Floods leave Yellowstone landscape 'dramatically changed'



RED LODGE, Mont. (AP) — The forces of fire and ice shaped Yellowstone National Park over thousands of years. It took decades longer for humans to tame it enough for tourists to visit, often from the comfort of their cars.

In just days, heavy rain and rapid snowmelt caused a dramatic flood that may forever alter the human footprint on the park's terrain and the communities that have grown around it.

The historic floodwaters that raged through Yellowstone this week, tearing out bridges and pouring into nearby homes, pushed a popular fishing river off course — possibly permanently — and may force roadways nearly torn away by torrents of water to be rebuilt in new places.

“The landscape literally and figuratively has changed dramatically in the last 36 hours,” said Bill Berg, a commissioner in nearby Park County. “A little bit ironic that this spectacular landscape was created by violent geologic and hydrologic events, and it’s just not very handy when it happens while we’re all here settled on it.”

The unprecedented flooding drove more than 10,000 visitors out of the nation’s oldest national park and damaged hundreds of homes in nearby communities, though remarkably no was reported hurt or killed. The only visitors left in the massive park straddling three states were a dozen campers still making their way out of the backcountry.

The park could remain closed as long as a week, and northern entrances may not reopen this summer, Superintendent Cam Sholly said.

“I’ve heard this is a 1,000-year event, whatever that means these days. They seem to be happening more and more frequently,” he said.

Sholly noted some weather forecasts include the possibility of additional flooding this weekend.

A house falls into the Yellowstone River in Gardiner, Montana after record flooding and rockslides in the area (June 14)

Days of rain and rapid snowmelt wrought havoc across parts of southern Montana and northern Wyoming, where it washed away cabins, swamped small towns and knocked out power. It hit the park as a summer tourist season that draws millions of visitors was ramping up during its 150th anniversary year.

Businesses in hard-hit Gardiner had just started really recovering from the tourism contraction brought by the coronavirus pandemic, and were hoping for a good year, Berg said.

“It’s a Yellowstone town, and it lives and dies by tourism, and this is going to be a pretty big hit,” he said. “They’re looking to try to figure out how to hold things together.”

Some of the worst damage happened in the northern part of the park and Yellowstone’s gateway communities in southern Montana. National Park Service photos of northern Yellowstone showed a mudslide, washed out bridges and roads undercut by churning floodwaters of the Gardner and Lamar rivers.

In Red Lodge, a town of 2,100 that’s a popular jumping-off point for a scenic route into the Yellowstone high country, a creek running through town jumped its banks and swamped the main thoroughfare, leaving trout swimming in the street a day later under sunny skies.

Residents described a harrowing scene where the water went from a trickle to a torrent over just a few hours.

The water toppled telephone poles, knocked over fences and carved deep fissures in the ground through a neighborhood of hundreds of houses. Electricity was restored by Tuesday, but there was still no running water in the affected neighborhood.


Heidi Hoffman left early Monday to buy a sump pump in Billings, but by the time she returned her basement was full of water.

“We lost all our belongings in the basement,” Hoffman said as the pump removed a steady stream of water into her muddy backyard. “Yearbooks, pictures, clothes, furniture. Were going to be cleaning up for a long time.”

At least 200 homes were flooded in Red Lodge and the town of Fromberg.

The flooding came as the Midwest and East Coast sizzle from a heat wave and other parts of the West burn from an early wildfire season amid a persistent drought that has increased the frequency and intensity of fires. Smoke from a fire in the mountains of Flagstaff, Arizona, could be seen in Colorado.

While the flooding hasn't been directly attributed to climate change, Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said a warming environment makes extreme weather events more likely than they would have been "without the warming that human activity has caused.”

“Will Yellowstone have a repeat of this in five or even 50 years? Maybe not, but somewhere will have something equivalent or even more extreme,” he said.

Heavy rain on top of melting mountain snow pushed the Yellowstone, Stillwater and Clarks Fork rivers to record levels Monday and triggered rock and mudslides, according to the National Weather Service. The Yellowstone River at Corwin Springs topped a record set in 1918.

Yellowstone's northern roads may remain impassable for a substantial length of time. The flooding affected the rest of the park, too, with park officials warning of yet higher flooding and potential problems with water supplies and wastewater systems at developed areas.

Major flooding swept away at least one bridge, washed away roads and set off mudslides in Yellowstone National Park on Monday, prompting officials to close the entrances to the popular tourist attraction and evacuate visitors. (June 13)

The rains hit just as area hotels filled up in recent weeks with summer tourists. More than 4 million visitors were tallied by the park last year. The wave of tourists doesn’t abate until fall, and June is typically one of Yellowstone’s busiest months.

