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posted by martyb on Tuesday April 10 2018, @05:16PM   Printer-friendly
from the rejecting-the-dirtiest-energy dept.

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".


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by https on Wednesday April 11 2018, @03:30PM (2 children)

    by https (5248) on Wednesday April 11 2018, @03:30PM (#665393) Journal

    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.

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  • (Score: 2) by dwilson on Wednesday April 11 2018, @08:55PM (1 child)

    by dwilson (2599) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 11 2018, @08:55PM (#665542) Journal

    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

      by https (5248) on Wednesday April 11 2018, @11:06PM (#665612) Journal

      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.

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