Pipeline politics-again

Opposition grows to the pipeline designed to carry oil away from Alberta. No, not THAT pipeline. It's Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain expansion project that faces new trouble.

The 715-mile twinning of the system between Edmonton and Burnaby, BC, received crucial sanction last November when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau approved it along with expansion of Enbridge's Line 3 transiting Saskatchewan and Manitoba between Edmonton and Superior, Wisc. While British Columbia Premier Christy Clark supports the Trans Mountain expansion, her Liberal Party fell a vote shy of winning a majority in a May 9 election. Since then, the New Democratic Party (NDP) and Green Party, the combined votes of which constitute a bare majority, have agreed to form a collation led by the NDP.

Trans Mountain's trouble

That's where the Trans Mountain project faces trouble. The coalition agreement promises to "immediately employ every tool available to the new government to stop the expansion of the Kinder Morgan pipeline, the seven-fold increase in tanker traffic on our coast, and the transportation of raw bitumen through our province."

Kinder Morgan announced its decision to proceed with the $7.4-billion project on May 25 after completing an initial public offering for a subsidiary to operate it. On May 30, the day after the NDP-Green link-up, the company said it was preparing to begin construction in September, targeting start-up by the end of 2019.

A fight thus looms after political formalities later this month. NDP-Green leaders fear Clark might call a snap election in hope of regaining the majority Liberals lost last month. Clark says she has no such plan and is willing to lead the Liberals in opposition. Her acquiescence will allow the NDP-Green coalition to defeat the government in a vote of confidence on the throne speech to be read when the Legislative Assembly reconvenes on June 22, probably the following week. The NDP-Green coalition then will form a new government.

British Columbia seems destined to become a no-go zone for the oil and gas industry. The coalition's opposition to the Trans Mountain project is explicit. So is its promise to review a hydroelectric dam project for which construction has begun. But British Columbia has rich potential as a producer of natural gas and gas liquids from the prolific Montney shale and as an export outlet for LNG, topics on which the coalition so far is silent. But aggressively stated opposition to Trans Mountain expansion makes its disposition clear.

Newly influential Green Leader Andrew Weaver claims not to want to stymie development of Alberta's oil sands, the main-although sometimes unexpressed-reason environmentalists oppose pipelines serving the region. He says he just doesn't want bitumen production to increase. For the oil sands business, that's just slow as opposed to sudden death.

Similar appeasement came recently from Matt Toner, a Green Party deputy leader who told the Canadian Press the coalition would consult with business and avoid overnight changes. But he added, "When it comes down to things like the fossil-fuel industry, we just have to have the conversation about how do we keep those resources in the ground."

Trans Mountain expansion has the federal approval it needs and received affirmation in a June 6 vote in the House of Commons. The province nevertheless can delay the project by reversing environmental sanctions and withholding construction permits.

The delay poison

Delay was the poison with which former US President Barack Obama initially tried to kill the Keystone XL pipeline linking Alberta with the US Gulf Coast. Obama eventually rejected the project outright-more than 7 years after TransCanada Corp. filed its first application. The administration of President Donald Trump reversed that decision in March.

During TransCanada's long wait, Obama claimed to be following an "all of the above" energy strategy while his subordinates worked with mixed success to hamper oil and gas development with regulation, taxation, and disapproval. British Columbia seems headed in the same regrettable direction, starting with a pipeline.