Pay to Play in BC with Spectra

Six years ago the BC government decided not to bother doing its own environmental assessments any more because it was so much more efficient to hand that responsibility over to the industry-captured federal National Energy Board for rubber-stamping. That deal was called the Environmental Assessment Equivalency Agreement.

In January the BC Supreme Court ruled that the BC government did not have the authority to pass off its constitutional obligations onto the NEB and found this agreement "invalid" as it served as an end run around the province having to consult BC First Nations over major pipeline projects on their territories. Score one for Gitga'at First Nation.

Now this equivalency agreement can be cancelled by either the NEB or the BC Environmental Assessment Office at any time with 30 days notice but Christy Clark opted instead for another end run - passing an Order In Council last Thursday exempting five Peace region natural-gas projects from the provincial environmental assessments the Supreme Court says it must now carry out: 

The Spectra South Peace pipeline, Spectra's Dawson gas plant, Spectra's Fort Nelson North plant, Nova Gas Transmission's Groundbirch pipeline, and Nova Gas Transmission's Horn River mainline extension.

As noted by Charlie Smith in the Georgia Straight : Christy Clark cabinet issues order-in-council to get around court ruling on environmental assessments

"Premier Christy Clark's former deputy chief of staff, Kim Haakstad, is Spectra Energy's manager of technical workforce strategy."

Ms Haakstad was forced to resign her position as Christy's chief of staff in March 2013 over the "Quick Win" ethnic vote election scandal but was back in May stumping for Christy in her bid to win a seat in her home riding of Vancouver-Point Grey - which she lost, making her a Premier without a riding until a safer seat could be found for her. 
Haakstad made the jump to Spectra three months later in August 2013. 

Over at RossK's killer reporting and banjo emporium, some of his commenters wondered if Spectra contributed to the $50,000 top up salary Christy receives from the BC Libs each year.   
Dunno, guys, but Texas-based Spectra has been pretty good to the BC Libs : 

From the BC gov press release : 

"EAO has begun a process for the projects which are also impacted by the court decision but have not been approved or constructed. These projects include: 

Approved Projects – not yet constructed

North Montney Mainline Pipeline Project; andEnbridge Northern Gateway Project. 

Projects currently under review

Trans Mountain Expansion Project; andTowerbirch Expansion Project.

Following a process set out by EAO including consultation with Aboriginal groups, ministers will make environmental assessment decisions on these projects according to the act."

Extra homework : Why Do So Many BC Liberal Operatives End Up in Trouble?

Criminal charges, convictions, and more plague the party.

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National Energy Board Ok's Trans Mountain Pipeline

You're shocked, I'm sure.

National Energy Board presser in Calgary today, Robert Steedman :  

"The NEB recommends that the Government of Canada find the Trans Mountain expansion project to be in Canada's public interest. ... The project would not likely cause significant environmental effects."

The Texas-based Kinder Morgan twinned pipeline will run from Alberta to Burnaby and Burrard Inlet BC, increasing tanker traffic by 600%. 

Here is the Kinder Morgan pipeline in the community of Burnaby in 2007, sending geysers of crude 12 meters into the air for half an hour before spilling into Burrard Inlet:




In January the National Energy Board sided with Kinder Morgan in refusing the Province of BC's request for more details on how KM would handle an oil spill, citing "commercial, security, and privacy reasons".  

Former BC Hydro CEO Marc Eliesen referred to the NEB as "industry-captured" and their Trans Mountain hearings as "a fraudulent process" and "a public farce" in his letter of resignation from the hearings. 

Not to worry, said the Federal Liberals on the campaign trail in BC in the October federal election : 

“We are going to redo the National Energy Board process. We’re going to broaden the scope. We’re going to make sure it’s objective, fair and based on science.”

So what did we get? A three-person mini-NEB announced just two days before NEB gave the Trans Mountain its blessing - to listen to us alongside the same old NEB :

“The panel is not going to come back with a formal recommendation about whether the process should go ahead. It’s going to come back and tell the minister that this is what we heard from communities..."

