Is “the lawyer for the five oil companies” willing to give up his nice suit and shoes to head out into the wilderness to help clean up a “leakage event” when (NOT IF) it happens? I think not! Take some of that “$140 million dollars” and spend it on reducing petroleum prices at the consumer level. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to read that the majority of British Columbians are opposed to this project, so why are they still holding herings? They’ll keep pushing ’til they get the answer that “suits” the CEOs.

MUST PROOF READ before posting.
Should be “hearings” although “hering” is closer to the smelly truth. Sorry!

Supply and demand will push this pipeline through weather we like it or not. Just will take the right dollar figure. Not saying that I agree with it, that’s just the way life is. Site C dam is no different. If the feds get involved and push for it, we as BC citizens will have no say.

Really? Petroleum Reps are calling for the approval of the Northern Gateway Project? How profound. Who would have predicted that?

(insert eye roll here)

Harper government just upped the oil company spill liability from $50 million up to $1 Billion. Good news, but if a spill like Valdez is expected to cost over $20 Billion than what about that… BC is on the hook is what… federal government hasn’t addressed this issue at all. Furthermore no where in the Gateway Pipelines proposal does it show they would have a $1 billion dollar contingency fund… hence why it was proposed as a subsidiary with legal limits to liability separating Enbridge from the stand alone Northern Gateway Pipelines Incorporated… a throw away pipeline of shorts to legally protect the shareholders of the primary investors.

I think the oil company representatives should learn about the term sunk cost and walk away now before they waste any more money and time. That is why they are paid the big dollars.

Supply and demand has nothing to do with it. We have all the domestic supply we need. If China needs oil and they have demand there are other ways for them to get what they need. Protecting our coast should be the top priority, and then national energy policy, followed only then by profits for off shore multinationals.

The Supreme Courts have already ruled in favor of native rights on land issues and provincial sovereignty as per the repatriation of the constitution.

The federal government could try and get a new ruling from the Supreme Court or bully their way and disregard the Supreme Court… but then we are into the realm of no longer being a country governed by the rule of law… so no I don’t think the federal government can just ram this pipeline through without consent and those that do are in effect arguing against the rule of law.

$1 Billion liability, big deal. That won’t replace our drinking water. This pipeline would cross the continental divide in this province, the source of some of the finest drinking water in the world, the source of our drinking water. If they held $20 billion in a 3rd party controlled fund to ensure cleanup costs, I still wouldn’t go for it. It’s not worth it. This project is all wrong for so many reason. I don’t want that sour crude flowing downwind of my home.

Have they done any “seismic instability studies” on our east coast before shipping anything? Or is that not as valuable as our west coast? Grrrr! Any port in a storm should be rephrased to “any excuse…”.

Harb: “Have they done any “seismic instability studies” on our east coast before shipping anything?”

Of course not. The demands are getting to the point of ridiculousness, and amount to nothing more than stall tactics. No pipeline in the world would meet the requirements set out by the anti-Enbridge crusaders.

What part of *PIPE THE ALBERTA BITUMEN TO EASTERN CANADA to replace the oil there which is presently being IMPORTED* is it they don’t understand???

If Harper rams this Enbridge thing down the throats of the majority of the B.C. population and in defiance of the rights of the First Nations he and his party are going to and up in the political wilderness for a very long time.

A hundred or so people protesting the pipeline once in a while is hardly “the majority” of BC. Recollect our last provincial election? I do. I wonder if Adrian’s significant other wrote a non-rhyming poem for him to help him get over his loss? Angry Tom or JT just won’t be our next PM. Make a memo.

Ba ha ha… “A hundred or so people protesting the pipeline once in a while is hardly the majority of BC.”

Try 60% of British Columbians being opposed to the Northern Gateway Pipeline!

http://www.news1130.com/2012/12/12/opposition-growing-towards-northern-gateway-pipeline/

So they took a poll, eh? Same kind of poll they took before the last election? Gimme a break. Nobody contacted me with this poll. But I guess I don’t count, eh?

Princegeeorge, the oilsands production can fill , south, east and west pipelines. Shipping oil to Eastern refineries will help, but won’t solve the growing production bottleneck.

“and spend it on reducing petroleum prices at the consumer level.” Did ya check the taxes. Dropping the carbon tax scam sure would help.

“Site C dam is no different” The alternative is what? I say new generation nuclear. There is a thousand years of fuel from older reactors.

“but if a spill like Valdez” They are still shipping oil out Valdez imagine that. Updated navigation, traffic control, pilots on board, double hulled and multi tug escort. Seems to work. Large ship traffic since the fifties hauling dangerous goods without the above in Douglas channel and no incidents.

Exxon makes about a 10% profit on their operations. Is that a problem?

Lots of emotion but short on facts.

