Is there any chance that this can be defeated? I doubt it. Approval processes are a sham and it matters not what damage this project can cause in its construction, operation and inevitable spills.
We need look no further than the Gulf of Mexico to see the unimaginable damage to our environment and economy that these inevitable pipeline ruptures will cause.
Who will stand up against Enbridge? Not our politicians.

I'm SummerSoul and this is just SummerSoul's opinion. (Apologies to Meisner)

A pipeline through the Rocky Mountains and the Coast Mountains just does not seem like a good idea.

How can they protect the entire thing from being damaged?

A tremendous number of landslides and avalanches occur every year. What happens if one of these hits the pipe?

Don't worry folks. Enbridge says that they clean up 97% of all their spills.

Now let's see in Enbridge's worst year (2007) they spilled roughly 13,777 barrels of oil, which equals about 2.19 Million litres, which would fill the aquatic centre pool about 3/4's full. A 97% clean up rate would still leave 65,700 litres of oil.

Why did I use the worst year? Well, plan for the worst right?

As usual IPG will drink the kool-aid and rise to its incredible consistent level of mediocrity.

It wasn't that long ago when the Pembina oil pipeline in the Pine Pass ruptured and polluted the Pine River all the way to and beyond Chetwynd, polluting their water supply and killing multiple thousands of fish and wildlife.

from the Pembina Institute
http://pubs.pembina.org/reports/oil-and-salmon-dont-mix-fact-sheet.pdf

Lots of interesting information in there, including this:

"In early 2009, Enbridge was found liable
in Wisconsin for over 500 violations of
U.S. environmental requirements that
occurred during the construction of the
Southern Access pipeline, a dual parallel
pipeline for crude oil. These infringements
included 282 wetland violations and 176
land disturbance violations near navigable
waters. A state lawsuit was quickly settled
after Enbridge paid $1.1 million in damages for the violations."

"The risk of a major pipeline spill cannot be completely eliminated, even with best practices. Enbridge has not yet explained how it would clean up a spill in a fast-flowing river like the Morice-Bulkley or Skeena without causing further harm."

I did some checking around and I've learned something interesting about the "quasi-judicial" federal review process. It approves 99% of the projects that it reviews. Virtually guaranteeing that all projects are approved doesn't sound like a legitimate or judicial process to me. And it certainly doesn't sound like a process that can grant "social license", as Mr. McEwan writes above.

To me, social license means having the broad acceptance by society and communities for a business to operate. This Joint Review Panel doesn't actually have any BC residents or local First Nations on the panel making the decision. Nor does it consider whether or not it is a good idea to allow crude oil tanker traffic for the first time ever on BC's fragile coast.

If you ask me, this doesn't sound like panel that can give social license to this project. It sounds like a panel of people that can give only a 'rubber stamp' approval. I expect more.

I don’t want Enbridge’s crude oil tankers on the BC coast. They are more dangerous than oil rigs. I’m saying no to Enbridge oil.

from the articles above:
"Initiatives Prince George supports the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline MOVING TO THIS NEXT STAGE IN THE PROCESS."

I agree with that.

"Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline is part of our ongoing efforts to build Prince George and the North as a knowledge-based, resource economy"

I am not quite sure how a pipline running through the region is going to help to build a "knowledge-based" resource economy. The knowledge is that we know where the oil is coming from, where it is going to, and how it gets there past our location. And this knowledge helps build our knowledge based industry how?

The airport runway extension has the protential of expanding our knowledge based industry. We could research and manufacture prodcuts here that can be shipped out more quickly and more cheaply in any one of many light industrial "knowledge-based" clusters that we may not have had access to in the past.

Please, someone, tell me how an oil pipeline helps us with that. Can we divert some of the oil to a high end petro chemical based industry in PG, for instance? If so, where are the opportunities? Will NDI fund someone to build a business case for such a purpose?

Gus. Locating industry in Pr George because of the Airport and being able to ship it out more quickly and cheaply is a fallacy.