Mark Taylor, owner and chief pilot of Rocky Mountain Rotors, said his company had airlifted about 40 paying customers over the past two days from Gardiner, including two women who were “very pregnant.”

Taylor spoke as he ferried a family of four adults from Texas, who wanted to do some more sightseeing before heading home.

“I imagine they’re going to rent a car and they’re going to go check out some other parts of Montana — somewhere drier,” he said.

At a cabin in Gardiner, Parker Manning of Terre Haute, Indiana, got an up-close view of the roiling Yellowstone River floodwaters just outside his door. Entire trees and even a lone kayaker streamed by.

In early evening, he shot video as the waters ate away at the opposite bank where a large brown house that had been home to park employees before they were evacuated was precariously perched.

In a large cracking sound heard over the river's roar, the house tipped into the waters and was pulled into the current. Sholly said it floated 5 miles (8 kilometers) before sinking.

The towns of Cooke City and Silvergate, just east of the park, were also isolated by floodwaters, which also made drinking water unsafe. People left a hospital and low-lying areas in Livingston.

In south-central Montana, 68 people at a campground were rescued by raft after flooding on the Stillwater River. Some roads in the area were closed and residents were evacuated.

In the hamlet of Nye, at least four cabins washed into the Stillwater River, said Shelley Blazina, including one she owned.

“It was my sanctuary,” she said Tuesday. “Yesterday I was in shock. Today I’m just in intense sadness.”

___

Whitehurst reported from Salt Lake City. Associated Press writers Amy Beth Hanson in Helena, Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, R.J. Rico in Atlanta, and Brian Melley in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Matthew Brown And Lindsay Whitehurst, The Associated Press

Armed Resistance to the Israeli Occupation Is Spreading in the West Bank

As Israel cracks down on Palestinian resistance, young men from small West Bank villages have been taking up arms.

By Shatha Hanaysha , 

MONDOWEISS

PublishedFebruary 17, 2024

Relatives carry the body of a Palestinian man who was killed by Israeli forces during a funeral ceremony in Jenin, West Bank, on November 10, 2023.

ISSAM RIMAWI / ANADOLU / GETTY IMAGES

This article was originally published in Mondoweiss.

In the early morning of Thursday, January 25, Israeli forces withdrew from the city of Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank following the army’s destruction of the city’s infrastructure and monuments of martyrs that lined the streets. Shortly after the withdrawal, an Israeli special forces unit raided and besieged a home in the small village of Bir al-Basha, south of Jenin, leading to clashes between the invading forces and a 20-year-old Palestinian man inside the house.

People in the village initially believed that the raid was a routine operation to arrest the young man, a former prisoner named Wisam Khashan. However, after Khashan was killed, the true narrative of the ambush emerged. Unbeknownst to his family, the martyr was, in fact, a resistance fighter who had been part of numerous armed confrontations attempting to repel Israeli army incursions into Jenin in recent months.

Earlier that day, prior to his assassination, Khashan had headed into the city as the army began its raid. There, he confronted Israeli military vehicles, firing a hail of bullets towards the army convoy. According to a local source, after the forces withdrew, Khashan returned to his village, just 15 kilometers (~9 miles) outside the city. On his way back, he was followed by an Israeli drone that tracked his movements up until the moment he returned to his house. Shortly after he arrived home, Israeli special forces raided his house and assassinated him.

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Though countless Palestinian resistance fighters in Jenin have been targeted and killed by Israeli forces over the past few years, Khashan’s assassination is notable in that it points to the growth of the Palestinian resistance across the West Bank. In cities like Jenin, resistance fighters have typically found safe haven within the city boundaries or inside the city’s refugee camp — a nucleus of armed struggle. However, Wisam Khashan’s story, one of a young man from a village traveling to and from the city center to fight and subsequently being tracked down and assassinated, made waves in the community.

And there are now many stories similar to Khashan’s, of young men from villages and towns and otherwise “quiet” cities who are taking up arms against the Israeli occupation.

A few weeks before the raid on Bir al-Basha, Israeli forces raided the village of Sir, another small village with a population of fewer than a thousand inhabitants located south of the city of Jenin. The raid, which took place on January 5, aimed to arrest a group of young men wanted for their involvement in student activism at one of the universities.

Following the failed arrest operation, armed clashes erupted on the outskirts of the village as the army withdrew. During the clashes, an explosive device detonated near one of the Israeli military vehicles, leading to the injury of a soldier, according to an Israeli army statement. The army was forced to dispatch a helicopter to evacuate the injured soldier.