Dear mini-NEB, let me save you the trouble. Here's three just from today :

First Nations vow to kill Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion with lawsuits

Local governments "deeply disappointed" by NEB ruling on Kinder Morgan expansion

It's kayaks vs tankers as pipeline battle heats up in BC

Meanwhile, back at mini-NEB base camp :
NattyPost, April 11, 2016 : Trudeau convinced that pipeline strategy must be top priority

"Justin Trudeau has told his senior lieutenants to draw up plans to make the Energy East pipeline and the Trans Mountain expansion in British Columbia a reality.
The prime minister has been convinced by his finance minister, Bill Morneau, and other influential voices around the cabinet table that the pipelines have to be built to achieve the ambitious economic growth targets his government has set."

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DILBIT does the Nebbies

The National Energy Board has sided with Kinder Morgan in refusing the Province of BC's request for more details on how KM would handle an oil spill from KM's proposed $5.4-billion Edmonton-to-Burnaby Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. 
None of our business apparently. Kinder Morgan cited "commercial, security, and privacy reasons" for their redactions.

The NEB is also rather coy when it comes to identifying the former energy industry links among the members that make up their own ranks.  NEB bios are full of expressions like "contributed to the creation and development of major energy projects" without getting into exactly which projects and companies they represent. So to augment that lack of info - here's the Nebbies...

Not to pick on "Bob" in the toon specifically here but rather than the NEB stating that Mr. Bob Vergette was once "Vice President, Operations with a major North American liquids pipeline company", it would seem rather more to the point given NEB's current Trans Mountain review to include the info that company he was VP of was Trans Mountain Pipelines - even if it was a decade ago.

NEB Chair and CEO Peter Watson - formerly Deputy Minister of the Alberta Executive Council til last June - is at least straight up about NEB priorities. Last November he explained that "the board's main job is to ensure proper construction of the pipeline" while he saw environmental concerns as more "the job of the provinces and pipeline company".

NEB Vice Chair Lyne Mercier : 29 years with Gaz Metro.

Roland George : according to NEB "worked primarily in the private energy sector for over three decades", is also a Gaz Metro alumni, and held senior positions with the Canadian Energy Research Institute, or CERI, a not-for-profit tarsands booster. 

Philip Davies : Vice-President, Law and General Counsel of SaskPower ; VP, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of Encana Gas Storage

Shane Parrish : Manager of Business Development for Canadian Petroleum Engineering

Ron Wallace : From NEB : "At AGRA, he was involved in major oil and gas operations throughout the former Soviet Union and Russia where he managed major project assignments in conjunction with the World Bank."
Also "senior management positions with Petro-Canada and CanStar Oil Sands Ltd."

Kenneth Bateman : "VP of Legal Affairs for Enmax, a large energy distribution, supply and service company"

Alison Scott : Deputy Energy Minister of Nova Scotia and offshore oil promoter

James Ballem : former Conservative MLA and PEI Minister of Environment and Energy.

Mike Richmond : energy lawyer and Co-Chair of the Energy and Power Group at McMillan LLP; and on the board of the Ontario Energy Association.

Jacques Gauthier : one time personal envoy to Harper in 2010 for the Vancouver Olympics, served on the Prime Minister's Advisory Committee on the Public Service, and was "senior VP and CEO of Kruger Energy Inc., where he headed up a new division dedicated to the development of renewable energy" . 
NEB bio : "Mr. Gauthier has contributed to the creation and development of major energy projects in Canada, the United States and Europe."

The only NEB member who doesn't seem to fit comfortably into the oil and gas sector insider mold is David Hamilton - Chief Electoral Officer and Deputy Minister and Clerk of the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories. 

Could be it's possible to be just a bit too much inside : 
NEB : Onshore Pipeline Regulation Incidents 2000 to 2012 :

"A truly captured regulator " said Marc Eliesen, a senior energy executive who once served as CEO of BC Hydro, when he quit his role as a NEB intervenor in the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain tarsands-to-tankers expansion project.

