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.
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Tuesday update : Kinder Morgan was unhappy at being pilloried by Rachel Maddow and issued a statement that their remarks were taken out of context :
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.”.
