Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline project is toxic and politically toxic, according to the member of parliament who represents much of the territory the project will pass through.
Nathan Cullen, MP, Skeena-Bulkley Valley, and the federal NDP finance critic, is campaigning to stop the pipeline project with his Take Back Our Coast tour. Speaking to about 70 people in Powell River on Friday, February 13, he outlined his initiatives to prevent marine disaster.
Cullen told those in attendance about a private member’s bill that he has introduced to regulate tanker traffic in BC waters.
Bill C-628 was given first reading in the House of Commons on September 23, 2014. According to the summary, the enactment amends the Canada Shipping Act, 2001 to prohibit the transportation of oil in oil tankers in the Dixon Entrance, Hecate Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound. It also amends the National Energy Board Act to require the National Energy Board to take into account certain specified factors before making a recommendation to the minister in respect of the issuance of a pipeline certificate.
Cullen had been in Powell River as part of a BC tour of Conservative ridings in the spring of 2014 to encourage people to urge their members of parliament to “do the right thing.” Since that time, the price of oil has fallen in half, creating problems for the government.
“We turned to our government in Ottawa and said, ‘okay, what’s Plan B?’” said Cullen. The price doesn’t fit with the expectation of the government, which was oil prices of $100 a barrel. “Now that we don’t have that they don’t know what to do.”
In terms of projects that are underway, Cullen said energy corporations are carving up the landscape in his riding, which represents one-third of BC’s landmass and is geographically larger than Poland. He said there are 13 or 14 liquefied natural gas (LNG) pipeline proposals, plus the Northern Gateway bitumen pipeline and others, all following different paths.
“This is not sanity,” Cullen said. “Even if one accepts the presumption of the desperate need to get energy to Asia, this is not the way you go about doing it. The people where I live are overwhelmed. Every week there is another proposal popping up. Every second night there is another open house with another company proposing another idea to move energy a different way.”
Cullen said his minimum expectation is stopping the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline. He said it is 1,100 kilometres in length, running from Bruderheim, Alberta, across two mountain ranges, to Kitimat. He said the 36-inch diameter pipeline will deliver diluted bitumen from the oil sands in Alberta to ship to Asia. Bitumen, he said, is very thick.
Bitumen would be shipped to Asia in vessels that the industry refers to as very large crude carriers. He said these ships are the equivalent of three soccer pitches long and a little more than one wide.
He said these huge, massive ships will travel from Kitimat down Douglas Channel, where they will make three 90-degree turns to go through the Inside Passage. He said this stretch of water is where BC Ferries’ Queen of the North sank, plus in 1946, the United States transport ship named Brigadier General M.G. Zalinski, with 700 tonnes of bunker fuel aboard.
The pipeline company has not submitted a cleanup plan because the environmental process does not require one until after construction begins, according to the MP.
Cullen said throughout the National Energy Board joint federal review panel hearing process he has been an intervener and one of the fundamental questions he kept asking was what happens to diluted bitumen when it hits water?
“Does it sink or does it float?” Cullen asked. “Why is that such an important question? You cannot clean it up if it sinks.”
During the hearings, an answer for the question was not provided, but two days after the approval went to Ottawa, Fisheries and Oceans Canada reported that it sinks, he said.
Interested readers can review Bill C-268 here. More information about Cullen’s tour is available online.