Here is an interesting read on big oil digging for big green subsidies.

http://joannenova.com.au/2013/06/even-big-oil-is-begging-for-big-green-subsidies/

A Spill over the Stuart River and Pg is screwed and everyone else that is downstream that pulls their drinking water out of that system. 100 billion isn’t enough. No amount is enough. Search Kalamazoo on YouTube if you want to see how Enbridge deals with a spill. They pumped oil for 17 hours after their equipment said there was a problem. It wasn’t until an employee from another company that was there called for help that Enbridge realized that maybe their instruments were right. They knew for 5 years that the pipeline needed maintenance and did nothing!

This BS pipeline must be fought until the bitter end. F’off Enbridge you aren’t welcome here!

Cleanup funds of $20 Billion dollars? $100 Billion dollars? Give yer heads a shake.

I think most of BC is shaking their heads. That usually means no.

1 gallon of crude oil can contaminate 1 million gallons of water! Who cares about money when we can’t drink our water! Get lost Enbridge!

The Gulf oil spill has already exceeded $20 billion in clean up costs and that is in a place where they are warm and have natural microbs that help to eat up the oil… the North coast is cold and would be a hell of a lot harder to clean as we seen with Exxon Valdez, with a hell of a lot less resources to pull on, and no one can say how the bitumen would even be cleaned up to begin with.

We recently seen the Queen of the North go down in those waters, a passenger carrying vessel with state of the art navigation… all due to simple human error. It happens no matter what the precautions… more so with all the extreme risks involved in crossing an unstable mountain route, to a coast that has rocked with multiple 7-8 magnitude earth quakes since this review process started, and a straight that is considered the most violent to navigate in the world.

A few beads and limited liability of the carrier is not worth the risk to the eco system and the billions in our economy that sustainably rely on our ecosystem.

Exxon has multiple off shore accounts and shell companies as do most all the oil- companies. Look at uncle Tsniav in the Boston bombings for a prime example of how the off shore accounts work for the corrupt oil industry. 10% my asz… if they even report that much.

Yep ships have been sinking all over Douglas Channel. Their carcases are spread from one end to the other.

If the ferry was operated the way these tankers will be, never would have happened.

Lots of pipelines transverse mountain routes.

Exactly, People#1, but some people still think that money can be eaten.

IMO if the Alberta oil industry wants to operate on this side of the Rocky Mountains then they should be restricted to the Eastern and Northern flowing watersheds. The only place acceptable for my liking would be north of Summit Lake.

North of Summit Lake all water flows into the Crooked River, into the Parsnip, into Wilston Reservoir, out the WAC Bennett Dam, and into the Peace and Mackenzie rivers that have already been thoroughly polluted by the Alberta oil industry.

Bear Lake has all the required infrastructure for a petro chemical industry. All power needs with a substation connected to WAC Bennett Dam, full rail access throughout North America, and a large regional city only 40 minutes commute with full amenities and the ability to absorb large scale growth with accommodations, education institutions, a skilled workforce, and a world class service sector. Furthermore the air pollution would be far enough away from population centers nobody would complain as much about the air pollution. All pipelines seem to be aimed through Bear Lake as is.

When I was in Red Deer recently my buddy Gary is a driller, and his neighbor builds pipelines. Huge oil and gas industry in Red Deer. I seen them moving an oil rig component manufactured in Red Deer… they have a guy from the city precede the over-sized load to open up the intersections… he gets out and sticks a bar into a fitting and turns the whole light standard until it turns sideways to allow over-sized loads through. Then a hydro crew runs ahead and brings down power lines throughout the route until the over-sized load clears, and then strings them back up again. A huge process, but essential to have the manufacturing jobs for the oil and gas industry in Red Deer.

Here in PG we could never wish to get a foot hold in the oil and gas industry manufacturing components simply because product over-sized loads could never make it to market with all the rail overpasses we could not go around. Furthermore the way our hydro lines are strung it would be a nightmare to navigate the local highways, and we don’t have light standards that can turn so as to allow traffic through to the freeway. PG is on the outside because we have a bottleneck of highway infrastructure.

The oil and gas industry has no plans to locate any jobs in the interior of BC because they simply couldn’t get product to this region for the industry to operate here, other than using us as a place to run pipelines through. Vice versa they couldn’t get product out of this region for like reasons.

If this region were to take any risk, then I think it would have to mean real jobs and be limited to the Mackenzie watershed.

PG’s huge weakness could also be a huge advantage if industry was to locate this side of the mountains. Most all the big components would then have to be made in PG because they couldn’t be shipped here from Alberta, and that would amount to real jobs and real spin off manufacturing industry benefits, and that might just make it worth while to refine North of PG.

Problem is the political leadership in our country wants to export raw resources to the third world for processing and not have the spin off industry here in Canada. They also prefer pipelines over rail for reasons of economic efficiencies, discounting the environmental effects of a large pipeline spill and the economic spin off of enabling more related local industry.

I think we should all have a red line and mine is the Pacific watershed. I think the future for Canada is in a national energy policy that maximizes industry for Canada, as well as energy security for Canada, and therefor I think the future should be a petro chemical industry located where it has the minimal impact and ships finished products to market via rail. Anything less is a sell out and a cop out for short term agrrandization of a select few.

