Enridge project's potential hazards making opponents edgy

Barbara Yaffe,
Vancouver Sun
December 3, 2009

Environmental activists try to turn off the oilsands taps by targeting pipeline carrying oil from Alberta to Pacific for transit to Asia

Against a pristine backdrop of blue mountains and ocean mist, a solitary grizzly surveys a bountiful realm.

That captivating image appeared on a poster last week, advertising a speaking tour by two West Coast journalists opposed to an oil pipeline promising prosperity and jobs in northern B.C.

The talks by Andrew Nikiforuk and Ian MacAllister, delivered in Vancouver, Victoria and Sidney, dealt with potential environmental hazards posed by Enbridge's Northern Gateway Project.

Their tour suggests opponents are starting to mobilize against the pipeline venture, which will take the debate about Canadian exports of dirty oil from Alberta into B.C.

"Groups like ours are organizing and preparing major opposition to the pipeline," Andrew Frank, representing Forest Ethics, wrote in an e-mail.

"Shortly, we'll be releasing an online animation tracing the route and showcasing the First Nations and other local opposition along each section of the proposed pipeline."

Forest Ethics, one of several groups opposing the project, has offices in Vancouver, Toronto, Bellingham, and San Francisco and claims to have been instrumental in saving half of Ontario's boreal forest and B.C.'s Great Bear Rainforest.

The stakes in the Enbridge enterprise are sky-high.

The 1,170-kilometre multi-billion-dollar pipeline, by 2015, would link the oilsands near Fort McMurray to a port in Kitimat on B.C.'s north coast.

Oil would flow west, while condensate -- used in oilsands production -- would flow east to Alberta in a second, twinned pipeline.

Environmentalists are on edge, not just because of a sensitive ecosystem in B.C.'s north that could be threatened by oil tanker traffic featuring everything from narrow coastal channels fraught with navigational hazards, the Mackenzie, Fraser and Skeena watersheds, the Great Bear Rainforest, and a wildlife population that includes the spirit bear, humpback whales, orcas and grey whales, wild salmon, sea lions and herring.

No, there's more to this fight. For eco-activists, busy lobbying Fortune 500 companies to boycott the oilsands, the project is anathema because it would enable Canada to wean itself off exclusive reliance on the U.S. as an oilsands purchaser.

Oil producers want market diversification because they fear potentially restrictive climate change regulations that could soon be introduced south of the border. If a pipeline can carry oilsands oil to the Pacific for transit via tanker to Asia, the activists' goal of turning off the taps in Alberta's oilsands could be seriously thwarted.

Of course, there's a whole other side to this story.

Enbridge, on its website, says its development would translate into jobs
-- 4,000 during a three-year construction phase plus long-term operational jobs -- and "hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues over the life of the project."

The company, which hopes to break ground in 2012 following public and governmental reviews by the National Energy Board and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, is also promising a trust "to create real, tangible benefits in communities along the route."

But the going will be tough. Several B.C. first nations representatives showed up last May at Enbridge's annual general meeting to warn
shareholders: "We will do whatever it takes to defend our lands and waters against this threat from Enbridge."

At present, the only pipeline connecting the oilsands to the Pacific -- the TransMountain Line -- runs to the Lower Mainland, for domestic consumption.

Whether a second line can make its way through extremely rough terrain remains to be seen.

byaffe@vancouversun.com