This post an update to Norm Farrell's from 2013 as more players have been added since.

Collected DILBITs
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DILBIT : The smartest guys in the room

Burnaby To Appeal NEB's Kinder Morgan Access Decision 

Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Advertising Blitz During Election Doesn't Count as Elections Advertising: Elections BC Ruling

Kinder Morgan slaps Burnaby residents with multi-million-dollar lawsuit

Kinder Morgan questions how much B.C. First Nation still eats fish

Gay serum rumour riles Burnaby politics

Ok, I don't think we can pin that last one on the smartest guys in the room, but meantime ...

Energy Executive Blasts Kinder Morgan NEB Review As “Fraudulent,” Quits

Former BC Hydro CEO Marc Eliesen referred to the NEB as "industry-captured" and their Trans Mountain hearings as "a fraudulent process" and "a public farce" in his letter of resignation from the hearings. 

After the cross-examination phase of the review was inexplicably shelved, intervenors were instead invited to submit their questions in writing. Trans Mountain refused to answer them "or referred back to the inadequate information in the original application that gave rise to the question in the first place."

"Out of the approximately 2000 questions not answered by Trans Mountain that Intervenors called on the [National Energy] Board to compel answers, only 5 per cent were allowed by the Board and 95 per cent were rejected."

"The Board has sided with Trans Mountain dismissing the Province of BC’s need for answers in pursuit of its duty to British Columbians. The Province should cancel the Equivalency Agreement with the NEB on this project and undertake its own environmental assessment as the only meaningful way in which it will be able to effectively obtain the answers it seeks."

BC, you will recall, gave up its right to do its own environmental assessments so as not to unnecessarily duplicate the work of the National Energy Board; in 2010 BC signed an Equivalency Agreement promising to accept the NEB's decisions.   Ha. 

Economist Robyn Allen :  The National Energy Board Guaranteed Kinder Morgan a Fund to Push Pipeline Expansion Through Regulatory Review

"In a precedent setting NEB decision in 2011, the Board granted Kinder Morgan the right to pre-fund future expansion applications from five firm shipping customer contracts to its Westridge terminal. Two of the five companies funding Kinder Morgan’s pre-development costs are Chinese National Oil Companies PetroChina and Nexen, while the remaining three are US Oil, Astra and Cenovus. These companies pay an average premium of $1.45 per barrel to guaranteed $28.6 million per year is allocated to the special account.

Over a ten year period, Kinder Morgan will amass $286 million to push its expansion plans through regulatory review. Pre-funding through shipper charges means that the Canadian public and the Canadian economy bear the risk and the cost of Kinder Morgan’s pre-development process, rather than the risk and cost being borne by Kinder Morgan’s US based shareholders.

Kinder Morgan has confirmed that $136.3 million of its special fund has been allocated to finance the current NEB public review process."

Texas-based Kinder Morgan is the third largest energy company in North America, valued at $120 Billion. 

Update : Crowdfunding campaign raises thousands to support legal defence of Kinder Morgan protesters

Donate towards the legal costs to challenge Kinder Morgan in the courts.

Boris in comments : "Meanwhile, the price of oil and therefore the lucrativity of pipelines keeps falling as US production ramps up due to fracking and renewables reach cost parity with fossil fuels. The pipeline mayn't even be built but we'll be left with a fracked process to be abused for the next big thing."

More DILBIT

ETA : Eliesen's descriptive quotes re NEB hearings
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Things that go better with Koch

We don't hear much about the Koch brothers' tarsands dealings in Canada so when a headline in the Washington Post reads : 
The biggest lease holder in Canada’s oil sands isn’t Exxon Mobil or Chevron. It’s the Koch brothers ,

it's still notable even after follow-up spats as to whether Koch was only the biggest lease holder in northern Alberta or the biggest US lease holder or perhaps only the second or third biggest overall and whether they actually stand to gain on the Keystone XL pipeline given they haven't reserved any space on it. 

