B.C. gets a north coast export project — with pipeline

Hoid said:

Nothing worse than loosing money.

Click to expand...

B00Mer said:

B.C. gets a north coast export project — with pipeline

The Trans Mountain Pipeline is stalled indefinitely. But a petroleum export project of monumental importance to B.C. is moving along just fine, thank you.
This week, it was reported that the $40 billion LNG terminal planned for Kitimat will get federal relief from tariffs on steel modules.
This would save LNG Canada, a consortium led by Shell, about $1 billion.
There will be a new pipeline (one of those!) to supply the terminal with natural gas from Alberta and Northeastern B.C.
TransCanada is ready to spend $4.8 billion on the Coastal Gaslink line as soon as investment in the terminal is approved.
That could happen next week, according to the Financial Post’s Geoffrey Morgan.
All the approvals are granted. The shovels are ready. Every First Nation along the route is happy.
Imagine that upbeat scene with any oil pipeline from Alberta. Impossible.
The LNG project itself will eventually be a real benefit to gas producers – and economies – of both provinces.
That’s good, in itself. The industry, eager for any good news, is cheering. That’s understandable after all the disappointments and delays.
But the decisions that led to this LNG project have done enormous damage to Alberta’s economy and the oilsands.
First, Ottawa killed the Northern Gateway pipeline in 2016, after the Federal Court found its approval lacking.
The terminus for Northern Gateway was to be Kitimat — the same port now cleared for the LNG project.
In 2016, Natural Resources Canada said officially: “The Government has determined that (Northern Gateway) is not in the public interest because it would result in crude oil tankers transiting through the sensitive ecosystem of the Douglas Channel, which is part of the Great Bear Rainforest.”
Even as that was written, there were plans for huge LNG tankers to pass through the same waters.
Liquid natural gas may be more benign than diluted bitumen if there’s a rupture or collision, but such accidents are extremely rare.
The real danger these days is bitumen riding the rails in B.C. because there’s no room in pipelines.
Also, anyone glancing at a map will realize that Kitimat is a long way from the northern tip of Vancouver Island.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau decreed a tanker ban in those latitudes, up to Alaska.
But Bill C-48, now before the Senate, doesn’t apply to ships carrying LNG.
Monster ships are therefore allowed to dock in Kitimat, load up LNG, and sail off to Asia.
It’s blatant hypocrisy for the federal Liberals to call their bill a tanker moratorium.
As I’ve pointed out before, it doesn’t even prohibit tankers. It only bans export of products listed in the bill — Alberta exports, as it happens.
Tankers are not allowed to load those products, so there’s no point for them to show up.
The Alberta government says the ban will kill billions of dollars in plans for exporting refined products.
The list includes oils which Ottawa deems “persistent” — fuel oil, marine diesel, synthetic crude, lubricating oil, partially ungraded bitumen (dilbit), condensates, and more.
In other words, all crude oil and bitumen, as well as almost everything derived from them.
But no problem for LNG.
Alberta Senator Doug Black, who is leading resistance to this bill, defies the government to show evidence of a similar ban anywhere in the world.
“I don’t believe there is one,” he says. “There certainly isn’t anything like it anywhere in Canada.”
Black adds that Canada is blessed with huge stretches of unspoiled coastline, west, east and north, all of it ecologically important and beloved by local residents.
What makes that one patch of northern B.C. coast so special?
He supplies his own answer — “Bill C-48 is an attack on the oilsands. It could not be more obvious.”
The Liberals will counter that they’ve spent $4.5 billion to buy a pipeline project specifically aimed at exporting bitumen from the Lower Mainland.
And how’s that going?
source: https://calgaryherald.com/news/politics/braid-b-c-gets-a-north-coast-export-project-with-pipeline

Click to expand...

