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Editorial comment

A set back for Coastal GasLink

In late October, Canada’s National Energy Board (NEB) announced that it was considering a jurisdictional challenge of TransCanada’s 670 km Coastal GasLink pipeline. The potential challenge is on the basis that the recently approved pipeline project needs federal oversight.


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The pipeline would be a feeder pipeline for LNG Canada’s Kitimat terminal and would link to the Nova Gas Transmission Limited (NGTL) pipeline system in Alberta. The approvals in place for the Coastal GasLink pipeline are regional, having been issued by British Columbia (BC). TransCanada would build, own and operate the 2.1 billion ft3/d pipeline.

BC environmentalist and anti-LNG campaigner Michael Sawyer made the application to the NEB suggesting that federal regulation was necessary. His argument is that because TransCanada operates the pipeline and the connected NGTL system together, they are a single federal undertaking. The NEB is asking for submissions from several interested parties before it makes a decision on a potential challenge.

Coastal GasLink and LNG Canada have been operating with approvals by the BC Oil and Gas Commission and the BC Environmental Assessment Office. A new, duplicate federal review of the pipeline has the potential to add years to the regulatory approval process. TransCanada rejects the argument and seeks to dismiss the call for the review.

The final investment decision on LNG Canada’s CAN$40 billion Kitimat export facility was only announced at the beginning of October, following a couple of years’ delay due to the global drop in gas prices. In March, the BC government had announced that it was revising the fiscal framework for the LNG industry in an attempt to secure a final investment decision from LNG Canada. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the financing of the export facility and associated pipeline “the single largest private sector investment in the history of Canada.” The LNG Canada joint venture includes Royal Dutch Shell, Mitsubishi Corp., Petronas, PetroChina Co. and Korean Gas Corp. The project will be the fastest route to Asia for gas from North America. Celebrations in Kitimat and in northern BC embraced the potential that this new megaproject could bring.

The outlook is less optimistic in Alberta, where the TransMountain pipeline expansion project has been fraught with complications and languishes under the weight of opposition to increased tanker traffic. Why does one project flourish and another suffer? Scott Thompson of Global News offers some explanations in his article titled: ‘Why LNG but not Trans Mountain pipeline?’1 To paraphrase Thompson, for one thing, the TransMountain expansion pipeline would be carrying heavy oil to market, rather than the natural gas that will flow through the Coastal GasLink. The BC project has the backing of Indigenous populations, TransMountain does not. Finally, the LNG project is privately funded, whereas Trudeau’s government purchased the TransMountain project from Kinder Morgan and now finds itself heavily invested and mired in opposition. Thompson ends his article by asking his fellow Canadians: “How can we permit a facility and pipeline we don’t own to be built, but we can’t twin the pipeline we do own?”

Richard Farthing-Nichol writes in the Vancouver Sun: “It’s no wonder that [Alberta Premier Rachel] Notley is seething about the BC government’s support for the LNG project. I expect unemployed oil workers in Alberta are even angrier. The BC government and the wider pipeline resistance movement continue to vehemently oppose TransMountain with barely a whisper of concern for the ongoing human cost in Alberta … At the same time, [BC Premier John] Horgan has decided that the environmental impacts of LNG are outweighed by the economic benefits (jobs) for British Columbians.”2

References
1. https://globalnews.ca/news/4511243/scott-thompson-lnc-vs-trans-mountain
2. https://vancouversun.com/opinion/op-ed/opinion-pipeline-debate-needs-new-direction


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