High stakes poker with the constitution IMO. That sells newspapers. David Black has no intentions of investing his own money in the project… just a hypothetical to juice up the debate and sell more newspapers.

It should be clear to everyone that Northern Gateway Pipelines is shaping up to be the mother of all constitutional challenges between provincial and federal areas of sovereignty. A defiant Alberta is putting its own gun to its own head risking the sovereignty it bases all its wealth on to push unlimited greed. If Alberta wins then they will not be isolated by the federal grab on powers over provincial areas of sovereignty under the guise of inter-provincial national interest.

However if one throws in a refinery that would be 100% in the province pushing it under a sole federal environmental review process under the same threats of national interest… then that sells lots of newspapers.

I think there are two parts to this. The first part is an upgrader which takes raw bitumen and turns it into syncrude (oil). It would seem to make sense to have this near the source.

The second part is a refinery. I can understand why you might want this near Kitimat. The Enbridge pipeline will go near some vast untapped oil deposits in BC. Eventually these deposits will be tapped (and fed into the pipeline). The refinery needs to be downstream of all the potential oil.

I was staunchly opposed to the all risk no gain Enbridge proposal but this adds a new twist. I think the plot is going to thicken.

Pipelines are not new, what Enbridge is proposing isn’t new, federally regulated and interprovincial pipelines aren’t new.

Obviously, such a refinery wouldn’t be built until the pipeline was a certainty, and it’s not currently.

We’re setting up the stage nicely for the NDP to come back and shut down all industry in this province. Today, oil and gas… tomorrow, forestry and mining.

Saskatchewan is booming, despite a left-leaning provincial government. If we could only find some potash in BC.

As the “energy Critic” of the NDP, I doubt the qualifications of Mr. Hogan when he refers to ” the pipeline of oil” across BC. It would not be oil but bitumin. A whole different problem of heterogeneous slugs of tarlike semisolids and dilutant fluids (some are known carcigens). Hogan minimizes the problem when he refers to “oil” being pumped.

Without the upgrader mentioned by Icicle, we would still be faced with thousands of kilometers of dil-bit carrying pipeline.
Dil-bit: the material that does not float on water, thus defying clean up from a breach to the pipeline. Dil-bit is the material that the proposed pipeline would carry to the coast ( Kitimat ) from there to be shipped to China, so that their industry can profit from Canadian raw materials processing. Just like raw log exports, most of the potential profit and jobs associated with processing OUR raw materials are shipped to a foreign country.
No predjudice intended here, it is Canada’s future I am concerned about.
metalman.

You forgot Enbridges incompetence isn’t new JohnnyB. But this is a new oilsands bitumen pipeline JohnnyB proposed by a company that ignores safety and maintanence of their property. The bitumen being piped to Vancouver by Kinder Morgan is an old pipeline but that is another issue. God help the folks in the lower mainland if they have a spill in a populated neighbourhood.

“just a hypothetical to juice up the debate and sell more newspapers.”

Well I saw this on the internet, how about you?

This guy is making the same mistakes Enbridge did. No community consultation, no meaningful First Nations engagement. Pompous hype, throwing good money after bad. The project is dead in the water. Thank goodness, or else everything else would be dead in the water

On the surface, David Black’s ironically-named “Kitimat Clean” refinery idea seems to offer three possible advantages:

1. creation of refinery jobs in BC, rather than exporting the processing work to China in the Enbridge/Harper scheme;
2. the tankers navigating the extreme perils of Douglas Channel and Hecate Straight would be full of slightly more containable refined petroleum products, rather than toxic dilbit which cannot be cleaned up–a minor improvement;
3. and refining locally might reduce fuel costs for British Columbians–or not.

But the Kitimat refinery would not eliminate the risks posed by Enbridge’s twinned pipeline pumping deadly, indelible tar at high pressure across BC’s unstable mountain ranges, crucial watersheds, and salmon-bearing streams. Add to Enbridge’s usual pipe ruptures the threat of mudslides, avalanches, and forest fires taking out large sections of the line in inaccessible locations, and BC’s environment would be on a constant death watch for many decades.

Inept, irresponsible Enbridge has simply not earned the right to be entrusted with BC’s environment, economy, employment, and health. More jobs in fisheries, tourism, and ecotourism would be put at risk than the refinery would create. Any scheme that includes Enbridge is a bad one for our province.

Black’s notion has enlivened the discussion, but hasn’t eliminated the excessive risks to BC’s wellbeing that Northern Gateway poses.

On the surface, David Black’s ironically-named “Kitimat Clean” refinery idea seems to offer three possible advantages:

1. creation of refinery jobs in BC, rather than exporting the processing work to China in the Enbridge/Harper scheme;
2. the tankers navigating the extreme perils of Douglas Channel and Hecate Straight would be full of slightly more containable refined petroleum products, rather than toxic dilbit which cannot be cleaned up–a minor improvement;
3. and refining locally might reduce fuel costs for British Columbians–or not.

But the Kitimat refinery would not eliminate the risks posed by Enbridge’s twinned pipeline pumping deadly, indelible tar at high pressure across BC’s unstable mountain ranges, crucial watersheds, and salmon-bearing streams. Add to Enbridge’s usual pipe ruptures the threat of mudslides, avalanches, and forest fires taking out large sections of the line in inaccessible locations, and BC’s environment would be on a constant death watch for many decades.

Inept, irresponsible Enbridge has simply not earned the right to be entrusted with BC’s environment, economy, employment, and health. More jobs in fisheries, tourism, and ecotourism would be put at risk than the refinery would create. Any scheme that includes Enbridge is a bad one for our province.

Black’s notion has enlivened the discussion, but hasn’t eliminated the excessive risks to BC’s wellbeing that Northern Gateway poses.

