Great interview with Boone pickens on BNN regarding Canadian pipeline to the pacfific and nat gas situation. Now I know why Northern Gateway is so important to complete..Like uh, are we going to leave 250 billion barrels of oil in the ground just to make thefirst nations happy? Like Pickens says, they are in it for the money so we just throw more at ’em. Done deal.

http://www.bnn.ca/News/2013/5/1/Obama-foolish-if-he-rejects-Keystone-T-Boone-Pickens.aspx

We don’t have to leave it in the ground, we can just send it in the other direction where they need it in CANADA.

That pipeline will never be built in this province, I promise you.

Sine Nomine. Pretty strong statement. (Never)

Considering that the decision as to whether it will be built or not will be made by the Federal Government, not sure how you would stop it if they decide to go ahead.

I haven’t decided if Im for it or against it at this point, however I was around when they built the Trans Canada Pipeline and no one seemed to care. Trans Canada ran from Alberta to Ontario. We have lots of other pipelines in the Country. Millions of miles of pipeline around the world.

This piddly assed little line from Alberta to Kitimat has been over blown. If they do everything to ensure the safety issues then I suspect it will be built,.

On the other hand the whole issue may be nothing more than a ploy so that they can put pressure on the Americans to allow the Keystone, and of course they could send more East.

At the end of the day, if the Prime Minister says this line will be built for the National Interest, then I suspect it will be built.

for what its worth, I agree with every word you just said Palupo.

Why does’nt this pipeline nightmare just go away? This disaster in the making can not happen, or I beleive as a species we are finished. When do we say that it is just not worth it? Why is it always about jobs and money, what good are these two things when we have no clean water to drink? I am not “First Nation” but I was brought up with a respect for the land and that we are all one, if you look after the earth it will look after you. The scar sands are already doing enough damage. Do we want more…?

I say no more road paving!

I too would agree with Palapu on everything said except the line being a “piddly assed little line”.

There is no doubt in my mind that the approval for the right of way for this first gateway line (which isn’t exactly small) will be followed by additional lines in the future. Just as Kinder Morgan is doing.

Whether people realise that the Gateway pipeline will likely be expanded at some point (being one of many options) is likely or not, at the core of this debate is the rate of which Canada allows the oilsands to be extracted.

There is the pro side at any cost and then there are the no way people at any cost and then there is the vast majority of people who have concerns/reservations as to what this development means to our country’s future.

To the people in the center who care about the environment as well as the economy and do care about the costs of each, there are many more questions to all this than what this pipeline review process involves.

Imagine we were having a debate like this one but it was about how many railways we should allow to be built to extract our timber, in an unprocessed raw log form? Imagine selling all the timber in the province to foreign interests? and having no controls over the rate it be extracted? just because there is unending world demand for it? just because of so called employment and business opportunities? just because of promises of revenue to the province. The promise of say 100,000 jobs in building railways and spanky new terminals to load ships and logging every tree with mostly foreign workers because we have no such workforce that all want to be loggers.
Say this boom development took 20 years to remove all the trees and inject some promised amount into the provincial revenue stream. Would anyone in their right mind support doing that to our province? As ridiculous as that sounds to remove all our timber, it is in no way as stupid as removing all of our oil because eventually our trees would grow back.

Even if you are a person or government who is attracted to the lure of speedy riches from unrestrained exploitation, such that Alberta is, the reality is actually quite different especially with a non renewable resource such as oil and gas. True that the “boom” will involve lower unemployment today because of the expansion, but anything comes to an end as to how much it can be expanded, especially a non renewable resource. The oilsands are really big but industry is assembling the machinery and technology to a level seen nowhere else on earth. They are doing that because they now have ownership of the resource and there is no control over how fast they can remove it. The faster these unsustainable dead end projects are ramped up the quicker it comes to an end and the bigger the bust when it does.

So the news story in 20 years goes that the oilsands are now exhausted/uneconomic and 1,000,000 people have no jobs, no royalties are collected, we have to import energy because we haven’t any left, our entire economy is doomed as it too cannot afford imported energy and others control its supply to us..so we don’t get any. It is we and not them who will pay the price for all of this. The restraint in providing approvals for pipeline capacity from the oilsands is now the only means to control the rate of removal and the rate which we reduce the consequences of this immanent boom and bust.

