest of Canada remains significant. . .The development of key oil and gas projects have the potential to reverse these economic trends. . .This project (TransCanada’s East Energy pipeline) is of such significance that if it proceeds to completion it will have a profound impact on the Atlantic region”

So profound, she says, it could amount to $35.3-billion in new gross domestic product across the country. So profound, she says, it could result in $266 million in new taxes to New Brunswick (during pipefitting) and maybe as much as $500 million after that. Moreover, she claimed with the sort of authority only an insider gets (and, trust me, she’s no insider), Irving Oil might just well spend upwards of $2 billion upgrading its coking and refining facilities in Saint John.

Oh, really?

This is irresponsible, unverified piffle; its feedstock derives directly from industry, itself. There is no way to credibly measure the merits of her assessments, just as there is no way to calibrate the real value of what she parrots are vast reserves of trapped shale gas in New Brunswick sedimentary rock. Why? Because industry, itself, is still reckoning the commercial viability of the resource. And, frankly, they’re not talking (which, in and of itself, should tell us something).

Still, she’s not the only partisan in the arena. Bid a welcome to the died-in-the-wool naysayers, who would rather buy their hemp oil from The Body Shop than see any of the dirty, necessary stuff that fuels their spectacularly energy-efficient homes spoil their golf-course-sized and well-fertilized lawns and gardens splendidly attended by certified “green” landscapers.

TransCanada Corp. has run afoul of four of nine National Energy Board regulations regarding its proper care and feeding of pipelines. This motivates New Brunswick Green Party honcho David Coon to theorize that “anything that suggests an increased risk of leaks will make everyone nervous.”

Furthermore, he postulates, “Since Stephen Harper has been prime minister, his orientation has been to ensure the National Energy Board is greasing the wheels of pipeline construction, not slowing it down because of things like safety and environmental impact.”

In other words, he seems to be saying, since the National Energy Board is, ipso facto, already compromised by the Conservative agenda, we must assume that its recent “harsh” judgement of TransCanada Corp. actually amounts  kid gloves’ treatment.

Again, so much for empirical evidence.

In one hand, the conspiracy theorists taketh away.

In the other, the apologists giveth back.

And, finally, no hands actually come together.

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Aug 02 2013
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Economy, Energy, Oil and Gas

New Brunswick’s pipeline to opportunity

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Now, for something completely different in New Brunswick: unvarnished good news. What began, for many, as a pipe dream becomes, for all, a bonafide pipe line into Saint John. And, unquestionably, not a moment too soon.

For much of the past 15 years, the urgent conversation in this decidedly unpromising corner of Canada has had everything to do with loss. How much public debt can we bear before our international creditors come knocking at the door? How many young people must we send west for jobs before, as public policy pundit Donald Savoie once famously wrote, New Brunswick becomes an old folks home?

Trans Canada Corp.’s announcement last week that it will move forward with a multi-billion-dollar pipeline from Alberta east to refineries in Quebec and Saint John – tentatively scheduled for completion by 2018 – changes the channel. (Quebec insists it wants to study the proposal, but the odds are in favour of its support).

In a report issued last Tuesday, Scotiabank energy analyst Patricia Mohr framed the opportunity clearly: “The line would allow access to less expensive and more secure domestic crude oil, allowing displacement of imports into the Suncor Energy and Ultramar (Valero) refineries in Montréal and in Lévis (near Québec City) as well as the large Irving Oil refinery in Saint John. These refineries have in the past been mostly supplied by expensive light oil imports.”

Moreover, “Greater access to stable supplies of domestic oil would improve the financial viability of current refineries and could eventually encourage development of a larger domestic refining industry in Québec and Atlantic Canada. History shows that pipeline developments – linking crude oil supplies to markets – often precede refinery expansion.

And, thirdly, “The line could provide vitally needed new export outlets for Western Canadian oil – to Europe and, most interestingly, to India – accompanied by expanded port and marine service-sector activity near Québec City and Saint John.”

All of which led her to conclude: “The economics of the ‘Energy East Pipeline Project’ are compelling. . .Refiners in India have shown considerable interest in importing Alberta blended bitumen. Estimated tanker charges from Québec City and Saint John to the west coast of India average a mere US$4.20 per barrel in a Suezmax vessel. A marine terminal at Saint John would be ice-free year round and could accommodate VLCCs of 350,000 DWT, cutting tanker costs to India to only US$3 per barrel. . .developing low-cost transportation infrastructure to access overseas export markets is critical.”

Against this backdrop, of course, languishes Keystone. As the Globe and Mail astutely observed in its coverage last week, “Politically, the project has attracted far less opposition so far than either Keystone XL, which has become a prime target for American climate-change activists and a political bone of contention between U.S. President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans, or the Gateway project, which has been opposed in its current form by Premier Christy Clark.” Meanwhile, it added, “Canaport (has) applied to transform its offshore facility to a gas storage and export terminal, giving it a new lease on life.”

For New Brunswick, the economic stimulus will be enormous: immediately translatable into thousands of skilled, highly paid jobs. Longer term, the energy sector, itself, will undergo a profound transformation as clusters of small and medium-sized enterprises emerge to support the refining anchor in the Port City.

But the broader significance of the pipeline has as much to do with national, as it does with regional, identity.

Premier David Alward was not wrong last year when he likened the project – when it was still just a concept – to a country-building exercise. For too long, the solitudes of West and East have driven the dialogue about what it means to be a Canadian. The have-less and have-more provinces have bickered over their respective slices of the energy pie.

The pipeline is, in effect, a handshake, across thousands of kilometers of geography, that unites once-competing interests. It says we’re in this together.

It also says to Alberta: You know all those Maritime sons and daughters we’ve been sending your way in recent years. . .Well, we’re gong to need you to send some of them back.

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