• 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
  • 2 hours GREEN NEW DEAL = BLIZZARD OF LIES
  • 7 days If hydrogen is the answer, you're asking the wrong question
  • 20 hours How Far Have We Really Gotten With Alternative Energy
  • 11 days Biden's $2 trillion Plan for Insfrastructure and Jobs

Breaking News:

Hess Board Recommends Merger With Chevron

EU and Turkmenistan Eye New Energy Partnerships

EU and Turkmenistan Eye New Energy Partnerships

Turkmenistan's Foreign Minister announces an…

The Ironic Little Detail In B.C.’s Spill Response Program

When British Columbia launched its improved oil spill response program as part of its efforts to safeguard its environment against accidents from the expanded Trans Mountain pipeline, the government officials in charge must have missed a little detail: the program was to be funded by toll payments from the pipeline.

Now, the program’s future is highly uncertain, after Canada’s Federal Court of Appeal suspended the project citing numerous flaws in the National Energy Board’s review of the expansion that the federal government should not have used as basis for its approval of Trans Mountain.

The spill response program, which was one condition set by the NEB for the approval of the Trans Mountain expansion, involved the building of six new spill response bases along the coast of British Columbia to match the increased flow of crude along Trans Mountain.

The US$150-million initiative would also create 120 jobs and the purchase of 43 new spill response vessels that would have cut response times in case of an accident from six to two hours.

Perhaps, now that Trans Mountain will either be shelved indefinitely or simply cancelled, the program is simply not necessary: there will not be more crude coming into Vancouver port. A hundred or so jobs are in the air and what has already been built will not be needed, but it’s still a victory for pipeline opponents worried that the risk of spills will increase with the increase in oil flow.

Related: Iranian Oil Exports Plunge Despite ‘Creative Solutions’

Kinder Morgan earlier this year sold its Trans Mountain expansion project to the federal Canadian government, exasperated by the persistent uncertainty around the project’s future that came under fire by not just environmentalists and First nations, but also the new B.C. government that made the project’s suspension one of its top priorities.

Ottawa is firm in its backing for the project, but critics say it has not done enough to make sure it goes ahead, which would relieve local crude oil producers of a worsening pipeline capacity shortage that has pushed Canadian crude into a deep discount to WTI.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

ADVERTISEMENT

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:



Join the discussion | Back to homepage



Leave a comment
  • SL on September 09 2018 said:
    The project won't be shelved or cancelled, just more delays. It's inevitable that it will be completed, now that the feds own it. The only way this isn't finished in the next 5y is if an NDP gov gets elected federally, which is unlikely.

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