Harper appoints pipeline consultant to National Energy Board

Ottawa - Greg Rickford, Minister of Natural resources announced that Steven Kelly, a petroleum executive based in Calgary would become a full-time board member of the National Energy Board(NEB) an agency that helps decide if oil and gas pipelines should be built.

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Kelly, as vice-president of IHS Global Canada, wrote and submitted a 203-page report on behalf of the giant pipeline company Kinder Morgan to the NEB. The report justifies the $5.4 billion Trans-Mountain pipeline expansion.

The National Energy Board's(NEB) function is described as follows: The National Energy Board (French: Office national de l'énergie) is an independent economic regulatory agency created in 1959 by the Government of Canada to oversee "international and inter-provincial aspects of the oil, gas and electric utility industries".[1] Its head office is located in Calgary, Alberta. The NEB mainly regulates the construction and operation of oil and natural gas pipelines crossing provincial or international borders.After helping Kinder-Morgan lobby for the Trans-Mountain expansion, now Kelly will be on a board that is regulating pipeline construction. The NEB has already been criticized by the Sierra Club of Canada for creating regulations it claims benefit oil companies drilling in the Arctic.

Marc Eliesen, former CEO of BC Hydro said:“It’s utterly incredible the Government of Canada would appoint such an industry consultant to a regulatory agency that presumably is interested in the public interest, and not in the interest of multinational oil corporations.The NEB have totally become a captured industry regulator."

A spokesperson for the board said Kelly would not be a member of the three-person panel that will pass judgment on the Trans Mountain expansion. Eliesen, however, pointed out that the proximity of Kelly to the decision-makers on the board and his possible involvement in future Kinder Morgan rulings still place him in a "significant and incredible conflict of interest." Rickford however praised Kelly as having 19 years of experience providing the Canadian government and international clients with "technical, commercial, regulatory and strategic" advice for accessing oil markets. He also claimed that Kelly's background would help the NEB to fulfil its mandate to ensure the safety and security of Canadians and the environment.

For years the Harper government has been appointing oil and gas executives to the NEB while at the same time assigning it new environmental regulatory powers: More than half of the NEB board members are now petroleum industry professionals. The agency is not only tasked with reviewing the economics of pipelines —but also their environmental impacts.That latter task was given to the NEB, following a Harper government omnibus budget bill in 2012 that stripped that responsibility from the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA).

Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party, said of the Harper appointment: "Wow. Clearly there's a flurry of appointments that Stephen Harper wants to get in place before he goes down in defeat in the election. He's picked people who are of his ideological bent, and are unlikely to provide dispassionate and neutral work on behalf of the people of Canada."

Critics of the Trans Mountain project worry not only about the environmental effects on land of the project but note that there will be increased tanker traffic through the Strait of Juan de Fuca an extremely environmentally sensitive area with shallow water. Aboriginal groups and the Mayor of Burnaby have protested the project and 100 citizens were arrested during protests against drill pipeline tests on Burnaby Mountain. From 2006 to 2014, Kinder Morgan, has been cited by the US government in 24 incidents that led to 5 federal enforcement actions. A recent study by Simon Fraser University and Living Oceans Society conclude that the Trans Mountain expansion did not meet the requirement of the NEB that projects be in the public interest: "The study says the project, which would triple Kinder Morgan's capacity to carry oil between Alberta and Burnaby, B.C., could come at a net cost to Canada of between $4.1 billion and $22.1 billion."

Burnaby BC and environmental activists fight to protect Burnaby Mountain

Both the city of Burnaby BC just outside of Vancouver along with environmental activists are joining battle against Kinder Morgan

Kinder Morgan intends to expand the Trans Mountain bitumen export pipeline so as to triple its capacity. This would require adding many storage tanks to their present storage facility at Burnaby Mountain. However, another factor that concerns environmentalists is that it would increase oil tanker traffic through the Burrard Inlet by four to six times what it is now, increasing the likelihood of a disastrous oil spill. A National Energy Board (NEB) decision granted Kinder Morgan access to the Burnaby Mountain municipal conservation area. The city plans to appeal the ruling. The city has tried to block the company from doing survey work in the Burnaby Mountain conservancy for the route preferred by the company for the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.
The Energy Board ruling claims that the geotechnical work in the area is necessary to provide the data to the Board to make recommendations to the government about whether the project should proceed. Derek Corrigan, the mayor of Burnaby questions the Board's legal authority to over-rule municipal bylaws. Corrigan said: "We are disappointed but not surprised by this ruling. We believe that it is inappropriate for the National Energy Board to rule on the critical constitutional issue of whether a multinational pipeline company can override municipal bylaws and cause damage to a conservation area, for a project that no level of government has deemed to be in the public interest." The city lawyer Greg McDade claims that the power to rule on municipal laws and enforcement powers does not exist in the National Energy Board Act and has never been claimed before by any federal tribunal.
 The Board however claims that it does have the power to override municipal bylaws. The NEB order prohibits Burnaby from attempting to enforce any bylaw blocking the Kinder Morgan work but ruled that Kinder Morgan must give the city 24 hours notice of work in advance and also repair any damage its work causes.This is the first time the National Energy Board has issued an order indicating what a municipality must do. Both sides are launching court battles, with Kinder Morgan managing to get a court injunction against protesters who were blocking workers from carrying out their drilling on the mountain.
 Thursday morning police swept in shortly after 8 AM after deciding to arrest anyone not obeying the court injunction. By 9:45 it was reported that at least ten people were arrested with at least one being a First Nations member. The RCMP have forced journalists and witnesses far away. There is an arrest-free area cordoned off by police. The people there are requesting community members to come to the site. As this short clip shows, the police were not always restrained in treatment of some protesters. The incident would appear to be the same as described here: A middle-aged female who was in front of the line was tossed to the ground behind police and was quickly arrested."Hey, that's violence," a protester yelled at police as the woman slammed onto the road. An RCMP tweet claimed that 26 people in all were arrested but that only five remained in custody by Thursday evening. Many were released after being cited for civil contempt. They were required to promise not to interfere, obstruct or impede survey crews.
There is still one ongoing protest a ceremonial First Nations fire remained burning throughout the day tended by a group of women. RCMP Staff Sgt. Major John Buis said: A ceremonial First Nations' fire remained burning throughout the day. A pair of RCMP officers sat down and spoke to a group of women who were tending the fire in the afternoon."We are in discussions with First Nations on how to respectfully remove a sacred fire and totem pole that remain inside the zone in contravention of the order." The government, has recently passed extensive anti-terror legislation. The RCMP has warned that environmentalists are a greater threat to Canada's energy system than jihadists. The climate is being prepared in which any militant actions by environmentalists can be treated as terrorist acts and no doubt dealt with using the powers of the new anti-terror laws. Conservative legislation has "streamlined" approval processes in the Conservative view or "gutted" them in the opinion of environmentalists. Under whatever description, the legislation is a move to prevent environmentalists from slowing up approval or even blocking approval of projects. Marc Eliesen former head of BC hydro recently withdrew from Kinder Morgan hearings calling them a farce and a waste of his time. Having successfully blocked legal ways of stopping development the Conservative government will now see to it that any illegal attempts by environmentalists to stop projects can be dealt with using powerful and punitive anti-terror legislation.

