Pushed by local climate activists, city council is again demanding the removal of old Enbridge oil pipelines across rural Hamilton that are now being sold to a US company. But that appeal may be blocked by the refusal of the National Energy Board to accept public comments despite Trudeau government reforms that promised “more inclusive engagement processes”.
Approval by the NEB is required for Enbridge’s sale of the Line 10 pipeline to the Pennsylvania-based United Refining Corporation, but the Hamilton 350 Committee has been informed that this will not be a public process. City staff appear to have reached the same conclusion and have recommended that the city should protect its interests by sending a letter to the NEB “if provided with the opportunity” to do so.
David Bennett of the Hamilton 350 Committee urged councillors last week to push the NEB. “The city should ask for a public process it can participate in or it’s unlikely to get one,” argued Bennett. “Otherwise the NEB will have no formal notification of the city’s interest.”
That push doesn’t seem likely to happen because councillors didn’t respond to that Bennett recommendation. But at the urging of Matthew Green council directed staff to write to both the NEB and United Refining demanding the removal of several kilometres of old pipe that Enbridge left in the ground when it expanded a portion of Line 10 last year.
Green argued failing to remove them is “forwarding risks onto future generations” and that “the position of the council and staff has always been that decommissioned pipes should be removed from the rights-of-way especially on municipal property and on private property”. His motion was seconded by the mayor and backed unanimously by councillors.
It was also argued that the federal government should require removals of abandoned pipes as a matter of principle. Terry Whitehead noted that federal regulations already require that mine closures force the owners to return “everything to its original state” and “make the land whole again”. He argued it is hypocritical not to apply the same principles to decommissioned pipelines.
During the hearings on the expansion of Line 10, the city had asked the NEB to require removal of the decommissioned pipeline but its request was missed or ignored and got no mention in the January 2017 approval decision. Council launched a legal challenge of the NEB decision but subsequently withdrew it without explanations.
Problems with the pipeline regulator’s process and decisions seem to be never ending. During the 2015 election campaign, Trudeau denounced the Board and promised reforms including a re-examination of the NEB approval of the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion across British Columbia.
However, it was not re-examined despite pleas from the British Columbia government and multiple municipal mayors including those from Vancouver and Burnaby. Indigenous and BC government legal challenges and the arrests of over 200 people for civil disobedience led the Texas-based Kinder Morgan to threaten to abandon the project.
In response, the federal government announced it is buying the Kinder-Morgan’s 65-year-old pipeline for $4.5 billion by late July and will push ahead with the $7.4 billion expansion across BC. That planned bailout with tax dollars is financially foolhardy according to some prominent economists who say there are no secured markets for the tar sands bitumen that the pipeline is scheduled to carry.
The climate implications have been labeled a “no-win bet”. Greenhouse gas emissions just from the expanded Kinder Morgan pipeline oil would exceed those from nearly all current transportation in Canada. It likely makes it impossible for the Trudeau government to reach even the modest Harper-crafted reduction targets agreed to in the Paris climate accord.