We have an embarrassing overabundance of resources in Canada. Why is hoarding them the answer for many people? Like it or not, the majority of meaningful employment in this Country is based on resource extraction. That is not going to change in the near future.

As far as oil and gas, thanks to advances in hydraulic fracturing (and remember, this is not a new technology) and other such technologies, just about everywhere they punch a hole in the ground, they find one or the other. Supplies of gas and oil have never been higher. They were predicting a ’20 year supply’ back in the 70’s.

Just like Palopu said, back in the day, people just got things done. Unless someone can come up with a legitimate set of reasons this why pipeline can’t be built, it will be.

Dirtcheap says This disaster in the making can not happen, or I beleive as a species we are finished.

So the million miles of pipelines in North America already must just freak you out as you are typing on your oil sourced computer.

“Unless someone can come up with a legitimate set of reasons why this pipeline can’t be built, it will be.”

You mean running around screaming “WERE ALL GONNA DIE!!!” isnt gonna cut it?

In all likelihood after all the gum flapping is over the Enbridge pipeline will be built. It may not go to Kitimat, but Prince Rupert instead. It may mean there’s some independent authority set up to monitor the ongoing condition of the pipe. It may also mean that there is an enhanced emergency response mechanism established to deal with the (small likelihood) of any spills. There will be jobs created from its construction. Businesses in north central BC will see a pick-up in economic activity, and their profits will no doubt trend upward.

But have we ever considered the REAL downside to this kind of project, and how we might ameliorate it?

No, we have not.

The REAL downside is that we are once again mistaking pure ‘inflation’ for ‘prosperity’, when it is no such thing. And we will once again fail to put in place any kind of mechanism to ensure the disadvantages of a higher consumer price level ~ which we are certain to get, as the price of everything we need and want rises faster than our incomes, taken collectively, will ever rise ~ can be offset. So that this project actually can benefit US. Instead, we’ll soon be bitching about the increase in the cost of gas at the pumps, and the rise in the prices of everything else, and how the minimum wage and all other wages in general have to increase to ‘catch up’. Which they’ll NEVER do. But we’re slow learners when it comes to such things.

Blocking this pipeline would be a huge environmental disaster. My shares in railcar builders have been on fire – why? Because the oil is already being shipped by rail and will continue to be shipped that way until a pipeline is built. I keep pleading with the greenies – EDUCATE YOURSELVES! Stop getting your news from the CBC! Get FACTS!

You are 20 years too late to help decide whether the oilsands should be developed or exported. Those decisions have been made long ago! That is NOT what JRP is for! Wrap you heads around making the best decisions for TODAY and TOMORROW and it all starts making sense!

Seamutt…I guess you have never heard of words like recycle,reuse,rebuild,restore…

You know what I find funny about this whole thing is that if they’d just picked a different (more strategic) route, hardly anyone would have cared, but they just happened to pick some of the most ecologically sensitive ares near populations to plow this stupid ill-conceived monstrosity through. In the end, that choice is going to cost them way more than it would have to route that pipeline elsewhere. Now they can shove it where the sun don’t shine, because it won’t happen no matter how much money they spend to advertise it. This will NOT benefit British Columbians and I sincerely doubt the Feds will risk what it would cost them to try and ram this down BC’s throat. All you little contrarians with your shallow navel gazing philosophies can root for this asinine stupidity if you want. If that makes you feel good, go for it. All your arguments are not based in facts though, because those have been vetted; it will make money for a select few, and the potential upside is so out of all proportion to the nature of the risk to our environment, economic security, and security period. They should be shipping this sour crude East, where they would welcome it and have to import it from foreign countries currently.

Saying the pipeline would be ‘too risky’ without quantifying it with solid numbers as to why it is, is just meaningless.

As long as Enbridge can mitigate the legitimate concerns, not the chicken-little ones, the pipeline will go ahead.

“A referendum on the ballot when we elect a government would sure put to rest how people actually feel about this pipeline.”

The pipeline comes under Federal jurisdiction. A provincial referendum would mean nothing.

The pipeline is already being built so stop whining

socredible. You got it, its supply and demand and the consumer ends up holding the bag.

