Enbridge spends quiet summer furiously wooing B.C. government
Despite long odds, pipeline firm is determined to fight for permission to build Northern Gateway.
With Northern Gateway hearings wrapping up in June and stakeholders submitting to summer’s wiles, all suddenly appears calm on the Western front.
Don’t be fooled. Enbridge is beaver-busy, communing with folks along the proposed pipeline route and meeting with B.C. bureaucrats in an effort to get the go-ahead for its controversial project.
The $6-billion scheme, including a pipeline to transport oilsands bitumen across B.C.’s midsection to a yet-to-be-built tanker port at Kitimat, was formally rejected in late May by Christy Clark’s government.
A three-member federal review panel, having sat through more than a year of hearings into the project, has begun writing its report, with recommendations to be delivered to the Harper government by Dec. 31.
The federal cabinet is expected to determine the fate of the Enbridge plan early in 2014.
Various polls show public opposition to the pipeline-and-tanker enterprise running at anywhere from 42 to 52 per cent in B.C.
Many aboriginals also have given a thumbs down, threatening future legal action. That said, Enbridge claims that 60 per cent of aboriginal groups (unnamed by the company) along the pipeline route, both in Alberta and B.C., have signed onto an equity-sharing arrangement with the company.
Environmentalists, meanwhile, are promising everything from civil disobedience to the end of the world should the project be sanctioned.
And that’s pretty much where things stand.
Except that Enbridge, in the face of long odds, is continuing to signal a fierce determination to see that Northern Gateway happens.
With review panel hearings completed, the company — whose stock price has been climbing regardless of the challenges confronting the pipeline venture — has been catching its breath.
It is using these summer months to meet with senior B.C. bureaucrats in an effort to satisfy Clark’s conditions for the project: completion of the environmental review, a world-leading spill response system, respect for aboriginal rights, and a fair share of economic benefits for the province.
B.C. has balked at the prospect of bearing the most risk in transporting the bitumen in order to earn just $6.1 billion in tax revenue, given that Northern Gateway will generate $81 billion in total government revenues over 30 years.
Enbridge officials have requested, but so far not been granted, face time with the premier.
The company’s senior vice-president for western access, Janet Holder, recently began travelling, mainly to communities along the pipeline route, to greet and explain the project’s ins and outs.
In the past two weeks alone, Holder has ventured to Kelowna, Kitimat, Terrace, Houston, Vanderhoof and Prince George. The company now operates offices in Vancouver, Prince George and Kitimat.
Enbridge reps are attending chamber of commerce luncheons and hosting campfire chats, coffee meetings and information sessions with community groups.
Last spring, the company flew a dozen municipal officials and fire chiefs from northern B.C. to Michigan to show off its oil spill cleanup on the Kalamazoo River.
In early July, Enbridge announced it had hired Linda Coady, a former Vancouver Olympics official, as “chief sustainability officer,” in hopes of forging relationships with the less doctrinaire environmentalists.
Gaining the public licence and government approvals needed for Northern Gateway was never going to be a slam dunk.
But the project no longer looks as doomed as it once did. Indeed it has a few things going for it.
The environmental review phase has been carried out, Enbridge sounds keen to bargain on B.C.’s demands, and the sitting federal government remains bound and determined to realize the export of Canadian energy to offshore markets.
Access article here: http://www.vancouversun.com/Barbara+Yaffe+Enbridge+spends+quiet+summer+furiously+wooing+government/8731897/story.html