I have huge news to share!
Kinder Morgan is suspending all “non-essential activities” on their controversial tar sands pipeline project. The Texas-based corporation has issued an ultimatum – with a May 31 deadline – to reach agreements with all stakeholders. After that, the corporation said it would be “…difficult to conceive of any scenario in which we would proceed with the project.”
As Grand Chief Stewart Phillip said, after leading a blockade Kinder Morgan’s Burnaby tank farm that has lasted more than 500 days, Kinder Morgan “just blinked.”
This is important news and it gives us an opportunity to step up our efforts to stop this export pipeline expansion that would send diluted bitumen from the Alberta tar sands to the West Coast (Salish Sea).
Kinder Morgan representatives recently told investors that they want the federal government to take “pre-emptive action” to stop B.C. from wielding its jurisdictional authority. Many people, including Council of Canadians supporters like yourself, do not want the pipeline expansion to proceed and have been taking bold action outside the Burnaby tank farm, holding rallies, writing letters and talking to their political representatives to stop it. Kinder Morgan is now calling on the Trudeau government to reaffirm the project’s “entitlement to proceed.”
On the political front, Prime Minister Trudeau and Minister Carr are both pressuring the B.C. government, asking Premier John Horgan to stop all “threats to delay” the project. Trudeau ominously tweeted “Canada is a country of the rule of law, and the federal government will act in the national interest. Access to world markets for Canadian resources is a core national interest. The Trans Mountain expansion will be built.”
The Trudeau government approved the Kinder Morgan pipeline under the broken Harper-era National Energy Board, with insufficient band-aid interim measures. The approval failed to address the significant shortfalls in consulting Indigenous peoples, assessing the risks of a pipeline or tanker spill, and the climate impacts of another tar sands export pipeline.
The federal government must stop citing the national interest in an effort to exclude the voices of opposition which are overwhelming them. This is an effort to mislead the public into believing that everyone benefits from this pipeline while in reality the primary beneficiaries are multinational oil corporations and their executives.
Read more about the Kinder Morgan pipeline and Indigenous rights, water protection and climate change.
