The response of the environmental movement to the 2012 federal budget was apocalyptic.
“The Harper budget: Assault on the environment for Big Oil profits,” screamed the Sierra Club.
The suggestion was that the budget’s dilution of some environmental protections would create a world that might be characterized in two words: Mad Max.
It hasn’t quite turned out that way.
The Harper Conservatives were trying to make it easier for Canada to realize its potential as a world leader in energy production. Then, as now, the country is reliant on one customer with a diminishing appetite for what we are selling.
This creates a discount for Canadian crude – our single most important export – relative to the global Brent benchmark that costs the federal exchequer billions every year ($7.3-billion annually, according to the Department of Finance).
Yet, every effort by “Big Oil” to reach tidewater has been foiled. The Northern Gateway project is stalled and the Keystone pipeline south to the U.S. has become grid-locked in the American Congress. Kinder Morgan’s Trans-Mountain pipeline in British Columbia is currently being blocked by environmental protestors in Burnaby, who are being arrested in their droves for violating a court injunction to leave the construction site.
The great hope was TransCanada Corp.’s Energy East project, a west-east pipeline that would convert 3,000 kilometres of existing TransCanada natural gas pipelines to allow for crude oil to be transported, augmented by 1,400 kilometres of new pipeline from Quebec to refineries in Saint John, N.B.
This was a pipeline even the NDP could love. It has received the blessing of all three major party federal leaders, albeit with the caveat on the part of Tom Mulcair and Justin Trudeau that it be subject to “complete, thorough and credible” environmental assessment.
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John Ivison: In Canada, even a pipeline project supported by the NDP is not sure thing | National Post
“The Harper budget: Assault on the environment for Big Oil profits,” screamed the Sierra Club.
The suggestion was that the budget’s dilution of some environmental protections would create a world that might be characterized in two words: Mad Max.
It hasn’t quite turned out that way.
The Harper Conservatives were trying to make it easier for Canada to realize its potential as a world leader in energy production. Then, as now, the country is reliant on one customer with a diminishing appetite for what we are selling.
This creates a discount for Canadian crude – our single most important export – relative to the global Brent benchmark that costs the federal exchequer billions every year ($7.3-billion annually, according to the Department of Finance).
Yet, every effort by “Big Oil” to reach tidewater has been foiled. The Northern Gateway project is stalled and the Keystone pipeline south to the U.S. has become grid-locked in the American Congress. Kinder Morgan’s Trans-Mountain pipeline in British Columbia is currently being blocked by environmental protestors in Burnaby, who are being arrested in their droves for violating a court injunction to leave the construction site.
The great hope was TransCanada Corp.’s Energy East project, a west-east pipeline that would convert 3,000 kilometres of existing TransCanada natural gas pipelines to allow for crude oil to be transported, augmented by 1,400 kilometres of new pipeline from Quebec to refineries in Saint John, N.B.
This was a pipeline even the NDP could love. It has received the blessing of all three major party federal leaders, albeit with the caveat on the part of Tom Mulcair and Justin Trudeau that it be subject to “complete, thorough and credible” environmental assessment.
more
John Ivison: In Canada, even a pipeline project supported by the NDP is not sure thing | National Post