The proposed Enbridge pipeline is the largest issue ever faced by B.C.’s aboriginal community, native leader Stewart Phillip declared Monday, as he vowed a long, protracted fight, including blockades and mass protests, against the project, if it is allowed to proceed.

“Our people are prepared to go to the wall against this. There is no doubt about that,” warned Grand Chief Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs. “There is absolutely no way we will tolerate a project that would violate the environmental integrity of our traditional territories along the pipeline route and along the B.C. coast.”

He was speaking at a gathering of high-profile opponents of the controversial, $6-billion pipeline project known as Northern Gateway, that would carry Alberta oil across northern B.C. to Kitimat. There, the oil would be transferred to supertankers for transport through the province’s coastal channels on its way to Asia.

They urged B.C. Premier Christy Clark to just say No to the project, rather than set preconditions, as she did last week, that must be met before the province will consider it. Among the conditions is a greater share of oil-generated revenue from neighbouring Alberta.

Joining those speaking out was former federal environment minister David Anderson, who ripped into Enbridge as “perhaps the last company in North America” that should be permitted to construct an oil pipeline across the province.

He accused the Calgary-based company of having a “cowboy culture” that is indifferent to safety and “quite inappropriate for building a pipeline in one of the most sensitive parts of the world.”

Mr. Anderson referred to a litany of oil spills from Enbridge-operated pipelines, including a large rupture in Michigan that prompted U.S. regulators to brand the company’s initial response to the mishap as one akin to “the Keystone Kops.”

“Enbridge should simply withdraw its application and disappear,” said Mr. Anderson, who spent five years as minister of the environment in the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien. “There is nothing to indicate the company has changed its corporate culture of carelessness, with respect to worker safety and environmental protection.”

Mr. Anderson, a long-time opponent of oil tanker traffic through B.C. coastal waters, scorned Enbridge’s commitment to spend an extra $500-million to further lessen the project’s risk, including thicker pipe. “You don’t change a corporate culture by spending more on steel,” he said.

He urged Ms. Clark to go even further in her opposition to the Enbridge pipeline and reject it completely. “She has tried hard to be reasonable, but I’d prefer her to come out against the pipeline and against Enbridge. I believe the time has come to say No – emphatically.”

Enbridge spokesman Paul Stanway denied Mr. Anderson’s assertions against the company.

“He’s entitled to his opinion, but I’d be interested to know how his opinion was formed,” Mr. Stanway said. “To my knowledge, he’s never made any enquiries about how we operate as a company.”

Asked whether Enbridge has a cowboy culture, Mr. Stanway replied: “No, of course we don’t, except for the two weeks of the Calgary Stampede.”

Mr. Anderson made up his mind a long time ago about the pipeline proposal, he said. “So, it’s difficult to have a conversation with him.”

Mr. Stanway said opposition to the pipeline project appears greater than it is, because supporters prefer to keep a low profile. “Our opponents are very visible, very vocal.”

Grand Chief Phillip, meanwhile, said B.C. natives will take their pipeline opposition to energy board hearings and to the courts. If those efforts fail, the fight will then move to the land, he promised. “And we will not be alone. There will be thousands of people there with us. We are willing to go the distance.”

He said it is not a matter of securing a better share of pipeline revenue. “This is about the integrity of our land, and we are willing to go to any lengths to defend that. We have no choice.“

Jennifer Rice, a member of city council in Prince Rupert, which has voted unanimously against the Gateway project, echoed the view that more money is not the issue.

“This is about risking our fishing and tourism economy for oil tankers and pipelines. Of course, the Premier should stand up for British Columbia, but the only responsible stand is to say No. Period.”

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First Nations warn of civil disobedience if Northern Gateway pipeline goes ahead

By Judith Lavoie, Times Colonist – http://www.timescolonist.com/news/First+Nations+warn+civil+disobedience+...

31 July 2012

First Nations in B.C. are pre-pared to go to the wall to stop construction of the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, Grand Chief Stewart phillip, Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs president, warned Monday.

“No way, absolutely no way will we allow or tolerate the pipeline proposal to proceed. We will fight this through the joint review panel, in the courts, and we will oppose this proposal on the land itself,” Phillip said during a Vancouver news conference with former federal environment minister David Anderson and representatives of the World Wildlife Fund, City of Prince Rupert and West Coast Environmental Law Association.

“We can’t help but believe that the Harper government’s aggression, in respect to attempting to bulldoze this proposal through, will change the political landscape of this country,” Phillip said.

Civil disobedience or blockades will follow if the federal government proceeds with the pipeline from the Alberta oilsands to Kitimat, Phillip said.

The proposal is currently under a National Energy Board panel review, expected to wrap up next year.

Most northern and coastal B.C. First Nations oppose the proposed pipeline, but some Alberta and urban First Nations support it.

Phillip emphasized that B.C. is not for sale, referring to Premier Christy Clark’s demand that B.C. receive a larger share of pipeline benefits.

Anderson, a former Liberal MP for Victoria who served five years as environment minister after being appointed to the portfolio in 1999 by then-prime minister Jean Chrétien, said it is time for Clark to reject the pipeline.

“She’s tried hard to be reasonable, but I’d prefer her to come out against the pipeline and against Enbridge,” said Anderson, the architect of the original plans to keep tankers out of northern B.C. waters.

Anderson launched a blistering attack on Enbridge – which is now cleaning up a spill of about 190,000 litres of oil from a Wisconsin pipeline.

The pipeline should not be built at all in such a fragile area, but if it is, Enbridge is not the company that should be involved because of its shocking safety record, Anderson said.

“Clearly, it has a cowboy culture that is quite inappropriate for building a pipeline in one of the most sensitive parts of the world,” he said.

