FLETCHER: New pipeline would carry twice as much as Northern Gateway

Tom Fletcher has covered BC politics and business as a journalist since 1984.VICTORIA – What’s the biggest oil pipeline in the world?That would be the Druzhba pipeline, built by the Soviet Union in 1964 to supply crude to its client states in Eastern Europe. Known as the “Friendship” pipeline in a classic bit of Russian humour, it has a capacity of 1.2 million barrels per day.The proposed new diluted bitumen pipeline from northern Alberta to the south coast of BC would carry up to one million barrels per day. Add the original Trans Mountain pipe to Burnaby and Cherry Point in Washington, completed in 1954, plus the Trans Mountain expansion pipe that is just now reaching full capacity, and the latest route from Bruderheim to Tsawwassen creates what may be the largest crude corridor on Earth.Northern Gateway, the proposed pipe from Bruderheim to the deep-water port at Kitimat, would have carried up to 525,000 barrels per day. Estimated to cost just under $8 billion, including the terminal, it was approved in 2014. It was cancelled two years later when rookie prime minister Justin Trudeau embraced an American eco-fable about the “Great Bear Rainforest” and a north coast sacred except for Alaska crude tankers, fuel barges, cruise ships, and ferries.The terminus at Roberts Bank would require a third causeway extending about five kilometres into the Strait of Georgia to accommodate Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs), next to the original BC Ferries causeway and the Roberts Bank terminal used for containers and coal. This, plus inflation fuelled by endless government spending, brings the cost estimate for the still-unnamed third pipeline and terminal to something north of $40 billion..Prime Minister Mark Carney got the credit card out again to promise BC billions for the terminal expansion, a shaky NDP plan for an eight-lane tunnel under the Fraser River, plus a northern power line to create “decarbonized” LNG, and other items typically cost-shared by Ottawa. Given the potential royalty and tax revenues from all this exported oil, for once, Carney and BC Premier David Eby have made a valid, if not wise, choice.Now comes the environmental resistance, still able to feed national and local media but finding they have much less of a hold on the public. First out of the gate was the Pacific Coast industry built up to “save” the Southern Resident orca population from these VLCCs.Tracked since the 1970s, the population of this niche killer whale subgroup has ranged from a low of about 70 to around 100 for 50 years. The academic and protester industry around it is almost entirely US-based, with government agencies NOAA, EPA, and Marine Mammal Commission joined by whole departments of universities, nourishing the pilot fish of protest and fundraising. Protest in this area is strangely selective. The current coal and container port at Roberts Bank was already on its way to expansion when the oil port became public. It receives up to three trains a day from Burlington Northern Santa Fe, bringing thermal coal from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana to feed the furnaces of China and other Asian powerhouses.These shipments were banned from California, Oregon, and Washington ports in a bit of state theatre for the folks down there. There was a brief flurry of climate protest when they moved north to BC, but it’s not a story anymore..There will be stories about the causeway’s impact on the marine ecosystem of Roberts Bank. This was gone over in detail for the Tsawwassen First Nation treaty, which detailed the huge impact on natural circulation and food production when the original BC Ferries causeway went in. A third causeway has little damage left to inflict.Work is now approved to dredge sections of Burrard Inlet on the approach to Trans Mountain’s expanded Westridge Terminal at Burnaby, which has delivered small, partly-loaded Aframax tankers for 75 years without incident. This dredging and a new tunnel under the Fraser River are intrusions into the marine environment that would have been unthinkable in BC not too long ago.That’s another advantage of this latest expansion, following the Trans Mountain route for most of its length. Not only will it more than double capacity, but it will also take advantage of the project completed in 2024 that reconstructed heavy equipment access to the right-of-way after 75 years.In BC mountain terrain, that’s a big deal.Tom Fletcher has covered BC politics and business as a journalist since 1984.tomfletcherbc@gmail.comX: @tomfletcherbc

FLETCHER: New pipeline would carry twice as much as Northern Gateway

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