BURNABY, B.C. C The nation’s Energy Board should suspend its overview of the Trans Mountain pipeline until Pm Justin Trudeau reforms the nation’s regulator, a lawyer for the City of Burnaby said Wednesday.
“You don’t have the legal right to speak in the interest from the citizens of Burnaby,” the city’s lawyer Gregory McDade told the NEB panel.
Burnaby is both the epicentre of opposition towards the $5.4 billion pipeline expansion project and the host city of the present round of NEB hearings around the project, likely to continue for 10 days in B.C. and can wrap up in Calgary next month.
“Burnaby should not be the final victim of a flawed process,” McDade said, referring to the best minister’s mandate letter asking natural resources minister to “modernize” the NEB.
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Burnaby may be the terminal point for the existing and also the proposed pipeline system and it has been the website of multiple Trans Mountain protests in recent days – including a march on Tuesday and ongoing smaller demonstrations Wednesday. The city’s mayor Derek Corrigan has stated he’d be prepared to end his political career through getting arrested attempting to stop the pipeline.
His city staff as well as their lawyer McDade told the NEB on Wednesday that the board must have allowed a cross-examination of Kinder Morgan’s arguments, that the board was not elected and also the board “represents the oil industry and pipelines.”
NEB spokesperson Tara O’Donovan said “the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project review has been arrived for nearly 2 yrs,” adding the board has had 1,300 people and groups comment on the project and 400 interveners involved in the process.
“The board continues to be tasked with making a recommendation within the public interest and it’ll only do so after considering all of the views it has been presented with and all of the evidence that’s around the record,” O’Donovan said.
Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr has stated the government will soon announce changes towards the pipeline approval process. But he explained the program will include a transition period for projects currently under review with no proponent will be asked to return to where you started.
Kinder Morgan Inc.’s Canadian division needs NEB approvals to expand its pipeline network between Alberta and B.C., which would increase the route’s ability to deliver oil by 590,000 barrels of oil each day to some total of 890,000 bpd. The project’s total cost is estimated at $5.4 billion, and also the route allows Canadian energy companies to export Western Canadian oil to overseas markets.
At as soon as, almost all Canadian oil exports go to the United States.
“Even if a pipeline is incorporated in the national interest, it should not be this one,” McDade said. He also said a route with the metro Vancouver area is “the worst possible location for a pipeline.”
If built, the Trans Mountain expansion project would require build-out of recent storage tanks in Burnaby, along with the demolition and subsequent reconstruction of the Westridge Marine Terminal to handle the extra flow of oil, as well as additional oil tanker traffic.
In its final written arguments filed Jan. 12, the town said the “pipeline, the tank farm and the marine terminal and shipping will cause major and unreasonable impacts towards the Lower Mainland.”
With files from The Canadian Press
gmorgan@nationalpost.com
Twitter.com/geoffreymorgan
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