  

For their part, Koch Industries has repeatedly denied any interest in K-XL one way or the other - despite their Application  to the National Energy Board for K-XL Intervenor Status for their Alberta subsidiary, Flint Hills : 

"(Flint Hills) is among Canada's largest crude oil purchasers, shippers and exporters, coordinating supply for its refinery in Pine Bend, Minnesota. Consequently, Flint Hills has a direct and substantial interest in the application."

The words "direct and substantial interest" here, say the Kochs, merely refer to "curiosity" and presumably not to having a direct and substantial interest in eventually getting their crude to the Koch refineries on the Texas coast at the other end of the pipeline from Flint Hills.

The National Energy Board passed K-XL in March 2010. 
Meanwhile at the same time south of the border, the Koch brothers were brazenly hoovering up members of NEB's US counterpart, the House Energy and Commerce Committee, through their conservative political advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity, which succeeded in signing up 600 lawmakers and candidates to their "No Climate Tax Pledge" in 2010.
Of the 12 Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee in 2011, 9 signed the pledge.

The only other Koch-related news we received regarding Canada, aside from Ezra Levant's  "wonderful summer internship" as a Koch fellow 20 years ago, was that Preston Manning, founder of the Reform Party and President of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, is also a senior fellow at the Koch-funded Fraser Institute.

Then earlier this month, the Manning Centre held one of their Networking Conferences in Ottawa featuring Adam Guillette, a Koch-connected speaker, on "Recapturing Popular Culture and the Arts" by "framing the debate in narratives".  
Guillette is director of development and outreach at Moving Picture Institute, which boasts  Charles Koch's wife Elizabeth as a founding director and board member and seeks to fund and promote young right wing film makers.
Guillette's MPI bio states he was a "founder of the Florida chapter of Americans for Prosperity" which pours money into defeating Democrats, where "he served as state director and head of donor relations".

Press Progress snagged 2 minutes of his Manning Centre speech on how to reframe fracking and charter schools as underdogs instead - shades of Frank Luntz! - plus further notes from it at the link. 

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Two minutes not enough?
Here Guillette addresses Tea Party Orlando as Florida State Director for Americans for Prosperity "doing grassroots training all around the country" as part of the "Global Warming Hot Air Tour against Global Warming Alarmism" :

Global warming legislation will raise taxes by $1.2-trillion, lose millions of jobs, and even if it works it will only result in a reduction of one tenth of one degree celsius by the year 2100. 

The phrases freedom, liberty, and free market also come up a lot.

Well done, Manning Centre.
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DILBIT : NEBBY's Fish 'n Chips!

Northwest Coast Energy News: DFO hands over fisheries protection along pipelines to the NEB.

"The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has handed responsibility for fish and fish habitat along pipeline routes over to the Alberta-based, energy friendly National Energy Board. The same agreement also gives the National Energy Board responsibility for dealing with First Nations fisheries if a pipeline or power line crosses their traditional territory.

As of December 16, 2013,  Enbridge no longer has to apply to DFO for permits to alter fish habitat along the Northern Gateway route." 

From the NEB MOU : 

"... the NEB application assessment process will be relied upon by DFO to the extent possible, to ensure Aboriginal groups are consulted as required, and where appropriate accommodated."

Yesterday the DFO issued a clarification :.

"Fisheries and Oceans Canada has established a collaborative agreement with the National Energy Board that will help eliminate overlap and duplication during regulatory reviews while maintaining a strong regime to manage threats to fish and fish habitat.

The National Energy Board is best placed to deliver regulatory review responsibilities under the Fisheries Act for activities relating to federally regulated energy infrastructure (such as pipelines)." 

This is the same NEB that worked with the RCMP and CSIS to "monitor the risk posed by environmental groups and First Nations" prior to public hearings into Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline project, which the NEB then dutifully approved in December :

"In the unlikely event of a large oil spill ... we found that the adverse effects would not be permanent and widespread."