Former head of BC Hydro Marc Eliesen withdraws from Kinder Morgan pipeline hearings

Marc Eliesen, who was formerly head of British Columbia Hydro, pulled out of federal government hearings on a proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline that would run parallel to its existing pipeline linking Alberta and Vancouver, BC.

Kinder Morgan has headquarters in Houston, Texas and is the fourth largest energy company in North America. In 2013 Kinder Morgan filed an application before the Canadian National Energy Board(NEB) to build a second pipeline parallel to the Trans Mountain line it already owns. This new pipeline would boost the amount of oil the company could ship to Vancouver to 850,000 barrels from 300,000 barrels per day. Cost of construction is estimated at $5.4 billion.
 The new line would allow much larger volumes of tar sands oil to be shipped to the US and Asia. In a letter sent to the National Energy Board Eliesen claimed that the federal hearing process on the project was "a farce". Among other failings Eliesen noted that oral cross examination of testimony had been removed entirely. Eliesen said: "Unfortunately, I have come to the conclusion that the board, through its decisions, is engaged in a public deception. Continued involvement with this process is a waste of time and effort, and represents a disservice to the public interest because it endorses a fraudulent process."
The provincial New Democratic Party environment critic Spencer Chandra-Hebert suggested that the province should not participate in the federal process: "I think the province should pull out of the Kinder Morgan process, and instead run our own environmental assessment process, where we can hold Kinder Morgan accountable and not let them get away without answering tough questions about their ability to respond to oil spills."
 Kinder Morgan has been found to have violated safety standards on a number of occasions by the US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration(PHMSA) in the US. A list of violations can be found here. In his testimony Marc Eliesen described the National Energy Board as "a truly industry captured regulator." Eliesen should know. Not only was he former CEO of BC Hydro but he was deputy minister of energy in both the provinces of Manitoba and Ontario and he also was once on the board of the oil giant Suncor. He spent 40 years in the industry.
 It is not his first foray into criticism of pipeline projects since during earlier hearings on the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipelines he suggested that the company's energy forecasts were based on "bogus economics". Eliesen testified:“It is my contention that Enbridge has submitted marketing propaganda masquerading as economic analysis because of the one-sided, self-serving private benefit picture the proponent has presented. Therefore the public benefit test is not being met and therefore the project is not in the public interest,”
As to the present Kinder Morgan hearings Eliesen claimed that the hearings are "dismissive of intervenors" and "showed a lack of respect" for participants. In an interview with the Vancouver Observer Eliesen said: "In my view the NEB hearing process is a rigged game. In the past, there was a more objective evaluation of projects that would come forward...but it's reached a stage where the NEB is not interested in the public interest, and more interested in facilitating the infrastructure for the oil and gas industry." The city councils of both Vancouver and nearby Burnaby oppose the Kinder Morgan proposal because it would increase oil tanker traffic in the Burrard Inlet six-fold.
The NEB spokesperson Sarah Kiley defended the hearings claiming they would not be biased: "We have a long history of conducting hearings that are rigorous, thorough and fair and the Trans Mountain Expansion project is no exception. As an expert and independent tribunal, it is up to the NEB to gather the information and evidence necessary to make an informed decision," Kiley claimed that the NEB had removed oral cross-examinations in past projects.
 Eliesen said that any claim that omitting oral cross-examination was standard procedure was simply false: "For them to suggest they've done this in the past is totally misleading and erroneous. We've never had in the history of the NEB a public hearing process in which there was no oral cross examination...You have a situation here where all intervenors have done due diligence and have put in a heck of a lot of work and time and cost...and you submit all these questions. And you have proponents refusing to answer questions, who appeal to the NEB. That's what makes this whole thing a farce."
 There is not just hostility in city councils and at the hearings but on the ground as protesters have blocked survey work in a conservation area in Metro Vancouver. Lawyers for the company are seeking an injunction to stop the protests.