Arrogant Pipeline Politics

Northern Gateway Pipeline in B.C. | BCBusiness
The Northern Gateway pipeline would mean Alberta reaps the benefits while B.C. absorbs the risk.

The proposed oil pipeline in Northern B.C. may not have found itself facing so much trouble and strife if Alberta hadn’t so arrogantly believed that it was the entire West.

The Alberta and federal governments are said to be considering sharing the spoils of the Northern Gateway pipeline with B.C. They’re hoping that may mute the escalating opposition to the massive project.

Don’t hold your breath, Alberta. The pipeline is all but a loser in B.C.

The $5.5-billion pipeline is shipping Alberta oil from its oil sands (“tarsands” if you’re of that persuasion) across hundreds of kilometres of relatively pristine wilderness to Kitimat, where it will be loaded onto giant tankers that will then make their way through some of the roughest waters on the coast.

All so Alberta – and the feds – can make a bundle by selling that heavy oil to China, where the price is higher. They get the money and we get the problems.

(We won’t even discuss right now how other nations, like the U.S., are undertaking their own projects to access the Chinese market, and that perhaps China is trying to set up a supplier competition so it can knock that price down considerably.)

Albertans tend to think of B.C. as full of loony-lefty flakes, tree huggers and professional shit disturbers who will protest anything that moves – in contrast to their own clear-eyed view that the environment is there to provide riches for those freebooters who are smart and brave enough to take it.

That’s probably why they didn’t really bother to try to understand the B.C. state of mind on such things. Too much bother, and really, most of us are like them anyway. We’ll just hire some hot P.R. pros to push it through.  

There may indeed be some sympathy in B.C. for the pipeline, but it’s rapidly disappearing in the face of such arrogance and ignorance.

As one B.C. “business community leader” quoted by the Financial Post put it, “This is the way it’s played out in B.C. We are putting a pipeline through the province, triggering massive opposition from environmentalists and First Nations, in order to give Alberta an opportunity to sell energy into Asian markets and we get essentially nothing out of it. That is why even those who will be sympathetic to the project aren’t as focused or as enthusiastic about it as people outside B.C. seem to believe should be the case.”

There are differences between Alberta and B.C., even though Alberta believes it speaks for the entire West. The oil-rich (and rich) province is very much a semi-autocratic and single-minded state, where citizens compliantly walk in step on most issues. Today, this is shared by the federal government, which is essentially Alberta-bred.

B.C. is more diversified and generally believes in protecting the environment as much as making vast amounts of money. Businesses here recognize that they must accommodate varying concerns about projects. While development is important, we believe, it’s not just about the money.

So, yes, the “pipeline politics,” as they has been described, have taken a turn for the worse in B.C. The situation may even be irreparable.

And all because the pipeline proponents figured they could just ram it through, reap all the benefits and leave us to deal with the problems.