The National Energy Board (NEB) will release its decision this afternoon on Kinder Morgan’s controversial Trans Mountain pipeline proposal, but the project faces an insurmountable wall of opposition, says the Council of Canadians.
“Whatever the NEB decides, it won’t change the fact that there is no social licence to proceed with the Trans Mountain pipeline,” says Harjap Grewal, Pacific Regional Organizer with the Council of Canadians. “Thousands of people from across B.C. have protested, been arrested, and spoken out against the project. Twenty municipalities including Vancouver and Burnaby, representing over 2 million people, voted against the increased tanker traffic that the pipeline would bring. Seventeen First Nations in B.C. and Alberta are opposed to the pipeline including the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh.”
Texas-based Kinder Morgan is proposing to twin the Trans Mountain pipeline from northern Alberta to the British Columbia coast to increase the pipeline's capacity from 300,000 barrels per day to 890,000 barrels per day. The pipeline would carry diluted bitumen from the tar sands through Jasper National Park into the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, across the Vedder Fan aquifer and the municipality of Chilliwack’s protected groundwater zone, then across the Fraser River to the Westridge Marine Terminal at Burrard Inlet. Once there, the bitumen would be loaded onto more than 400 export mega-tankers each year.
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