It must be a time of more honesty. TransCanada Pipelines is now estimating that its Energy East pipeline proposal could cost as much as $12 billion. And the pipeline company is now being more truthful about the intent to export at least half of the 1.1 million barrels per day of Alberta Tar Sands bitumen the pipeline is designed to carry.
But this is not oil. This is the one lie that TransCanada seems to want to stick with. The company thinks Canadians are stupid and they would not understand that bitumen requires more highly polluting processing before it can become synthetic crude oil. And then, and only then, can you refine it into oil products such as gasoline for automobiles.
If the pipeline is approved and built, it will be the longest and largest pipeline in North America. And while there is considerable environmental concern about the pipeline, most knowledgeable experts feel that there is little chance that the pipeline will be turned down as long as the Conservatives are in power in Ottawa.
The pipeline company has at the end of October dumped a 30,000 page application on the Calgary based National Energy Board. The greatest effort by the energy board will be to deal with the expected objections from the governments of Ontario and Quebec. The objections from the more than 150 First Nation groups whose lands the pipeline will cross have been frustrated by the company buying off 60 of them and being able to produce signed agreements. It makes it look as though the objecting groups are just unhappy with the payoff and are holding out for more.
Ontario and Quebec can both be counted on to remind the energy board of the Enbridge Kalamazoo River spill in Michigan in 2010. That spill has already cost Enbridge’s insurance companies more than a billion dollars (US). With Enbridge’s Line 9 and TransCanada’s Energy East running across Ontario and then Quebec to carry bitumen to ocean-going tankers on the St. Lawrence and the Bay of Fundy, the question is when not if, there will be a similar spill in Canada?
While both major pipelines will be more rigidly inspected, the intent is to increase the pressure in the pipe to move the hydro-carbon diluted bitumen through the system faster. The only problem is that no matter how thoroughly the sand is washed from the bitumen, it will still be more abrasive and more corrosive than anything sent so far or so fast by pipelines.
Mind you, if by any chance the federal Conservatives get re-elected in 2015, the Canadian economy will be so tightly tied to bitumen, we better get used to it.
-30-
Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]