While the furious debate rages on between B.C. and Alberta over the Northern Gateway pipeline, a Richmond-based protest group says Premier Christy Clarks new list of demands for heavy oil passage has only confused the issue.
After Clark issued her list of requirements for heavy oil pipelines for the province, her Albertan counterpart, Alison Redford, reacted with indignation about the demands and scoffed at suggestions B.C. should get a bigger slice of the Northern Gateway pie.
As well as fighting for a larger share of the gateway project led by oil giant Enbridge and which runs from the oil sands in Alberta across northern B.C. to the coastal industrial town of Kitimat Clarks list sought to tighten the rules over heavy oil pipeline passage in the province.
However, Richmonds own controversial fuel pipeline, the VAFFC proposal to pump jet fuel through the city to YVR, will likely remain unscathed by the premiers five-point list.
Confusion begets confusion, said Carol Day, of VAPOR, the group campaigning against the proposal to barge jet fuel up the south arm of the Fraser River and pipe it through Richmond.
I think Clarks announcement just confused people further. It muddied the issue more.
Clark listed five requirements that needed to be met in order for the province to consider support for heavy oil pipelines:
- Successful completion of the environmental review process;
- World-leading marine oil spill response, prevention and recovery systems for B.C.s coastline and ocean;
- World-leading practices for land oil spill prevention, response and recovery systems to manage and mitigate the risks and costs of pipelines;
- Legal requirements regarding Aboriginal and treaty rights are addressed, and First Nations are provided with the opportunities, information and resources necessary to participate in and benefit from a heavy-oil project;
z B.C. receives a fair share of the fiscal and economic benefits of a proposed project.
Two of these demands (environmental review and First Nations input) were already law, while another two requirements (world-leading responses) are left fairly open to interpretation.
The fifth point, which garnered the most controversy and sparked the debate with Redford, implied that ultimately, and perhaps regardless of environmental impact, the pipelines can be built for a price, but left that price unclear.
It makes it difficult for people to understand the issue, said Day.
What makes a world-class facility, for example? Were trying to make things clear. There can be good and bad pipelines, and there are better alternatives for the proposed pipelines, which the list doesnt even address.
The vagueness of the two world-leading response points leaves a key issue free from much-needed scrutiny, according to Day.
Its the clean up part thats been left the most vague and is not being addressed, she said. We want to bring more awareness to the risk of these pipelines and the transportation of fuel.
Day has long since been fighting the VAFFC proposal, which attempts to update the current and, apparently, no longer adequate fuel delivery system to YVR. A better alternative, to Day, VAPOR and its supporters, would be a 70-kilometre pipeline to the Cherry Point refinery in Washington State. They say this would be a low-cost alternative, both economically and to the environment.
Day said the provincial environmental assessment process which the VAFFC (a consortium of airlines) project is currently subject to was supposed to take 180 days, but is now reaching the 500-day mark, as it keeps getting pushed back and tweaked.
