Tying up the Kinder Morgan pipeline in the courts
may be a good move politically for premier John Horgan, but as a Canadian, I
must say that all this strategic delay pains me terribly. The cost of not getting our petroleum to
tidewater has been more than $117 billion over the past seven years: that is a
transfer of wealth that has varied between US $11 to almost $40 per barrel,
typically averaging between 30 and 45 million dollars every day. As long as we are forced to send 99% of our
oil to a single customer, all of that money will be scooped up by American
consumers and refiners at the expense of Canadians. This is painful even from a green perspective
because, if we are relying on a depleting and highly polluting resource for
some transitional period, we should at least get the full market value for that
resource!
On the other hand, diluted bitumen is a toxic sludge
that, if spilled, slowly sinks and leeches into the water, coating everything
in the marine environment that it comes into contact with. Moreover, the
process by which the pipeline was approved was widely discredited by experts.
That sounds like a horrible
dilemma. Either disingenuously flout constitutional law in order to suck
billions out of the Alberta and Canadian economies to the financial benefit of
Americans, or gamble that we can increase tanker traffic tenfold without a disastrous
spill so that Asians can heat and pollute the atmosphere even more just so we
(especially Albertans) can benefit from greater fossil fuel revenues here in
Canada. So what are we to do?
Well, I am nothing if not an
inveterate policy wonk and an incurable optimist. Here is what I hope happens:
that some combination of Indigenous, environmental and NDP legal delay and
political resistance will force Alberta, Ottawa and the oil industry to
re-think the pipeline strategy. It is
theoretically possible (according to recent findings by researchers at the
University of Alberta), to turn bituminous sand into dry pellets that can be
shipped by rail and which will not pose a serious environmental risk to the
coastline. It is also theoretically
possible to process and refine bitumen here so that we are shipping regular oil
and gas instead of diluted bitumen. It is even theoretically possible to do
either one of these things, and boost our energy exports to Asia, without
greatly increasing our net Greenhouse Gas Emissions. This could be done by diverting
supply from the U.S. and from rail transport, using oil sands revenue to
purchase green energy and efficiency offsets, and by cooperating with our Asian
customers to reduce emissions. None
of these things are as easy or as profitable as simply building the pipeline
extension as quickly as possible. But hey, who said it was going to be easy?