And here is another question how is it that Enbrdge seems to have all the environmental problems of ruptures in their pipelines. We never hear that Transmountain has any leakages in their lines. They had one in Burnaby caused by construction equipment not so long ago.
Cheers

Sine Nomine, the only reason why this pipline will never be built would be that the Native population will stop it. But I bet you dollars to donuts that Harper will approve this pipline. And I do hope that I am wrong.
Cheers

Well Johnnybelt, the argument works both ways. So far the province of Alberta cannot even balance its budget and it is screaming for more of what seemingly put it in this position. The last premier of Alberta was just about hanged for trying to increase royalties and then only to be threatened that the wonderful oil industry would leave the province if they had to pay more. Just go ahead and try to quantify how good the oil industry or this pipeline will be for Alberta, BC or Canada.
If you know anything about how a pipeline is built or what happens after it is built you will know it is a flash in the pan that will be over before most knew it started.

I would agree with gamblor that indeed the decision to develop the tarsands was made long ago, more like 40 years ago. Several things were not envisioned possible then and neither was it envisioned how the world would change. Who then knew that China would become a superpower and a super consumer of energy, super wealthy and be buying resources rights directly from Canadian soil. Who then knew that there would be such an increase in demand so that the price of oil should go to 90 or 150 dollars per barrel? Things change just like back in the days of axes and crosscuts there was no worry about running out of forests whereas it is widely known that mankind now has the ability to easily overcut the forests which it does in many places. It would happen everywhere if it were not for controls that don’t allow that. OPEC was formed to control their oil, Venezuela took control of their oil, Norway took control of their oil wealth and then there is Canada that allows its oil to be handled like Nigeria who will never emerge from being a third world country filled with poverty.

You are also absolutely right that the JRP is not the appropriate process of debating the rate that the tar sands are mined out in the fastest time possible and that is precisely why a national energy policy is absolutely necessary before this goes any further.

It is now obvious TODAY that when oil prices are as high as they are that it is necessary to have controls be put in place as to the rate which this extraction occurs. There is no social licence to be doing this and the greed vrs fear war is just beginning to pull our country apart.

If you don’t think that is needed then go ahead and cheer for an octopus of pipelines and might as well sell all of the forests to be logged immediately without controls and whatever else some foreign interest wants to own. Sell all the rights to our water, sell our farmland and since you aspire to this go ahead and sell your OWN house and land and car and just rent it back with the bit of paper money they gave you but remember your job will only last for as long as it takes to exhaust the resources they came for. good luck with that.

JohnnyBelt”The pipeline comes under Federal jurisdiction. A provincial referendum would mean nothing.”

I disagree. A provincial referendum would be most meaningful and powerful! I hope that B.C. has a referendum on the pipeline (not likely to happen if the NDP gets in) and that the people vote against it!

Harper can choose to ignore the result at his own peril and dismiss it and the determination of the First Nations to protect their land, our land and the coast!

Political suicide, for sure!

Dirtcheap, care to elaborate.

Another (although small) oil pipeline leak south of the border today.

foresight:-” Venezuela took control of their oil, Norway took control of their oil wealth and then there is Canada that allows its oil to be handled like Nigeria who will never emerge from being a third world country filled with poverty.”
——————————————-
In Venezuela the price of gas at the pump is pretty cheap, but most of the people don’t have enough money to afford a car. Even with all that oil wealth. Which most Venezuelans don’t seem to see too much of personally, Hugo Chavez notwithstanding.

In Norway, the price of gas is way higher than here, so even if the average Norwegian can afford a car it costs him dearly to run it.

Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa, and despite having a civil war a few years back, seems to be coming ahead.

It’s government invited dispossessed white Zimbabwean farmers (Rhodesians) to come in and develop new farms in rural Nigeria, using the expertise they’d gained over two or three generations on how to farm successfully in their own country. And share that knowledge with native Nigerians. And that’s boosted Nigeria’s ability to feed itself, and may lead to it becoming a net exporter of foodstuffs like Rhodesia once was.

It seems to be using some of its oil wealth more effectively at creating a viable economy than the other two nations are ~ Venezuela, where the government still has to resort to the failed ‘socialist’ prescription of “take from the rich to give to the poor”, and only succeeding in leveling everyone down in the process; and Norway, where the State seems to believe it can somehow ‘save’ all the revenues from North Sea oil to the benefit of Norwegians without them ever getting any of it individually. As looney an idea as Christy’s pipe-dream about LNG being BC’s financial nirvanah.