IMHO Time Will Tell

Some call for nuclear power to replace the need for Site C. Complete balderdash.

I find it interesting that since fracking started in 2009 the nuclear industry says it can no longer compete with the natural gas industry for electricity production and canceled all new plant proposals.

Exelon (the largest nuclear power company in the United States) has even shelved plans to upgrade its LaSalle plant in Illinois and Limerick plant in Pennsylvania as too costly considering the return on capital for upgrading existing plants. The company itself says nuclear power is dead and can not compete with natural gas on costs. Its stock has lost 2/3rds of its value as a result.

So with Seamutt logic we should scrap Site C and build a nuclear plant that can go Fukishima on us, so that we can pay more for electricity, so as to compress natural gas for export, so that off shore companies can produce electricity cheaper with natural gas than we could with a nuclear plant to compress that gas for export. Some logic.

Maybe better to just have the gas export companies build power plants somewhere along the line like Bear Lake to induce spin off jobs for the BC interior, save the Peace Valley, and not need to go nuclear.

If gas produced electricity is cheaper to produce than nuclear and has 1% of the risk and capital cost of a nuclear plant or hydro dam, then maybe some politicians need to explain why not? Is it the ‘carbon’ footprint… bunk if you ask me.

They are still finding oil to clean up at Kalamazoo JB 3 years after the spill! Or is it 4 years now? Give your head a shake JB!

60% of BC against N. Gateway? Lying with statistics again…If an honest poll was done in BC it would survey the people of BC who live in the North, not tree hugger headquarters in the lower mainland. For the ‘60%’ poll, 72% of those interviewed live in the lower mainland, who couldn’t give diddly squat about the North. Only 4% or 40 people out of a 1000 would have been polled between here and Rupert and you naysayers on here think you have a win? Get a life.

I agree with eagle’s 12:22 post.
This thread began because the oil producers themselves are now speaking up. I say its your oil and you as well as the pipeline company should be on the hook for whatever goes wrong with it and your oil.
That approach would go a long ways towards having a much more diligent oversight of the operations of the whole system. It ends the debate about a dollar figure as well.

I read and hear the endless “line in the sand” people who say “no way no matter what” to this pipeline.
As long as people keep preaching what they don’t want instead of what they do want, we will certainly arrive at a decision that most are unhappy with. Christy’s 5 conditions did the right thing and my concern is that the federal government is sleeping when it comes to concerning itself with what Canada should receive and how it protects OUR own interests involving OUR energy resources.

There is more to this than a fantasy of balancing a budget and Alberta being in a deficit is proving that wide open energy production isn’t the windfall that they tell us it would be. It is not working in BC either and yet we are told it is our financial savour. The people who chant “proceed no matter what” need to see that the economic windfalls of energy production are not really what they are said to be. Governments need to be honest about this as well as even if they win elections today, this is an ongoing issue to everyone in Canada for much longer than any elected term of a party in government.

There are a lots of reasons that people are unhappy with this pipeline proposal and most of this debate should have already happened on the national stage with a new era Federally formed National Energy Policy. That would have been the appropriate process to have dealt with many of the questions of what Canada does with its energy resources. This current JRP is an example of why that is absolutely necessary.

The debate about sending oil to eastern Canada, the debate about our national energy security, the debate about domestic prices and supply, Canadian refining capacity, the debate about price fixing, the debate about carbon emissions, the debate about environmental protection on land as well as offshore and the list goes on. That should be done on a national level and not through a JRP involving only this one pipeline proposal.

It should be envisioned by the federal government as well as the provinces and industry that this cannot and should not be the way we go through each and every pipeline proposal. It is not fair or practical nor a balanced approach for anyone to do this in this manner.

Eagle hope you take blood pressure meds.

Actually Exelon never said nuclear is dead and is upgrading its existing plants which is the equivalent of building one new plant. At present natural gas prices it is difficult to compete but if that goofy pres. puts a carbon tax on emissions its a new ballgame.

The problem with building natural gas power plants is that 90% of its operating cost is fuel. So a small change in gas cost can have a big effect on the price of electricity produced. A nuclear plant 14% of its operating cost is fuel so not nearly as affected on changing fuel costs. Nuclear like Hydro is expensive to build but once built relatively inexpensive to operate.

Oh Eagle along with your exaggerations I never said scape site c I just suggested nuclear as an alternative. Site c is required as a backup to the intermittent power from the IPP’s, Hydro’s own words.

Did Fukishima kill anyone, the wave sure did and Japan will start putting its nuclear plants back on line by the end of the year.

You seem to think gas plants can be just dropped willy nilly here and there, think again. There is the gas and electrical infrastructure required.

Just remember the price of electricity from a gas plant is heavily dependent on the price of fuel. Once built the price of produced electricity from a Hydro or Nuclear plant can be projected out to future, gas not so much.