No mention as yet of Nebby's Fish'nChips shops opening up along the proposed pipeline route.

Previous DILBIT toons
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DILBIT : National Enbridge Board approves Northern Gateway

From The Enbridge Northern Gateway Project Joint Review Panel :

"In the unlikely event of a large oil spill ... we found that the adverse effects would not be permanent and widespread."

And just in case you aren't convinced of this by reading it just the once, the National Energy Enbridge Board repeats it three more times in their report.

But "in the unlikely event of a large oil spill ..." :

"Our final condition requires the company to maintain insurance and other financial resources totaling $950 million. The financial assurances would include $100 million in ready cash for immediate costs, $600 million in insurance or similar instruments, and $250 million in financial backstopping such as guarantees by equity partners."

And what did we learn from the 3.3 million litre $1-billion cleanup at the Enbridge dilbit spill in Kalamazoo three years ago?

                                                         It sinks.

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Enbridge hearings hit with Snuffaluffagus hoax

Two Brazilians who have never even heard of the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway tarsands-to-tankers pipeline appear to have been signed up as applicants to speak at the hearings. A Calgary Herald editor confirmed their applications were fake by simply pulling their names off the National Energy Board list, phoning them up in Brazil, and asking them.

And right about now I'm guessing you're remembering Kory Teneycke and the Snuffaluffagus hoax.

On Sept 3 2010, former Harper director of communications Kory Teneycke was striving to get his dream of a Fox News North up and running in Canada just as a Stop Fox News North petition from Avaaz was circulating.

"It is safe to assume many, if not most, are Americans" 

he wrote in an op ed slamming the petition that day, sounding eerily similar to Joe Oliver this week.
And not only that, he said, but they were fake names : Snuffaluffagus and Homer Simpson were signatories to the Avaaz petition along with real people who had not signed it, including Andrew Coyne, Paul Wells, and Kady O'Malley. 


Kady was immediately suspicious :

okay, this is weird. how did @KoryTeneycke get a list of *fake* (not fraudulent) sigs on a list that isn't available online?

Teneycke then revealed that he had been contacted with the list of fake names by the prankster who had added them. When Kady told him of her displeasure at being included, Teneycke said his "source" told him he had not added the journalists' names.


Avaaz was understandably livid at this first ever spamming of one of their petitions and filed a complaint with the RCMP and the Ottawa police to investigate the source behind the single IP address from which they had all apparently originated. Although police declined to investigate, Teneycke resigned from Sun TV the next day. for three months before returning as VP in January.


Flash forward to the The Calgary Herald yesterday, who were questioning environmental groups about the two fake Brazilian sign ups :

Unfortunately, after just one day of searching, finding two people who were signed up against their knowledge indicates that at least some people are not interested in acting ethically or hearing the science and the facts. They simply want to mess with the process and throw a wrench into the gears.

Well I certainly agree with that assessment although I don't see any particular advantage to the environmental groups to falsely add the names of people who are never going to testify. This isn't a petition.
No, I think it would more likely be perpetrated by someone seeking to undermine the very legitimacy of the public hearing process itself. Back to the Calgary Herald :

Clearly, the National Energy board and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency have not done a very good job of ensuring the legitimacy of the process.

It's the Snuffaluffagus hoax all over again.
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Update : Big City Lib! Go! Now!
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Steve frets about foreign influence on Enbridge pipeline

G&M : 'Foreign money' could gum up pipeline approval, Harper warns

"Stephen Harper is warning about the possibility that hearings into Enbridge's Northern Gateway pipeline will be "hijacked" by foreign interests. The Prime Minister is threatening to prevent foreign environmental interests from delaying the approval of a pipeline that would take bitumen from the Alberta oil sands to the West Coast for shipment to Asian markets."