(The only ones who’ve got it right, so far, are the Alaskans. Who not only “protect the capital”, with the Alaska Permanent Fund’s investment of oil royalties, but let each individual Alaskan “live off the income” from it. With a yearly oil dividend paid to each Alaskan man, woman, and child, to spend or save as they choose.)

Canada can’t send the oil east to the Maritimes, (which have Hibernia, and other offshore oil of their own, largely as yet undeveloped), because of the way the financial system works.

We have to have a so-called “favourable” balance of trade internationally under the current set-up. We need, in effect, to import other countries’ ‘money’ in order to live, financially speaking, that is.

No modern industrial country that is continually progressing, and becoming technologically more ‘efficient’ by displacing labour and labour’s incomes with automation and mechanisation, can BUY ALL its own production and pay for it fully from the incomes and profits distributed in the course of making that production.

They all have to import ‘money’ from elsewhere to do that. It’s stupid, but that’s the way it is. And no one wants to understand it, let alone try to correct it. So somehow or other, the oil sands oil will be going abroad. If you want to change that, study how finance actually works. And don’t fall for that Trudeau idiot’s idea of another National Energy Policy that’ll just centralise power further into the hands of those who should never hold it.

Sure am glad they built the Alaska Highway in 1942. If they tried to build it tomorrow, we’d have the Indians, environmentalists, tree huggers. Greenpeace and all the little fishies talking about it, up to and including today. Folks in the US were very patriotic when it came to that war. I doubt back then they would take kindly to the greenies and such trying to stall that project. That was then. This is now. But still…. They built that highway and guess what? The sky did not fall.

Venezuelan oil to its people is heavily subsidized. Norway has a very high standard of living and a huge surplus fund unlike Alberta blowing their money.

What good does that do the average Norwegian?

Does each Norwegian get a dividend distribution from this ever growing surplus fund, to spend or save as they so choose? Never heard of that happening there. Only in Alaska. Where if the ‘savings’ belong to all Alaskans, the investment of them is each Alaskans to ‘spend’. After all, how can you ‘own’ something you can’t, in any way, ‘disown’?

Any country is ‘wealthy’ by what its citizens are able to SPEND, not what they’re able to ‘save’, since monetary savings have no equivalent in real wealth.

You can’t get any ‘wealth’ at all, (“well-being” ~ the original meaning of wealth), out of a roast of beef in your freezer, while it’s in the freezer. That only happens after it’s taken out, thawed, cooked and eaten.

PG: “Another (although small) oil pipeline leak south of the border today. “

Yeah, I’m sure the media is all over it. If you want to stop all pipelines present and future, the solution is simple — stop using oil. And good luck with that.

I want to see refineries built here in Canada…so we can start selling some finished products and creating jobs here. It’s about time this country matured as a world power, we have all the resources and yet flounder under a sea of debt.

Can you imagine if Japan had access to our resources where they could take this country, it’s the difference between a business person and an auctioneer that is willing to sell to the highest bidder.

Jim: “It’s about time this country matured as a world power, we have all the resources and yet flounder under a sea of debt.”

I agree! That’s what we should be focussing our energies on. It doesn’t seem to matter what government is in power, left, right, center, or whatever.

And the story comes out this morning about how we paid $100M+ for boat blueprints, when the Danish were able to get the boats actually built for that. Incompetence at its highest level.

Ottawamitisawak……$30 BILLION unaccounted for???? It’s a good thing these guys are considered fiscal conservatives or we would really be in trouble.

But just WHO are we going to sell the finished products to, and HOW are they going to pay us for them?

JB:”And the story comes out this morning about how we paid $100M+ for boat blueprints,…”

McKay paid 5 million to get some blueprints from Norway and gave Irving a 250+ million contract to design some boat(s). No building, no welding, no laying of a single keel. Just designing!

Eventually this Canadian company plans to subcontract the design phase to Denmark, because there are no designers in Canada who have any background designing naval vessels. So says the media.

No wonder the BC Liberals looked at the situation in B.C. when it needed real ferries in a hurry and decided to give a key ready contract for ferries to a foreign company which had decades of experience in successful designing and building of quality vessels!

That company also built the ferries INSIDE a large temperature controlled assembly building, out of the weather and with laser accuracy.

Time for a change in Ottawa.

Yes, Jim13135, it’s business which makes this province tick and not some hordes of government minions who regulate and manipulate with ignorance and no need for profits from out of their cushy offices until everything goes into a coma, like during the nineties!