Firstly Air Transport is one of the most expensive ways to ship a product.

Trucking is also very expensive.

Rail is expensive and very slow.

Why would you build an industry in the middle of nowhere 3000 miles from your major market area. ie; US midwest and eastern US.

What would you produce that would warrant the use of Air Cargo Jets., on a regular basis???? If you didnt use the Jets on a regular basis as they do in Anchorange then it would be cost prohibitive for them to use Prince George. At the end of the day these business's operate on the economies of scale. What portion of the 700 Wide Body Aircraft per week that fly through Anchorage Alaska would you need to make a viable operation in Prince George.??

The Airport Authoritys operating loss in 2008 was $1,5 Million. In 2009 it was $300,000.00. They now have to borrow from money generated by the Airport Improvement Fee just to stay in business.

The Airport Authority states that they would need approx 4 Wide Body Aircraft for tech stops per week to break even. That means that they generate approx $1200.00 per aircraft in landing and take off fees.

The actual fueling of the Aircraft generates money for the Oil companies, but nothing for the Airport.

Insofar as the Pipeline goes, once its built there will be no benefits of any significance. IPG operates on taxpayers dollars and has the luxury of getting $2.5 Million from the City every year, no matter how many inane statements or comments they make.

This article represents the same kind of myopic thinking that has impoverished the north for many decades. It is hardly a "knowledge-based" economy being pushed, it's an economy based on accepting an ever declining number of jobs for an ever increasing amount of risk. We already know that isn't working. The people pushing us to invest even more heavily in this strategy are the few people who benefit financially from it. Putting the entire B.C. coast at risk for a few short-term construction jobs is simply ludicrous.

The ones that support this (outside of Enbridge)are politicians and bureaucrats that hope to spend some of the royalty money on their salaries and pet projects... they care not one bit about the risks that will be the legacy of a project like this.

Point number two... to argue that this is a national interest project is a fallacy. There is nothing in our national interest to risk our rivers and streams in the coastal mountains and our coastline... so that we can export oil and gas to Asia. In fact this project is treasonous from the carbon tax perspective where we will be subsidizing countries that will not be paying any carbon tax. Canada has set quota's for reduction, and to meet this reduction the governments of the day have been using a sin tax to deter Canadians from oil and gas usage thereby driving up our local costs and reducing our local competitiveness in the process. The Alberta oil sands projects use huge amounts of energy to extract the oil and this will have a negative effect on our carbon projections thereby justifying further punitive measures by our governments to reduce our local and national carbon usage.

I don't support this project because it is an enabler of making our economy less competitive in the long run, and entails unnecessary risk to our unique environment for the sake of a few token short term jobs mostly for Albertan companies.

The Joint Review Panel is similar to our securities regulators... they are not there to protect the public and enforce regulations, but rather they are there to rubber stamp and provide cover for those they are tasked with regulating. Most of these so called 'regulators' are industry appointed to begin with....

Could not someone install a "T" in their pipeline to siphon off some crude, which we can turn into cheap gasoline for our own use? No cheap gas for us. Oil for China and we take the risks. Sounds fair. (sarcasm)

As I said before, a lot of this oil will go to California. The shipping to China is a **Red Herring** China can buy oil all over the world, plus it produces a lot of oil itself. At present it is involved in a number of huge wells in Northern Iraq, (Kirkuk).

Just because a few lines in a newspaper article makes reference to shipping oil to China, and the USA, doesnt make it binding. They wlll ship the oil wherever the hell they chose.

"What would you produce that would warrant the use of Air Cargo Jets"

Hmmmm let me see ..... how about the same stuff that gets shipped that way already ....

"Why would you build an industry in the middle of nowhere 3000 miles from your major market area ... "

Maybe because it is 3,000 miles closer than where it is produced and shipped from now????

Nah ... could not possbily be that simple ... LOL

oh Gus you had to bring up the airport - I was just getting used to not seeing Palopus daily rants on the runway expansion...