OTTAWA - Jim Carr's view of enhancing Canadian trade in Asia — and its biggest prize, China — is rosier these days because he's seeing the possibilities through a new lens: LNG Canada's new $40-billion liquefied natural gas project in northern B.C.
"The most interesting development in Canada's relationship with China happened (Tuesday)," the new minister of international trade diversification said in an interview one day after the historic announcement to build the long-awaited LNG plant in Kitimat, B.C.
"What we'll be able to say to our potential customers is that this now is real and there will be timetables."
Carr is so buoyant about the door-opening possibilities of shipping cleaner energy across the Pacific that he categorically discounts the effect of another surprise on the trade file this past week.
He sees no obstacle in the controversial clause in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement that allows any of the countries to withdraw from the deal on six-month's notice if one of the partners enters into a free trade agreement with a non-market economy — China, again.
"There's nothing in the trade agreement with Mexico and the United States that stops Canada from that. The deal has no impact on Canadian sovereignty or the capacity of the Canadian government to do business around the world," Carr said.
Carr's job is to find new trading markets for Canada beyond its largest trading partner, the United States. The word "diversification" was conspicuously added to his job title during a July cabinet shuffle and the minister is clearly thrilled with what he sees as the LNG arrow in his quiver.
Given the rocky, insult-laden, 14-month road to a new North American trade deal, the need to fulfil the promise of diversification has never been greater for Canada. Carr is also eyeing India, South America, and other Asian countries, as well as pushing for the speedy ratification of the new Trans-Pacific Partnership.
He is hoping to travel to China next month, though he stops short of calling for all-out free trade with the country that is the subject of so much Trump administration ire.
"I would say there are lots of possibilities for sectoral trade. We know the LNG possibility is real. We know that the Chinese Canadian community is very interested in deepening ties."
The distinction Carr makes is significant. An attempt to launch formal free trade talks last winter stalled because Chinese leaders flatly rejected the Trudeau government's progressive trade agenda that would have included labour, gender and Indigenous rights.
And then there's that surprise clause in the new USMCA. It requires a member country to provide notice and information to the other two partners if it plans free trade talks with a "non-market" economy. It gives the other partners a say in the text of such a deal.
The Chinese embassy in Ottawa blasted the inclusion of the new clause because it unfairly targets China's potential trading partners, and unfairly brands it as a "non market" economy.
Trade experts and analysts support the careful approach that Carr advocates because it gives Canada room to talk to China without overtly angering the United States.
"The Americans may still take notice but there's nothing to stop Canada from continuing to have productive conversations with the Chinese in areas that we have common interests," said Meredith Lilly, a trade expert at Carleton University.
Lilly said the non-market economy clause is unusual and represents a new way for the Trump administration to force its allies to "pick sides" in its ongoing trade dispute with China that has seen billions of dollars of tariffs imposed on Chinese goods, and retaliation by Beijing.
"You can view those as targeted at China, and the U.S. creating a template for future trade agreements with other countries beyond Mexico and Canada," said Lilly.
Derek Burney, who was a key player in the Brian Mulroney government that negotiated the original Canada-U.S. free trade deal, said he's not convinced the clause has any teeth to prevent Canada from moving forward economically with China, which he urged the government to do "as assertively" as possible.
"We have misfired in our approaches to China thus far. We have to redouble those efforts and get more serious, and not just with China, but with India as well," he said.
"China's going to be the No. 1 economy in a number of years, not decades. We've got to take it more seriously."
Advertisement

Burney said business needs to do more to find opportunities to capitalize on the major trade deals that Canada has already completed with the European Union and South Korea, among others, as well as the new TPP that the Trudeau government hopes to ratify this fall.
"I don't see as much evidence yet of our companies taking advantage of the openings that those agreements are giving us," said Burney. "The biggest handicap in Canada is complacency. We've become comfortable in the cocoon of dealing with the Americans for 75 per cent of our trade."
Carr is anything but complacent.
A full legislative effort is being made to ensure the rebooted TPP will be ratified this fall, giving Canada so-called first-mover advantage by being among the first six counties in the 11-country Pacific Rim pact to benefit. Meanwhile, Canada's battalion of 1,000 trade commissioners and a newly created Invest in Canada agency are pushing hard on all fronts, said Carr.
"All of it plays to the heart of our strategic investment, which is to safeguard the most important trading relationship for Canada, which we have done, while expanding possibilities, which we are doing."

Click to expand...