Ok then, let's have a look at some of those 'foreign interests' which have applied for intervenor status at the Enbridge hearings due to start in two days, courtesy of the National Energy Board's  Regulatory Document Index:

Enbridge Northern Gateway Project Joint Review Process 

Registration for Intervenor Status

• DAEWOOD INTERNATIONAL AMERICA CORP,  Anaheim, California 

• BP CANADA, subsidiary of BP (formerly British Petroleum) of Gulf Oil disaster fame

• TOTAL E&P, a wholly-owned subsidiary of TOTAL SA, France 

• EXXON MOBIL OIL,  Fairfax, Virginia 

• FLINT HILLS RESOURCES LTD, a Koch Industries subsidiary   

• SINOCANADA PETROLEUM, Sinopec, China

Bloomberg, Jan 4, 2012: 

"Ten companies have contributed $10 million each to help Enbridge finance the regulatory approval process, Enbridge spokesman Paul Stanway said in October.  

China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. also known as Sinopec, was previously the only company that had publicly stated its participation."

G&M : Oil giants back Gateway pipe :

"Gateway’s financial backers include Chinese state-owned energy company Sinopec. Market sources have said they believe China National Petroleum Corp. also holds an interest in Gateway. Sinochem Group, another Chinese energy firm, is also believed to support Gateway."

According to StatsCan in October last year, much of our tarsands is already "hijacked by foreign interests".

StatsCan : Total assets, operating revenues and operating profits under foreign control

Oil and gas extraction and support activities - 2009 

• Assets - 35.9% under foreign control
• Operating revenues - 51.1% under foreign control 
• Operating profits : 41.3% under foreign control

"American-controlled enterprises continued to dominate the shares of assets, revenues and profits under foreign-control. These enterprises increased their share of both revenues and profits to 59.1% and 58.3% respectively." 

"In the oil and gas extraction industry, foreign-controlled enterprises increased their share of revenues to 51.1%. This occurred as revenues declined nearly twice as fast in 2009 for domestic enterprises as they did for foreign enterprises."

I thought this was kinda cute from Ethical Oil's Kathryn Marshall though :

Canadians have much at stake in the construction of the pipeline and “must take a stand against foreigners and their lobbying groups interfering in our decision.”

Okey dokey then. Really looking forward to her defence of China as a foreign 'ethical oil' majority financial backer of the pipeline.

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Updates via Dave : There's nothing ethical about it :

• The Real Story : Unethical oil and its friends and 

• Northern Insights : "Ethical Oil" - an argument that makes no sense

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TransCanada : an "American company"

Hey, did you think TransCanada, the company intending to extend the Keystone XL pipeline from Hardisty, Alberta to the Free Tariff  Zone refineries in Texas, was a Canadian company? 
Me too. Must be something about the name. And the fact that articles about TransCanada always refer to it as "Alberta-based".

However TransCanada's own K-XL Know the Facts webpage begs to differ. Debunking the "Myth" that  TransCanada is a foreign company operating in the US :

"Like many American companies with operations in Canada, we are incorporated and registered in both Canada and the United States. We currently have 1,631 talented employees in 33 U.S. states. Our U.S. operations are headquartered in Houston and will be responsible for the U.S. construction of Keystone XL."

Huh. 

Now as we already know via Inside Climate News, Koch exports 25% of all tarsands crude to the US.

In 2009, Flint Hills Resources Canada LP, an Alberta-based subsidiary of Koch Industries, applied for—and won—"intervenor status" in the National Energy Board hearings that led to Canada's 2010 approval of its 327-mile portion of the pipeline. 

The company's Flint Hills subsidiary already has an oil terminal in Hardisty, Alberta, the starting point of the Keystone XL. It sends about 250,000 barrels of diluted bitumen a day to a heavy oil refinery it owns near St. Paul, Minn., making that refinery "among the top processors of Canadian crude in the United States," the company website says.

