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The CBC Reports:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet colleagues signed off on two major pipelines today, projects that will pump nearly a million more barrels of oil a day from Alberta's oilsands to global markets, if they are constructed.
Ottawa gave the green light to Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline and Enbridge's Line 3, while it rejected Northern Gateway.
Trudeau also announced that the government would ban crude oil tankers along B.C.'s North Coast, promising legislation in the new year to implement a moratorium.
[...] The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency estimates that the new capacity will result in roughly 13.5 to 17 megatonnes of additional upstream greenhouse gas emissions each year.
Kinder-Morgan's Trans Mountain project is an expansion of an existing pipeline that runs between Edmonton, Alberta, and Burnaby (part of Greater Vancouver), British Columbia. The expansion will nearly triple the amount of product that can be shipped to just under 900,000 barrels/day.
Line 3 is a 1,660km pipeline that runs between Hardisty, Alberta and Superior, Wisconsin. The proposal by Enbridge is to replace the 34" pipeline with a 36" pipeline. Enbridge expects 760,000 barrels/day of light, medium and heavy crude to flow through the upgraded pipeline
(Score: 5, Informative) by Snow on Wednesday November 30 2016, @10:24PM
There are a lot of differing opinions around these approvals.
Where I am from, Alberta, we rely on oil revenues and this year our Provincial deficit is something like $50 billion - not good. Alberta, being a landlocked province, has difficulties attractin buyers of our crude because it can be difficult to transport to where it it needed. Right now, much of that happens via rail, which is expensive, so that lowers the value of our crude. Not getting full value for our crude means less revenue and less royalty incomes. Many Albertans feel like they have been getting screwed by all levels of government, so having this approval happen is really throwing Alberta a bone. (IMO Alberta deserves one. We send billions eastwards in equalization payments and recieve very little in return. We call it the gravy train... and it heads straight to Quebec.)
Beside us, in BC, they are not super happy about this approval... They are understandably concerned about what might happen if there were a major oil spill in Vancouver Harbor. They plan on protesting and doing everything they can to stall the pipeline heading their way (The Kinder-Morgan one).
For the rest of the world this is confirmation that for the foreseeable future, oil sand activity will continue.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday November 30 2016, @10:44PM
They are understandably concerned about what might happen if there were a major oil spill in Vancouver Harbor.
Of course the alternative isn't totally harmless either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-M%C3%A9gantic_rail_disaster [wikipedia.org]
The real question being which solution causes the least damage, the ship has long sailed for "we can't permit any danger".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 01 2016, @12:41AM
well, the main line train tracks from Alberta to BC coast go along the Frasier River valley. So a derailment there, with subsequent oil leakage, will flow down river to Vancouver BC...
Same grief with UP and BNSF running oil trains along their Columbia Gorge mainlines. BNSF has a mainline that goes through Cascades to Seattle. An oil train derailment and fire & explosion in the tunnel would suck, too, and doesn't mitigate that half of BNSF's trackage north from Seattle is right next to Puget Sound. I do not think that the UP has a cross-Cascades track except through the Columbia River Gorge.
Those trains at least go to the refineries in Anacortes and Ferndale, WA, ostensibly for NW US refining and distribution, less so for export.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Thursday December 01 2016, @02:21AM
Overall, unfortunately, I think this was pretty much a no-win situation for Trudeau. No matter what the decisions were, there would be very unhappy people and protests.
(Score: 1) by dwilson on Thursday December 01 2016, @03:26PM
Overall, unfortunately, I think this was pretty much a no-win situation for Trudeau. No matter what the decisions were, there would be very unhappy people and protests.
Yeah, but those very unhappy people will all be 'out west' regardless of which way the decision goes. For years, the Liberal's modus operandi has been to court Ontario and Quebec, and to hell with the rest of the country. Lip service when required, otherwise fuck 'em. So I very much doubt he's going to lose sleep over it.
Disclaimer: Also from Alberta.
- D
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bob_super on Wednesday November 30 2016, @11:17PM
That's about 12000 dollars deficit per person living in Alberta. That is such a staggering amount that I don't think they should try to fix that with a pipeline while hoping that the price of crude will keep rising. The Tar Sands are some of the dirtiest, most expensive hydrocarbon sources on the planet (to extract, transport, and refine), so you can expect fracking everywhere else to keep expanding any time the barrel rises towards Tar Sand happy levels. It's gonna take Trump playing a W-wannabe wargame to shrink that deficit, even with an Elon-sized pipe.
