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Common Dreams reports
Environmental and indigenous groups are cheering after Kinder Morgan announced Sunday [April 8] it was halting most work on its controversial Trans Mountain expansion pipeline project, citing continuing opposition. Map of proposed route
"This is a sign that organizing works, and it could well be the beginning of the end for this dangerous pipeline", declared Clayton Thomas-Muller, a Stop-it-at-the-Source campaigner with 350.org.
"This is huge", added British Columbia-based advocacy group Dogwood.
In the company's statement announcing the move, chairman and CEO Steve Kean said Kinder Morgan was suspending "all non-essential activities and related spending" as a result of the "current environment" that puts shareholders at risk.
"A company cannot resolve differences between governments", he added, referencing resistance from B.C. lawmakers that is at odds with support for the project coming from Ottawa and neighboring Alberta. "While we have succeeded in all legal challenges to date, a company cannot litigate its way to an in-service pipeline amidst jurisdictional differences between governments", Kean said.
Unless legal agreements are reached by May 31, Kean said that "it is difficult to conceive of any scenario in which we would proceed with the project". (There are still 18 pending court cases that could thwart the project, the Wilderness Committee notes.)
B.C. Premier John Horgan, for his part, said in a statement Sunday, "The federal process failed to consider B.C.'s interests and the risk to our province. We joined the federal challenge, started by others, to make that point."
[...] Greenpeace Canada's climate and energy campaigner Mike Hudema, said:
Investors should note that the opposition to this project is strong, deep, and gets bigger by the day. This announcement shows that this widespread opposition has reached critical mass. British Columbians' desire to protect clean water, safeguard the environment, and stand behind Indigenous communities cannot be ignored or swept under the rug. We encourage Kinder Morgan to shelve this project before the litany of lawsuits, crumbling economics, and growing resistance against the pipeline does it for them.
While the company "looks ready to pack it in", said Wilderness Committee Climate Campaigner Peter McCartney, the opposition is "not going anywhere until this pipeline no longer poses a threat to the coast, the climate, and Indigenous communities along the route".
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Gaaark on Tuesday April 10 2018, @06:42PM (10 children)
I look at it as "the people are starting to be heard above the road of corporate lobbying money".
Corporations are starting to get screwed a bit like the people they've been screwing: do THEY like it?
I was raised Conservative, voted Conservative in the past, but corporations now have too much power. Time to take some of that power away. (But not with the recent governments we've had: they like corporate money too much).
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 10 2018, @07:47PM (9 children)
Exactly. The gas & oil companies are aghast at the idea that BC doesn't want their money, while BC residents look at the massive ecological disasters that oil spills create and, wisely, choose not to push their luck with another environmental-disaster-looking-to-happen. Sure, the odds of an oil spill might not be huge, but when one does happen -- and they happen too often -- the plants and animals and their environment are f--ked.
The gas & oil companies have zero interest in the future or the environment; the honchos there today want money now and let someone else, even if it's just their successors, worry about the dealing with the spills when they happen. Good on BC for telling them to stuff it.
(Score: 1) by dwilson on Wednesday April 11 2018, @12:30AM (2 children)
Pipeline-protesting has been in the news up here in canada for several years now, for various different pipeline projects. I've often wondered why the companies behind the pipelines don't take the following approach...
"So, you don't want a pipeline through your area, and you cite fear of a breach leading to a spill leading to an ecological disaster? Fair enough! If you're that worried about the safety of pipeline technology, we won't build it. INSTEAD, we will send the projected daily capacity of the pipeline through your area by tanker truck. On your roads and highways. Every day, for a month. Let us know when you want the (-far- more) dangerous trucks to stop moving the product, and we'll talk about the much safer (and cheaper, for everyone) pipeline we'd like to build..."
- D
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 11 2018, @07:41AM (1 child)
Because:
1/ that would be very expensive and pointless to do.
2/ Lawsuits would stop it instantly.
3/ It would only take a couple of sympathetic local cops to put every one of those trucks off the road for as long as the cops feel like. There isn't a truck on the road that a cop can't find a fault in if they want to.
4/ I cannot think of any tactic more well designed to kill a company than to align every possible enemy against it by acting as such an arrogant bully.
(Score: 1) by dwilson on Wednesday April 11 2018, @08:41PM
In no particular order...
point 4: Humans suck at assessing risk. A tactic like that would help to get the point across, that a pipeline, while dangerous, really is the least-problematic option when compared to moving product by truck. Or by train, for that matter. I'd expect their PR department to stress than point.
point 2: Lawsuits may be filed instantly, but unless you can point out which existing laws they are breaking by doing so, I don't expect they'd go anywhere. The lawyers would win, as usual...
point 1: Expensive, yes. Pointless? Not if it gets their point across. And if anyone has money to burn, it's the energy companies.
point 3: 'cops'. RCMP? not so much. unless the trucks are speeding or breaking other traffic laws, they won't give two fucks. The DOT, aka commercial vehicle enforcement cops? Sure, if they look hard enough they can find a fault in any trucker's rig. But DOT is federally directed, and in most of these cases the federal government has given it's blessing to the pipeline projects, it's (very) localized opposition, amplified entirely out of proportion by the internet and non-local bandwagon support, that's causing the problems. The DOT won't give two fucks.
