The Line 9 Reversal

The chap from Blast Furnace Canada has a carefully reasoned take on what's at issue with the "Line 9 Reversal"--the plan to bring diluted bitumen from Alta/Sask's  tar-sands to refineries in Eastern Canada. Mind you, I disagree with his conclusion: a reluctant acceptance of the line for "energy security" reasons. My understanding  (and I haven't followed this project nearly as closely as Northern Gateway, Trans Mountain, or Keystone XL) is that this too is intended largely as an export pipe-line. The oil in it will be sold to China and other locales, and if anything it will drive Canadian gasoline prices higher rather than lower. I also think that the kind of upgrades to the existing pipe that BFC thinks necessary for safety reasons will never come to pass.  Rebuilding the line would be expensive, and the market take on a West-East line is already an unenthusiastic meh.  Driving up the costs of building it will not change this verdict.

Justin Gives West/East Pipeline Yellow Light

After the B.C. election there was some speculation that Adrian Dix's sudden thumbs-down to the Trans Mountain Pipeline after a year or so of fence-sitting cost him votes.  I think that's wrong, but since the B.C. polls all turned out to crap, they can't tell us anything one way or another and we are therefore free to speculate as we please.  My opinion, FWIW, is based on the behavior of the B.C. Liberal campaign, which toughened its own anti-pipeline rhetoric in the last week of the race with Christy Clark's "we don't need Alberta, we don't need Canada" speech. In other words, the BC Libs worked to narrow the distance between the Liberal and NDP positions, not increase it.

Nevertheless some people seem to feel that a softer line on Alberta pipelines has become the politically expedient move.  Thankfully, Justin Trudeau is not among them:

The federal Liberal leader told the CBC’s Information Morning Fredericton on Thursday he has specific questions about potential toxins that may be used in the pipeline.

“I think it is a proposal that is extremely interesting. We are waiting to look at how they are going to deal with both the community, local, aboriginal concerns and the environmental concerns,” Trudeau said.

“The [substance] that they put to make that thick crude, thick bitumen run through those pipes can be very toxic. I want to see the plan for being environmentally responsible on it because it won’t go ahead if it will cost us on pollution, in degradation and in inefficiencies in the coming years.”

Now Trudeau is hardly going so far as to suggest that he will kill the proposal when he becomes PM (and its starting to look like he may).  He might simply be commenting on the general lay of the political landscape. Moreover, I think the line nine reversal will ultimately fail due to market disinterest rather than political machinations.  But its good to see that Justin is not simply abandoning the field to the pro-oil-patch forces on environmental issues.  He's showing a little bit of sand on the topic, and that's a good thing.

Adrian Dix On Trans Mountain (Kinder Morgan) Pipeline

Announcing his environmental platform, Dix said he does "not expect Vancouver to become a major export oil port" as he said appears to be contemplated in the Kinder Morgan proposal.

Dix would not definitively rule out the project, saying the company has yet to submit a formal proposal.

But he said he it appears the company is looking to increase by "five or six fold" the amount of oil going through Vancouver, which he said an NDP government would not support.

Assuming Dix wins in B.C.--a pretty safe wager at this point--no pipeline to the West Coast will ever get built.  Meanwhile, Enbridge is trying to grease the skids for a Line 9 reversal to bring its product East, and running up against suspicious locals.  If Keystone XL is approved by the Obama administration, as seems increasingly likely, then I suspect the Harper government's support for all three other projects will soften.  They will fight for them, but not really.  2015 is too close by and B.C. has too many CPC seats for them to press for the first two; Quebec opposition, and the fact that it isn't a particularly profitable option in the first place, will take care of the third.

PS.  Dix has also apparently promised to expand the scope of B.C.'s carbon tax, thus burying once and for all memories of 2009 when the NDP's threat to repeal the tax blew the wheels of their campaign bus in week one of that election.

There’s The Rub

 I am mostly neutral on the idea of reversing line 9.  But when I read this bit:

From Sarnia, the upgraded and refined product would be sent down Enbridge’s Line 9 to Montreal, and on to Saint John, N.B., either by barge down the St. Lawrence River, by rail, or through the construction of what McKenna calls “the final leg of a national pipeline.”

Well, good luck building a pipeline through Quebec.