Obviously, either replacing that much income, or cutting that much spending, or even half and half, isn't exactly the dream conundrum of your average politician. Good luck.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Wednesday November 30 2016, @11:34PM
The deficit is actually closer to $10 Billion, I was wrong there. I'm quite liberal in a part of the country that is quite conservative. I don't personally think that Alberta should be banking their future on the oil sands, but the reality of the matter is that for now, we do need them.
At least with oil sands (vs fracking), we know what the risks are. We know about carbon. We know about tailings ponds. With fracking (which we do here too!), many of the concequences are still being learned. Despite the bad rap that the oil sands have, at least we do have strict environmental controls. Alberta is also phasing out coal powered power plants. This will help offset some of the carbon that is produced from the oilsands.
I assume that you are an American, and if so, you are not in a position to be thumbing your nose at our oil sands. The USA regularly gangbangs mother nature.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday December 01 2016, @12:24AM
I was talking purely from a price-to-market standpoint, without even touching on the emissions. Tar sands are costly at every stage of their processing (and later, cleanup), and require a sustained high barrel price to be viable compared to already-costly fracking, let alone the rest.
Obviously, others have made the math and decided that it was worth a few billions, but the question remains of how much Alberta cashes in compared to the other actors in the market.
Like many other giant dirty endeavors before it, the question is always whether the future cleanup/retraining costs will be properly deducted, safely invested and available when the operations eventually cease. The list of places where the immediate profit-taking was maximized, and someone else got left with the mess, is a huge and ever-expanding one (especially in the US).
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Thursday December 01 2016, @04:10PM
You'd think that with all the other facilities already built to process/cleanup tar sands, that they might as well just build the refineries there as well.
That said, I've read that it's not cost effective to refine in Canada vs ship/pipe the crude to China or the Gulf of Mexico.
Then again, they say the same thing about assembling iPhones in the USA vs cheap labour in China, but Trump keeps talking about making Apple do exactly that, so what the heck do experts know.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Thursday December 01 2016, @11:22PM
I agree. Speaking from a purely logical (energy in : energy out) standpoint, it would make more sense to use conventional oil reserves. It's clear that there is more oil available than could be burned without completely screwing up the atmosphere, so it would make sense to use the oil that gives the biggest energy return on investment. It's a tragedy of the commons type of problem.
As for who gets to pay for the final cleanup once it's no longer profitable... The answer, unfortunately, is almost always the taxpayer.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday November 30 2016, @11:43PM
At one point, though, Alberta had a huge surplus... then they started spending and spending.
Governments need to start being smarter.
But I agree about the equalisation payments: Ontario's money goes to Quebec too... I love it when their government of the day says "we'll separate!!!"
We say "go for it... look at the money we'd save just in not having to print everything in English AND French!" Bye!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Thursday December 01 2016, @02:19AM
Ontario's money *used* to go to Quebec. Now. we get money from Alberta as well, or we certainly did for the past few years. Dalton McLyingPieceOfRatshit drove us into the ground, adding 35%+ teacher salary increases on top of a bad economy (I'm sure his wife being a teacher is not a conflict of interest). It'll be a whiel before Ontario is making enough money to consistently support Quebec again, I think
(Score: 5, Interesting) by aclarke on Thursday December 01 2016, @12:19AM
I genuinely sympathize with Albertans where your economy is tied so closely to oil. I care about people's well-being, but on the other hand I feel very strongly that we can't keep selling our future for the present. I've been thinking a lot lately about the utter inadequacy of capitalism to value anything that can't be quantified with a dollar sign, and our democratic system's inability to think more than a few years into the future. We're screwing over our children and grandchildren, and our entire planet, for short-sighted economic gains. Externalities are swept under the rug, because we "need" the oil sands.
I discovered the Leap Manifesto [leapmanifesto.org] a couple months ago, and it really resonates with me. It echoes many of the concerns I have and attempts to do something about it. The premise is that we can't get where we need to be with incremental changes. There needs to be a leap in our thinking and actions. One of those leaps needs to be weaning our economy off of fossil fuels.
For another example, as Canadians we paid $13.7B [theglobeandmail.com] to prop up two foreign companies during the 2008 financial crisis: GM and Chrysler. I live near several GM plants and they're important to our local economy. However, I said it then but of course nobody listened, if we'd put $13.7B into R&D on renewable energy at the time, we'd be a world leader in a growth market right now. On the other hand, we backed one of the world's dumbest companies (GM), who for decades provided utter dreck for people who seemingly didn't know any better.
