Thanks to climate politics, Canada approaches a constitutional crisis. The government of British Columbia is not resisting federally approved expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline mainly because it fears spills of oil on land or sea. It's doing so because it needs support from climate activists hoping to crimp bitumen production in Alberta.
As usual with opposition to pipelines, worry about spills is secondary. It's a way to foment local resistance that works until facts put the manageable risks of pipelines into perspective. What activists really want when they protest pipeline construction is to create bottlenecks, thus to depress oil and gas values and discourage development. This motivation is fundamental to a provincial showdown in Canada, where the strategy is succeeding.
Limiting transit
The coalition BC government led by New Democrat John Horgan on Jan. 30 proposed to limit transit of diluted bitumen while it redundantly studies the environmental effects of spills. The move would stymie Kinder Morgan's 590,000-b/d expansion of the Trans Mountain system between Edmonton and the British Columbia coast at Burnaby, near Vancouver. It thus would aggravate pipeline congestion in Alberta, where the discount of Western Canadian Select blend to West Texas Intermediate crude recently grew to its greatest value in 4 years, exceeding $25/bbl.
Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, also a New Democrat, reacted to the BC initiative with understandable anger. She initially insisted Horgan had exceeded his authority, noting the federal government has jurisdiction over interprovincial transportation and approved the Trans Mountain expansion. Then she suspended talks on electricity purchases and, on Feb. 6, ordered Alberta's alcohol regulator to block $70 million worth of imports of BC wine.
Horgan probably won't yield. His government can't survive without support of the coalition partner, the Green Party. The New Democrat-Green alliance declared its opposition to the Trans Mountain expansion when it took power by a one-seat margin last June. Municipal governments also resist the project.
Notley's position is no less tenuous. She'll face consolidated conservative opposition in elections next year and needs the Albertan economy to grow robustly. Without new pipeline capacity for production from the oil sands, that will be difficult.
Aggravating Notley's problems is growing recognition that she's been snookered in a climate deal with the federal government. The National Energy Board approved the Trans Mountain expansion along with replacement of Enbridge's Line 3, between Alberta and the US, after Notley agreed to tax carbon dioxide emitted by fuel combustion and to cap CO2 emissions from the oil sands. Now, both projects face at least delays while Albertans have begun feeling the cost of climate regulation without the promised economic boost from pipeline construction.
For its part, the government of Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says it stands by the NEB's approval of the Trans Mountain expansion. So far, however, that's all it says. It seems less than eager either to press a constitutional conflict with the BC government or to tarnish Trudeau's reputation with environmentalists by offering Trans Mountain more than superficial support. For Notley, of course, federal inaction is dreadful.
Yet the bargain she made with Ottawa seemed reasonable when she made it. She grounded the deal in the comforting notion that a government can pursue both environmental protection and economic growth, however constrained. She asserted the value of compromise.
Fatal flaw
That, of course, represents her strategy's fatal flaw. Climate activists don't compromise. They block work essential to the development of oil and gas resources. It's what they do. They don't base their fundraising on promises to compromise with the very organizations they disparage as evil polluters. They raise money by slaying hydrocarbon dragons, especially pipelines.
Notley's deal with Ottawa was doomed when the Greens joined the New Democrats in BC, if not before. Albertans suffer as a result. Meanwhile, the risks of Canadian oil and gas investments grow. And for everyone, everywhere, the destabilizing products of climate politics come again into clear and troubling view.