If the intention is to sell to China rather than to use the product locally, would a refinery in Kitimat work? My understanding is that refineries are built near the consumer end because they produce a variety of products that must be transported separately. That’s why crude oil from, e.g., Saudi Arabia, is shipped all over the world and refined at the far end. If the refinery need not be at the consumer end, why not build it in Alberta and eliminate the need for a pipeline carrying either bitumen or syncrude?

Eagleone’s comment nailed this issue. Black is in the newpaper business, not the oil business. He will no more build a refinery than he will sprout wings and fly to the moon. He might sell a few more papers, though.
CL

Wings will not get you to the moon. Extreme perils of Hecate straight and Douglas inlet. Gee everything from kayaks to freighters and tankers have been sailing those waters for decades. No more hazardous than a lot of other waters on the world.

Our local paper carried a full page ad by Enbridge just before this announcement. Probably just a coincidence that it is owned by Black Press.

The issue was August 15 2012 page A7 of the Caledonia Courier.

Don’t blame the NDP for the way the BC Lieberals handled the Pipeline debackle. If there is the input of the majority of BC who have writen and expressed their negative feelings for Enbridges pipeline crossing our Province. You can add my name to that long list as well.

To the nay sayers about the NDP of BC I would like you to ask yourselves why the BC NDP left the province in better financial shape than the BC Lieberals or the BC Conservative party? Tell me why the Lieberals are bankrupting BC before the NDP take power??? I don’t think there is a liberal that can answer for their party.

I am opposed to the pipeline, but still think the Feds will push it through! Could get down right nasty!

I hope that whoever is in power after the next election in BC, and the pipleine is approved, that BC will stand its ground and not allow it as it is presently proposed.

If the Feds decide to try to pull rank, I hope that the provincial government of the day has the guts to take it to the Supreme Court of Canada as a constitutional challenge.

The oil is the property of the province of Alberta, not the property of Canada. Alberta has won that case already.

So, Alberta is trying to move the goods outside of the country. It is not trying to engage in interprovincial trade. Of course, if we were to build a refinery in BC, that perspective would change.

Since this is not interprovincial trade, it is different from say the Trans Canada pipeline originally built to move natural gas from the western provinces to servce the market to the eastern provinces. That was and continues to be interpovincial trade.

The electricity generated at Chruchhill Falls in Labrador was not interprovincial trade either since Labrador was intending to sell it to markets in the USA. Quebec buying the electricity and distributing it to mareket made it interprovincial trade.

Anyway, that might just be the way it could be looked at and argued. Maybe we have a legal specialist in Canadian constitutional law who could give us a bit of an opinion of whether a winning argument can be made to support BC on this and move to changing Alberta’s mind a bit.

The Haldi Rd group might assist ….. :-)

http://news.ca.msn.com/top-stories/northern-gateway-review-hobbled-by-budget-cuts-critics-say-1

Wow what a liar Harper is.

“All but five of the province’s fisheries field offices will be cut as part of a $79 million — 5.8 per cent — cut to the department’s operational budget, including the offices in Prince George and Smithers that would have had the lead in monitoring pipeline effects.”

“The marine contaminant group that would have been involved in a spill in B.C. has been disbanded and the fisheries and environmental legislation gutted, said Otto Langer, a retired fisheries department scientist.”

“[Harper] says the science will make the decision. Well he’s basically disembowelled the science,” said Langer. “It’s a cruel hoax that they’re pulling over on the public.”

‘It can’t be done’

“this work will continue and, should the project be approved, our review will continue into the regulatory permitting phase,” DFO wrote in a five-page letter dated June 6, 2012.”

Thanks for the link. The quote is from that link.

Here we go again with incremental approval. That is nothing new in the game of pushing projects through. It happens in this City as well. Last major time was when Canfor went for a rezoning for an MDF plant. Luckily there were people who opposed that and the plant was never built. But, it was set up in a similar incremental approval process.

The problem with those is that once th first domino falls in the approval process, the momentum and expectations are such that no one is willing to stop it. That whole process should be banned.

Again, a good lawyer, understanding that to be the situation, should be able to win a case in court based on the notion of duress. In contracts, agreements made under duress are void. The same should hold for incremental permits provided in a complex approval process.

Governments should not be pulling the wool over people’s eyes. It is not only unethical, but it should be illegal as well.

The HST was reversed because of that type of action by a government and the government that implemented it will likely fall as a result. The local government had a rezoning reversed, and God only knows what will happen to them and the administration which recommended it to Council.

Good faith, people, good faith. We need that in government and we do not have it locally, provincially and federally at the moment.

Say, do you think that Enbridge are in cahoots with Mr. Black, maybe paying him to stand up and make some positive statement type noise?
metalman.

No, I think it is exactly as was stated earlier, he is using the hottest topic in BC at the moment to his advantage to sell more papers. He knows he is proposing something that has absolutely 0% chance of going beyond the talk stage, and we all know, especially in politics, how easy it is to promise the moon when you have no chance to achieve that.

The enbridge pipeline is a pipe dream . It isn’t going to be built and as for the supporters of this fiasco are concearned I doubt that yourconcearn is for the clean pristeenprovince that we live in and any thing you enter into this blog gives them more false hope.

What is truly amusing is watching the “Anti-everythings” reshuffle and reaiming the deck cannons.

It only took the NDP 2 hours to come out guns ablazing against a project that may or may not create over 3,000 high paying jobs at home in BC. If I’m an investor, thats the message i’m taking away from all of this, pipe dream or not.

If you were an investor northern_curmudgeon would you invest in a company like Enbridge with it’s slime ball track record? I wouldn’t!