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(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 11 2018, @07:21AM (3 children)
I can't remember which province it was in, but they had a huge ecological disaster after some trailing ponds got compromised and leaked all sorts of toxic sludge into some river up there a few years back. Oil pipelines aren't that different as far as the maintenance concerns go. Unless it is proven that the mining company or oil company have not only paid ahead, but set aside a minimum amount as well as a fixed percentage of their profits towards maintenance and post-production ecological restoration, we shouldn't be allowing them to do ANY of these things, given that it can poison whole communities for miles around a spill site or downstream of a waterway if not properly cleaned up before the pipe or storage ponds being unmaintained and fail.
(Score: 3, Informative) by https on Wednesday April 11 2018, @03:30PM (2 children)
That would be British Columbia - the Mount Polley mining disaster. Oh, and we just recently discovered that our previous government administration, a bunch of honest politicians*, tried to keep the lid on the fact that fracking companies have built almost 100 dams in the province without any meaningful oversight, environmental impact assessments, or engineering reports - the last because they weren't actually engineered. Making a safe ten metre high dam does not happen by guess and by golly.
So, yeah, the citizens are pretty much fed up with corporations having more rights than people, and being told that the environment and their health are expendable. And, seeing that Quebec managed to shut down the Energy East pipeline has given new hope.
* "An honest politician is one who, once bought, stays bought." The BC Liberal Party (no relation to the Liberal Party of Canada) is stunningly and blatantly owned by corporate interests. It's not a wonder that they were turfed.
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 2) by dwilson on Wednesday April 11 2018, @08:55PM (1 child)
Genuinely curious here, can you dig up anything on which fracking companies, and which dams / where they were built?
I ask because I used to work for a hydraulic fracturing company in Alberta, and we had precisely Fuck All to do with infrastructure. The customer (company owning the well and lease) hired us to come in and frac. A 'frac' consisted of pumping x amount of water/sand at y concentration with z concentration of chemicals a,b and c, and pressures d, e, and f for certain depths in the well. Was there water in tanks/ponds on-site? customer owned/organized it. Changes needed to be made to the lease to accommodate our equipment? Customer organized/paid for it. We showed up with our equipment, chemical, and sand (sometimes the customer handled the sand, as well), pumped the job we'd agreed to pump, and left. Literally -everything- outside that narrow remit was the customers responsibility. And that wasn't just us, that was industry standard for frac companies, canada-wide.
So I have a fairly hard time believing any frac company, anywhere in canada, would be building dams or worrying about ponds or environmental impact assessments or anything like that. that's the customer's concern, not ours. Blame the well owner if you want, leave the service companies out of it.
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(Score: 2) by https on Wednesday April 11 2018, @11:06PM
Pardon me for not knowing the fine details of your industry's subcontracting methodologies. Leaving the service companies out of it is a distraction at best, but for now I'm going to resist jumping to "disingenuous". Did you never ask, "where did all that water come from"? Maybe you really are ignorant of the implications.
Here in BC, Joe Sixpack asks, why these dangerous dams gotta be built? Previous administration's answer: blah blah fracking blah blah economy blah blah. How did Joe even find out abut all this blah blah Sir the microphone is still on.
And here's your homework [thetyee.ca] started for you.
Last fall I had to go through the BC mountains and once we got off the beaten path, every creek and river had shitloads of hoses and pumps taking it all away to... somewhere. While weird, I didn't think on it much since I had more pressing concerns at the time. Only later did the penny drop.
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 11 2018, @03:48PM (1 child)
Why do conservatives prefer to endorse the profit motives of big businesses, fossil fuels and not, say, land conservation or the will of the regular people?
why are they against solar power and windmills? if power generation is still turning the lights on, why the entrenched favoratism with industries that might not be the best business decision as a whole? Certainly oil companies favor oil policy that benefits them; but the conservative mindset is very hard to understand when a different type of big business may emerge--that even does the same thing but with less mess--yet they are against it because of eco hippies or something?
That is foolish. there is money to be made if that's what its all about. if its about a fear of change, the climate is changing, but I guess it doesn't change fast enough to cause fear.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday April 12 2018, @12:34AM
For conservative politicians, it's about collecting the lobbyist money, whoever is paying.
Corporations are trying to keep flogging their horse, and will until it is dead and longer.
Smart conservatives will trek out new ways to make money, but the old money dies slowly.
It's like the only reason Microsoft is still viable is because of all the money they have in the bank: they can lobby HARD, they can last out hard times, they can force their will.
On an equal level Microsoft would have died looong ago and we'd ALL be using Linux.
Money talks for a long time, even once most people have stopped listening.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---