The pristine wilderness of Eastern British Columbia is one of the most stunning and environmentally sensible landscapes of North America. The potential danger of contaminating this untouched environment has now urged the provincial government of British Columbia to recommend to the federal Canadian review board to forego plans for a 730 mile pipeline designed to deliver bitumen crude from the Alberta tar sand fields to the Pacific coast. The decision will likely put an end to the Northern Gateways project pushed by Premier Stephen Harper in an effort to diversify Canada’s oil export strategy. Moreover, British Columbia’s rejection of the Enbridge pipeline will undoubtedly further fuel the already heated debate on TransCanada’s project for pipeline Keystone XL.
In the U.S. both supporters and opponents of Keystone will have registered the decision with great interest. Proponents of the pipeline as well as the government of Alberta were so far able to convincingly defend the environmental safety of the planned Keystone pipeline that would deliver Alberta’s crude to Gulf Coast refineries. However, recent spills such as a pipeline rupture in Mayflower, AR in April that spilled approximately 200,000 gallons of crude into a suburban neighborhood have started to raise concerns about the safety of America’s pipeline infrastructure. The decision of British Columbia’s government to pass on a $6 billion project over doubts that pipeline operator Enbridge could adequately respond to safety issues therefore comes at a very bad time. It might even further erode the public support for a pipeline that would traverse more than 1500 miles of American wilderness, farmland, and neighborhoods and that nobody would like to see contaminated. In this regard, one of the major concerns that have entered the debate is the unpredictability of oil sand bitumen in an emergency scenario. Some experts fear that crude derived from tar sand will be much more difficult to clean up after a pipeline spill and inflict more serious contaminations on the affected environment.
Up to now, the general consensus among policy makers was that a tar sand oil pipeline is inevitable. If the U.S. State Department would deny Keystone, then Canada would work on an alternative solution for bringing Alberta’s crude to market. Now, one of those alternatives, so it seems, will be shut down due to homegrown opposition. As a result of BC’s veto, TransCanada might now face somewhat of a dilemma. While it seems that Keystone should now become even more important as the primary option for Canadian exports, the BC decision, at the same time, signals that opposition on the government level might be stronger than expected.
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