We've got to harden up and make some difficult choices. Investing more into oil sands is going the wrong direction.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 01 2016, @01:23AM
I care about people's well-being, but on the other hand I feel very strongly that we can't keep selling our future for the present. I've been thinking a lot lately about the utter inadequacy of capitalism to value anything that can't be quantified with a dollar sign, and our democratic system's inability to think more than a few years into the future.
I can't help but notice that people who complain in this way have no notable proficiency for thinking into the future or dealing with capitalism. Anything has some value in a capitalist society, if you choose to value it. But for so many things, people aren't willing to do that. A priceless thing that you aren't willing to defend has the same value as a worthless thing.
As to the Leap Manifesto, it completely ignores that there are seven billion people on this planet and not all of them have the standard of living or relatively low fertility that Canada enjoys. The Manifesto merely assumes that global warming is the most important problem out there, ignoring the more important problems such as overpopulation, poverty, corruption, and arable land and habitat destruction. Petroleum remains a tool for successfully fixing bigger problems than global warming. It would be good to remember this.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aclarke on Thursday December 01 2016, @04:08AM
I'm not sure if you're referring to my comments as complaining, or if you're indirectly insinuating that in your opinion I "have no notable proficiency for thinking into the future or dealing with capitalism." Regardless, your belief of anything having value if we choose to value it is true on one level. It also assumes that we as humans are the ultimate arbiters of value, and that nothing has inherent value. It also trusts the wisdom of the crowds, in that if not enough people value something enough to do something about it, it has no value.
This sociological outlook has little basis in reality. Game theory explains these phenomena quite well. One does not have to look very far to see situations most of us would value that aren't adequately handled by capitalism: traffic, clean parks, high-quality education, elderly care, etc. Most of us could list things that we feel have value to us, that are not adequately internalised by our current version of capitalism.
Have you read the Leap Manifesto? You don't have to agree with it, but your arguments are against some fantasy version of the Manifesto, as they make not sense when applied to the actual document. Here are their stated values: respect for Indigenous rights, internationalism, human rights, diversity, and environmental stewardship. If you read the document, you'll see that the point of calling it the LEAP Manifesto is that each of the issues you've listed, and that are in the Manifesto, is too big to handle on its own without factoring in other issues and opportunities. It's hard to sort out overpopulation without looking at habitat destruction. One can't deal with global warming without a sane hydrocarbon policy. Taking these issues one at a time isn't working. The concept is to look holistically at the issues and opportunities, and make a "leap" that would be impossible as a series of small, politically hampered changes without an over-arching master plan.
Canada clearly can't fix all these global problems on our own. But someone has to show leadership. We're one of the few countries in the world who could actually show the way, if we had the will.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 01 2016, @04:58PM
I'm not sure if you're referring to my comments as complaining, or if you're indirectly insinuating that in your opinion I "have no notable proficiency for thinking into the future or dealing with capitalism."
Let me put it this way. By complaining (and yes, that is complaining) about "to value anything that can't be quantified with a dollar sign", you demonstrate that you are rather ignorant about capitalism. Anything real or imagined can be valued with a dollar sign. It might not be even remotely close to what you think it should be valued, but it can be valued.
It also assumes that we as humans are the ultimate arbiters of value, and that nothing has inherent value.
Inherent value doesn't exist. Value is always subjective. And I haven't said that humans are the only source of valuation. Other animals have their own ways to impose valuation for what they want.
This sociological outlook has little basis in reality. Game theory explains these phenomena quite well. One does not have to look very far to see situations most of us would value that aren't adequately handled by capitalism: traffic, clean parks, high-quality education, elderly care, etc. Most of us could list things that we feel have value to us, that are not adequately internalised by our current version of capitalism.
There are a couple of things to note here. First, many of these problems are completely irrelevant to capitalism's alleged efficacy. Everyone has trouble with traffic, clean parks, high quality education, elderly care, etc. And as usual with this sort of thing, even if capitalist systems aren't quite as adequate as you'd like, they're better than the systems without capitalism.
Have you read the Leap Manifesto?
Yes, and the first thing I noticed was paragraph after paragraph about the supposed evils of fossil fuels and global warming. It looks to me like at least half the Manifesto is about that thing. And the outlook is remarkably skewed, such as complaining about "austerity" because of its alleged negative effect on fossil fuel use or calling for public infrastructure investment because "extreme weather events" will supposedly become more likely. The paragraph on austerity is notable for its tunnel vision:
We declare that “austerity” – which has systematically attacked low-carbon sectors like education and healthcare, while starving public transit and forcing reckless energy privatizations – is a fossilized form of thinking that has become a threat to life on earth.
