Sunday, February 25, 2018

Addressing the Pipeline Dilemma


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?