Monday, May 05, 2014

Rachel Maddow rips Kinder Morgan



                                                        see update below 

A clearly "gob-smacked" Rachel Maddow rips into Kinder Morgan for touting the local economic benefits of oil spills :
"Spill response and clean-up creates business and employment opportunities for affected communities" depending on "the willingness of local businesses and residents to pursue response opportunities" 
in a 90 second clip from Press Progress who broke the original story.

Maddow's full show on pipeline and crude oil train transport safety opens with the "12 meter geyser of crude oil" spraying over a Burnaby BC neighbourhood in 2007 after a Kinder Morgan pipeline was accidentally punctured by a backhoe doing streetwork. 

Maddow notes that the Houston, Texas-based Kinder Morgan has applied to triple the capacity of its Trans Mountain pipeline from 300,000 barrels per day to 890,000 barrels per day in a $5.4B expansion proposal bringing tarsands crude to Westridge Marine Terminal in ... Burnaby!

Maddow :
"Turn that frown upside down, oil-soaked neighbourhood! You can get a job cleaning it up if you just have the right attitude ... We’ll make it worth your while - you'll get a job out of it! That is seriously what Kinder Morgan is arguing to the freaking Canadian government about why they should be allowed to triple the capacity of their pipeline. More oil means more chances for oil spills and more oil spills means more jobs cleaning up oil spills! ... If you let us triple the size of our pipeline, we might spill more oil and then you could hire yourselves to clean it up."
The whole show is well worth a watch if only for the collected video footage of oilspill after tanker train spill in towns and rivers and wheatfields being allowed to burn themselves out for four days before any clean-up even starts because apparently that's the best oilspill  emergency response we've got.

No wait ... we do have a better emergency response actually. 
It's called the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, located right across the Burrard Inlet from the Burnaby terminus of Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline, and they are launching a legal challenge to the National Energy Board's review of the tarsands-to-tankers pipeline.
"The process to review Kinder Morgan's proposed pipeline expansion and tanker project was designed without First Nations consultation or public participation. The timelines appear to have been designed to rush through approvals," says Chief Maureen Thomas.
I guess the Tsleil-Waututh Nation aren't too excited by the promise of "employment opportunities for affected communities" in Kinder Morgan's oil spill proposal.
.
Tuesday update : Kinder Morgan was unhappy at being pilloried by Rachel Maddow and issued a statement that their remarks were taken out of context :
“it’s part of what the NEB expects us to provide in the application" and KM was  "required to analyze both positive and negative effects of a spill in its project application"
This morning a National Energy Board regulator says that's crap :
"A manual provided to all applicants asks them to assess the project’s expected overall beneficial and adverse socio-economic and environmental impacts, according to the NEB’s Sarah Kiley.
“It does not say that we expect to see an assessment of the positive benefits of a potential spill. In this case, (Kinder Morgan) has chosen to indicate that there will be economic benefits as the result of a spill or malfunction.”
.

8 comments:

West End Bob said...

The really sad thing is that kinder morgan's argument will ring true with WAY too many people on both sides of the border.

Very sad, indeed . . . .

Anonymous said...

Somehow the international joke that is Canada's resource extraction reputation can be assuaged by some fat frat standing up and saying jobs jobs jobs a couple of times to the same Canadians whose jobs are increasingly going to temporary foreign workers for lower pay.
Yet still the ruse works.

scotty on denman said...

Are we all going to be rich?

Unknown said...

Well the law suits have already started.

http://thetyee.ca/News/2014/05/06/Trans-Mountain-Participation-Challenge/

This Harper government (the worst of all time) has begun by picking a fight with Canadians and favoring foreign companies like Kinder Morgan. I for-see a long series of legal challenges to this government because of its omnibus behaviour.

Did Steve really think Canadians would roll over?

Anonymous said...

Andrew Leach says the problem is with doing "economic impact analysis"

http://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/saying-oil-spills-boost-the-economy-is-even-dumber-than-it-sounds-leach/

Holly Stick

Alison said...

Mogs : Even the NEB's contention that it is allowing people "directly affected" to have intervener status is bullshit.
John Vissers, whose property is near the Kinder Morgan oil tank farm in Sumas where there was a spill in 2012, was denied intervener status.

Holly Stick : Good article! Thanks.

"Some of the benefits they cite for the pipeline such as jobs and direct and indirect GDP impact would be higher if they built the pipeline, ripped it all up, and built it again- twice the jobs—twice the GDP impact."
Ha!
Broken window fallacy - the pitch used to justify disaster capitalism.

In other news - Christie Clark advisor/funder Gwyn Morgan, who resigned as board chair of SNC-Lavalin exactly a year ago three months after the BC gov awarded SNC-L a $900M contract to build the Evergreen Line rapid transit project in Vancouver, has been appointed chair of the B.C. gov's Industry Training Authority.

Anonymous said...

Harper's good buddy Gwyn Morgan, who failed to get a patronage appointment as a patronage watchdog?

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/politics/story.html?id=ef7d26ff-a4a8-435c-a1f8-a06ab1101a30&k=57662

Holly Stick

Alison said...

Yes, and former chief of the Alberta Energy Company.

CBC :

"Operation Kabriole" was planned and executed with the direct involvement of a Calgary based oil and gas business. Alberta Energy Company has a big operation in the Peace River country.

The RCMP's original plan was to blow up one of AEC's trucks. The company convinced the police to change the operation even though AEC had already given its approval, offered up a truck to be bombed and said it would pay for any major damages. Company officials were having second thoughts.

According to the RCMP's own files, the head of AEC's northern operations met with the police to say his bosses were concerned that bombing a vehicle would cause 'undue stress and fear' for employees driving company trucks.

So the company offered an alternative, a shed covering one of its "out of service" well sites not far from the suspects' property.

The bomb was set off Oct. 14, one week before AEC hosted two tense and emotional town hall meetings. Worried residents who turned out, were told by an expert, who was flown in by AEC, that they were the victims of 'eco-terrorists'.


In his bio, Morgan has said he was sorry for his part in this.

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