Not a word about Canada's publicly held debt to GDP. A high ratio is a trigger for austerity, not fossilized thinking. As of 2013, Canada's ration was 66% publicly held debt to GDP. That's high, but not quite high enough to trigger austerity (I'd consider anything over 70% to be risking austerity during some future recession). I note that the Manifesto is very delusional about where it thinks money will come from, for in the very next paragraph:
The money we need to pay for this great transformation is available — we just need the right policies to release it. Like an end to fossil fuel subsidies. Financial transaction taxes. Increased resource royalties. Higher income taxes on corporations and wealthy people. A progressive carbon tax. Cuts to military spending. All of these are based on a simple “polluter pays” principle and hold enormous promise.
Canada's fossil fuel subsidies aren't particularly large and you're not going to get even a little back from ending Iran or Russia's oil subsidies (most oil subsidies are in countries like those). Financial transaction taxes and those income taxes are notably unjustified here. There is no "polluter" to justify the so-called "polluter pays" principle. There's also considerable blowback since financial transactions in particular are as "low carbon" as you can get.
It's hard to sort out overpopulation without looking at habitat destruction.
Not at all. Habitat destruction is completely subordinate to overpopulation. You don't get overpopulation due to habitat destruction.
One can't deal with global warming without a sane hydrocarbon policy.
Canada's current policy is sane too.
Taking these issues one at a time isn't working.
Who's doing that? Even the ideologies that obsessively focus on climate change claim that fixing it will improve all the other problems.
The concept is to look holistically at the issues and opportunities, and make a "leap" that would be impossible as a series of small, politically hampered changes without an over-arching master plan.
The huge problem here is that your plan is probably worse than having no plan at all. The Manifesto merely assumes that switching to a renewable energy, local production economy is going to be better. But we wouldn't have so much fossil fuel use and global trade in the first place, if that were true. Our economic systems just aren't that deficit that we would ignore some immense value like that for decade after decade.
Similarly, the Manifesto makes broad, unjustified assumptions about the efficacy of mass transit, the revenue stream they'll get from fossil fuel taxes and taxes on rich people activities, or opening Canada's borders to immigrants while simultaneously creating costly social services that will encourage tragedy of the commons situations.
Finally, while the plan deals with poverty in Canada, it does the opposite for poverty outside of Canada (reversal of trade treaties, emphasis on local production, etc).
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 01 2016, @02:41AM
Where I am from, Quebec, Alberta seems like a bunch of over-entitled cry-babies, that don't want to pay taxes, and then at the smallest trouble (like burning forests, flooding, whatever else happens and their corrupt oil-bribed politicians cannot handle) come crying to the federal government and the rest of Canada to help them.
So while we don't want your crappy pipelines here, we wish you success is selling your oil to US, China or whoever, and hope you enjoy the tailing ponds and beautiful strip-mining scenery when you're done selling it all. Because your post-oil future looks very similar to Baku and other "successful" oil dependent regions.
And speaking of irony, looks like Trudeau did more for your the only industry in your province than your beloved Harper.
Drop by here and enjoy the beer and poutine sometimes ...
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday December 01 2016, @05:27AM
Most Canadians have very little idea of how equalization payments work, seeming to think that the Provincial Minister of Finance writes a check to Quebec or PEI, etc. It's actually that a Province like Alberta has lots of millionaires paying the highest rate in Federal income taxes and the Feds spending more in Quebec then in Alberta. Much like in the States some states such as California contribute more to their federal government and other states such as the central and southern ones take in more then they spend. We're just a bit more upfront that the rich get taxed to help the poor.
Alberta's fiscal problems mostly come from giving tax breaks instead of saving for a rainy day and also trying to do the fair tax thing where everyone pays the same 10% or whatever it is. Too many people figure if they have enough income to pay the bills, it means cutting back on income or increasing spending rather then putting some aside for the bad times that always seem to come around again.
As for the Kinder-Morgan pipeline, I'd feel a lot better about it if we (BC) benefited more, like getting some cheaper Canadian gas instead of being dependent on the Americans who have no problem shutting down their refineries all the time to drive the price up. $1.20 a litre in Vancouver and 1.05 here just outside of the GVRD for gas while the world price is at record lows and Kinder Morgan won't sell any oil to the refinery a mile away from the terminus of their pipeline.
This whole sell the raw product cheap rather then adding value stinks
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 01 2016, @07:47PM
"like getting some cheaper Canadian gas instead of being dependent on the Americans who have no problem shutting down their refineries all the time to drive the price up."
the hell, you say! :)