• 3 minutes e-car sales collapse
  • 6 minutes America Is Exceptional in Its Political Divide
  • 11 minutes Perovskites, a ‘dirt cheap’ alternative to silicon, just got a lot more efficient
  • 4 hours GREEN NEW DEAL = BLIZZARD OF LIES
  • 6 hours How Far Have We Really Gotten With Alternative Energy
  • 8 hours If hydrogen is the answer, you're asking the wrong question
  • 4 days Oil Stocks, Market Direction, Bitcoin, Minerals, Gold, Silver - Technical Trading <--- Chris Vermeulen & Gareth Soloway weigh in
  • 6 days The European Union is exceptional in its political divide. Examples are apparent in Hungary, Slovakia, Sweden, Netherlands, Belarus, Ireland, etc.
  • 21 hours Biden's $2 trillion Plan for Insfrastructure and Jobs
  • 4 days "What’s In Store For Europe In 2023?" By the CIA (aka RFE/RL as a ruse to deceive readers)

B.C. Sues Alberta Over ‘Turn-Off-Fuel-Tap’ Legislation

The bitter dispute over the expansion of the Trans Mountain crude oil pipeline between British Columbia and Alberta took another legal turn for the worse on Tuesday after B.C. sued Alberta over a recently passed act giving Alberta the power to reduce the flow of crude to British Columbia in retaliation for B.C.’s efforts to end the pipeline’s expansion plans.

The Government of British Columbia filed Tuesday the statement of claim—after it had threatened to do so last week—in Alberta’s Court of Queen’s Bench, arguing that the ‘Preserving Canada’s Economic Prosperity Act’ recently passed by Alberta violates the Canadian Constitution in the part that prohibits any law that is a tariff or whose purpose and essence make it “tariff-like.”

With this lawsuit, British Columbia seeks “a declaration that the Act is inconsistent, in whole or in part, with the Constitution of Canada and is of no force and effect.”

“A significant disruption in the supply of gasoline, diesel, and crude oil from Alberta to British Columbia would cause British Columbia irreparable harm,” B.C. argues in the claim.

“The Government of Alberta introduced and supported the Act because it asserts British Columbia is responsible for “delays” to an expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline, which transports petroleum products from Edmonton to Kamloops, Burnaby, and Washington. Alberta seeks to utilize powers under the Act to punish British Columbia, and to exert pressure upon British Columbia with a view to forcing British Columbia to, inter alia, discontinue the reference to its own courts about the constitutionality of proposed amendments to the British Columbia Environmental Management Act,” the plaintiff says.

Related: OPEC May Ease Oil Cuts As Soon As June

Alberta, for its part, says that its threat to turn off the fuel taps to neighboring B.C. is no joke.

“Albertans, British Columbians and all Canadians should understand that if the path forward for the pipeline through B.C. is not settled soon, I’m ready and prepared to turn off the taps,” Alberta PM Rachel Notley said last week.

While the two provinces are locked in the dispute, the deadline given by Kinder Morgan—May 31—is drawing closer. Kinder Morgan has given Canada until that date to find a way to guarantee that the Trans Mountain expansion could move forward without any more delays.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

ADVERTISEMENT

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:



Join the discussion | Back to homepage



Leave a comment
  • BC vision is fake on May 25 2018 said:
    BC is BS, they got no standards. They say what ever suits them. On one hand they say oil sands is dirty and accuse Alberta of spreading dirt. When Alberta stops spreading dirt on BC, they accuse Alberta of causing them "irreparable harm". For any one to prosper at other people's expense, they just need not bother if society is spitting on their face.
  • Citizen Oil on May 23 2018 said:
    It's ironic that on the one hand BC feels petroleum products should be limited through their province and then when Alberta tries to call their bluff and accommodate them, they get sued. BC is violating the constitution by stalling a federally mandated infrastructure project . They should be fined millions of dollars for each day this delay goes on. They should send in the army to get this done. What a pathetic bunch of hypocrites they are.

Leave a comment

EXXON Mobil -0.35
Open57.81 Trading Vol.6.96M Previous Vol.241.7B
BUY 57.15
Sell 57.00
Oilprice - The No. 1 Source for Oil & Energy News