Yesterday that same National Energy Board, Canada's presumed energy regulator, rejected the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union's request to hold a new hearing into K-XL. 
CEP, which opposes K-XL on the reasonable grounds it would rather see tarsands refineries built in Canada, maintained "the project had violated its permit by not starting construction by a March 2011 deadline". However, according to the NEB, TransCanada's 'earth moving' activities in Canada apparently counts as a start. 

Meanwhile, south of the border, three environmental groups filed a lawsuit against TransCanada earlier this month for mowing a 110 ft wide swath clear across the state of Nebraska prior to receiving the official US go ahead for K-XL to begin. TransCanada responded that mowing grasslands and moving endangered beetles out of the way of the proposed pipeline doesn't count as a start.

So far, no matter which side of the border you're on, things really do go better for Koch. 
And for TransCanada, an "American company".

Update : From Harvard Business School : a short history of TransCanada Pipelines

TransCanada's "Know the Facts" webpage - June 2012 http://web.archive.org/web/20121109020149/http://www.transcanada.com/docs/Key_Projects/know_the_facts_kxl.pdf

 
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Hey Joe, where you goin with that gunk in your hand?

While in Washington oildrumming up K-XL support with US senators yesterday, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver plumped for the Keystone XL pipeline in his keynote address to the 4th Annual United States Energy Association (USEA) Energy Supply Forum.
Here is the quote chosen by Natural Resources Canada "for broadcast use" :

“The future of North America’s economy and our national security is inextricably tied to energy,” said Minister Oliver. “Clearly, it is in both of our interests to ensure that our future oil supply remains stable, secure and developed in an environmentally responsible way.”

Our future oil supply? Really, Joe?
We're still going with the tarsands = North American security model?

For starters, Canada imports half of its oil for domestic use - over a million barrels per day - from various "conflict oil" states, while exporting 65% of its "ethical oil" tarsands crude to the US.

Dear Joe : How does the K-XL proposal to export tarsands - owned in part by the Chinese state - to Texas to be refined by Saudi's Aramco refinery in a Foreign Trade Zone [read: no import/export duties or taxes] so that it can then be shipped off to Europe and Latin America have anything to do with "our national security"?

Exporting Energy Security : Keystone XL Exposed
Interesting report. It contends that there is currently a glut of domestic oil in the US due to increasing vehicle efficiency and slow economic growth, so the real purpose of the K-XL is to make tarsands crude available to the FTZ refineries in Texas which are specifically set up to turn it into diesel for export.

Nothing to do with national security, nothing to do with energy independence, nothing to do with gasoline prices at the pump.
So who is it all you guys are working for again?

The Guardian : Koch company declared 'substantial interest' in Keystone XL pipeline

"In recent months Koch Industries Inc., the business conglomerate run by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, has repeatedly told a U.S. Congressional committee and the news media that the proposed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline has "nothing to do with any of our businesses."
But the company has told Canadian energy regulators a different story.

In 2009, Flint Hills Resources Canada LP, an Alberta-based subsidiary of Koch Industries, applied for—and won—"intervenor status" in the National Energy Board hearings that led to Canada's 2010 approval of its 327-mile portion of the pipeline.

In the form it submitted to the Energy Board, Flint Hills wrote that it "is among Canada's largest crude oil purchasers, shippers and exporters. Consequently, Flint Hills has a direct and substantial interest in the application" for the pipeline under consideration.

The Koch brothers own nearly all of Wichita, Kan.-based Koch Industries, the second-largest private company in the United States. The energy and manufacturing conglomerate earns an estimated $100 billion in annual revenue from its network of subsidiaries—a mix of oil, gas, pipeline, chemical, fertilizer and paper and pulp companies. In addition to its Canadian operation, Koch's Flint Hills subsidiary operates oil refineries in Alaska, Texas and Minnesota as well as a dozen fuel terminals in the Midwest and Texas.

The Koch brothers have donated millions to Republican candidates and conservative movements, bankrolling groups involved in Tea Party causes and in campaigns to deny climate change science and the need for cleaner energy."

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