Earlier this month, the head of the U.S National Transportation Safety Board said Enbridge officials handled a spill into Michigan wetlands and the Kalamazoo River like the “Keystone Kops.”

Anderson said he has little faith in the National Energy Board review, as it has not been able to get the names of 10 companies that put up $10 million each to finance the Enbridge bid.

“Without that information, you can’t tell what deals have been made,” Anderson said. “Enbridge is the front for 10 other corporations, and we don’t even know their names.”

Ideally, Enbridge should just go away, Anderson said.

“They should simply withdraw their application and disappear,” he said.

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Canadians are saying no to tar sands pipelines: risks outweigh the benefits

Susan Casey-Lefkowitz – http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/sclefkowitz/canadians_are_saying_no_to...

23 July 2012

We have long heard threats from the tar sands oil interests that if America won’t allow tar sands pipelines to cross our communities, they’ll just send the oil across Canada to Asia instead. But Canadian communities don’t like the idea of risking their fishing rivers, farms and coastal waters to a tar sands oil spill any more than U.S. communities do. In fact, pipeline company Enbridge’s proposal for the Northern Gateway tar sands pipeline that would cross British Columbia is in real jeopardy.

After refusing to take a stance on the Northern Gateway project, just this morning, the Globe and Mail reported that the Premier of British Columbia said that the risks of a tar sands oil spill outweighed the economic benefits of a tar sands pipeline across the province. And the British Columbia government has outlined a series of concerns and minimum requirements. Yet, given the deep concerns of First Nations, municipalities and others in British Columbia, what is needed is a clear message to echo what we hear coming from Canada: no tar sands pipelines and no tar sands oil tankers.

These are the same concerns that are driving opposition to the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline that would cross the U.S. to the Gulf Coast and the Trailbreaker project that would bring tar sands east through the Great Lakes and New England. Bringing dirty and expensive Canadian tar sands across our rivers and through our communities brings us the risk of climate change and tar sands oil spills all to benefit the oil industry. We can do better for our communities.

Tar sands pipelines are more likely to spill and their spills are harder to clean up. We see that in everything we have learned from the Enbridge tar sands spill into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan which is sadly seeing its second anniversary of cleanup efforts this week. The truth is that we don’t know enough about what tar sands does to a pipe and how to clean it up. If the oil industry had its way, the United States would be facing an invasion of tar sands in pipelines that are not equipped and through communities who are not prepared. The tar sands oil industry is playing a risky game of chance with our health and waters. It is doing this with the heightened risk of climate change from the energy intensive tar sands, but also with the heightened risk of difficult to clean up tar sands oil spills.

But we are seeing an increased focus on the safety of tar sands pipelines. Today, the National Academy of Sciences is listening to briefings by experts on the nature of raw tar sands oil (diluted bitumen) to try to determine whether it is more likely to leak than conventional oil and if it perhaps needs special regulation. This is in response to new U.S. pipeline safety legislation requiring such a study.

And just recently, a National Transportation Safety Board investigation of the spill of the 2010 1 million gallon Michigan Kalamazoo River tar sands oil spill led the NTSB director to compare the pipeline company Enbridge to the bumbling Keystone Kops. A mixture of human error and a substance like tar sands that is more likely to leak, more difficult to detect leaking and more difficult to clean up is a recipe for disaster. Enbridge clearly has a bad record when it comes to spills as is documented in a new report from the National Wildlife Federation. But all pipeline companies seem to have trouble keeping tar sands from leaking.

Let me summarize a few of the tar sands versus conventional oil differences from NRDC’s own research:

• Tar sands is significantly more acidic than conventional crudes historically transported in the U.S. pipeline system. This higher corrosivity is a known issue for refinery operators, but not yet well studied when it comes to pipelines.
• Diluted bitumen also has higher sediment content, meaning that under the high pressures necessary to move the thicker substance it is like sandblasting the inside of the pipe.

• The fact that raw tar sands is more like soft coal than like oil means it needs to be diluted with chemicals and moved at higher pressure which in turn causes higher temperatures. This all increases the risk of stress cracking.

The NTSB investigation found that Kalamazoo rupture was caused by a combination of stress corrosion cracks and external corrosion defects, which resulted in the 6’ corrosion fatigue rupture that lead to America’s largest inland pipeline spill with a price tag so far of $800 million.

The lessons from the Kalamazoo River spill are important for all other tar sands pipelines.

TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline would carry the same raw tar sands oil from Canada over America’s heartland to the Gulf Coast for export TransCanada has already had over a dozen leaks in its recently built and supposedly state-of-the-art first Keystone pipeline to the Midwest. This is not a safety record that inspires trust.

The proposed Enbridge Midwest expansion and Trailbreaker pipeline project – would bring tar sands oil through the Great Lakes and across fragile New England rivers and lakes to Portland, Maine for export. Folks in New England are not happy about this and have been protesting tar sands oil putting their communities at risk, most recently in a series of solidarity actions with the Kalamazoo spill.

The people and First Nations of British Columbia have made it clear that the time for calling for more studies or conditions is past. Communities in British Columbia should not have to bear the risk of tar sands oil spills so that the tar sands oil industry can profit by accessing export markets for their product. It is no wonder that the scathing report from the National Transportation Safety Board was a final straw in helping Canadians realize that the risks of tar sands pipelines are just too high.

Follow the We Are the Kalamazoo – Tar Sands Spill Solidarity Actions at: http://www.tarsandsfreene.org/we-are-kalamazoo-solidarity-actions-july-2...

Listen to people in the path of tar sands pipeline and refinery expansion talk about their concerns for their families and communities. Short videos at: http://www.nrdc.org/energy/keystone-pipeline/tar-sands-stories/

Take action to make the environmental review of the re-application for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline be strong and comprehensive: http://www.savebiogems.org/stop-the-tar-sands-pipeline/