The armed clashes shocked the residents of the tiny village, who, despite living in the Jenin area, were accustomed to relative quiet. A resident of the village told Mondoweiss that it was the first instance of armed clashes in the village since the First Intifada in 1987, and the army’s incursion into the village was described as the largest since the Second Intifada in 2000.

The events in Sir and Bir al-Basha paint a story of a larger pattern that has taken shape primarily in the northern West Bank. Although cities like Jenin, Nablus, and Tulkarem have emerged as hubs for armed resistance and Israeli repression over the past two years, since October 7, a new resistance landscape is emerging outside of these hubs. As Israel moves towards a more aggressive military approach in an attempt to quash armed resistance, the resistance is adapting and changing with it.
The anonymous resistance fighters of Qalqilya

One example of an emerging resistance group can be found southwest of Jenin and Tulkarem in the city of Qalqilya. One of the smaller cities in the West Bank, Qalqilya sits right on the Green Line, the demarcation line between the occupied West Bank and ‘48 Palestine (present-day Israel).

Qalqilya and its surrounding towns and villages have largely been considered “under control” and “contained” from an Israeli security perspective. It is surrounded on most sides by Israel’s separation wall and Israeli settlements and is “only a 20-minute drive to Tel Aviv,” as one resident put it, even though Tel Aviv and the other side of the wall are effectively inaccessible to the Palestinians in Qalqilya. A majority of the district’s land also falls under “Area C,” which is under complete Israeli security and civil control.

Due to its geography and the entrenchment of the Israeli security and settlement apparatus in the area, Qalqilya has not typically been a conducive environment to the formation and development of armed resistance groups.

But since October 7, Qalqilya has witnessed armed clashes for the first time in more than a decade. Every Israeli incursion into the city over the past few months has been accompanied by armed clashes with Palestinians.

According to sources, unlike in Jenin and Tulkarem, where the resistance can exist and operate openly within the boundaries of the refugee camp, resistance fighters in Qalqilya must operate in such secrecy that their identities remain largely unknown, even to Israel.

Representative of this reality is the story of the martyr Alaa Nazzal, whose identity remained unknown for a whole year even though he was wanted by Israel. For most of that time, people only knew him by the nickname “Abu George,” and his picture did not circulate on social media until after his martyrdom.

“Abu George” was largely attributed to the renewal of armed clashes in Qalqilya and is one of the founders of the “Lions of Glory Brigade” in Qalqilya. His martyrdom seems to have changed and inspired Qalqilya as many of Nazzal’s friends and community members decided to take up arms and follow in his footsteps.

Today, the Lions of Glory Brigade, affiliated with the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the military wing of Fatah, leads the confrontations against invading Israeli forces in Qalqilya.

“The [Israeli] occupation periodically tries to arrest some of these fighters but is surprised by the emergence of others joining the resistance,” a source close to the Lions of Glory Brigade told Mondoweiss. What makes Qalqilya different, he noted, is that while some fighters do operate within the organizational structure of the brigade, many, like Wisam Khashan in Bir al-Basha, also operate individually, making it more difficult for the military to track their plans and movements.

Sources told Mondoweiss that fighters in Qalqilya primarily emerge at the moment when Israeli forces carry out a military operation in the city, sparking armed clashes in various locations. The fighters also conduct shooting operations toward the settlements and throw explosives at a permanent Israeli military checkpoint north of the city.

Since October 7, Israeli forces have been raiding the city of Qalqilya every week, seemingly in an attempt to flush the fighters out, hinder the establishment of a more organized armed resistance structure in the city, and prevent it from turning into a Jenin or Tulkarem model.

Nevertheless, the fighters in Qalqilya seem to be adapting, not only in the decentralization of their brigade but also in the type of weapons they use. Due to its isolation from other Palestinian areas, the transfer of weapons into the city is nearly impossible. This has led most resistance fighters to use locally manufactured Carlo-type weapons or homemade explosives.

The use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) has become increasingly popular among the decentralized militia-like resistance groups across the northern West Bank. Popularized most recently in the refugee camps of Jenin and Tulkarem, local resistance brigades in Qalqilya, Tubas in the Jordan Valley, and the rural areas around Jenin have deployed the use of locally made explosives as another means of confrontation.
The countryside in armed confrontation: The growth of the ‘Azzun Brigade’

On Route 55, a highway connecting the northern and southern parts of the West Bank, lies the entrance to the town of Azzun, situated to the east of Qalqilya. Azzun, like many Palestinian villages in the north, is surrounded by Israeli settlements. For years, it has been common practice for the youth of the village to throw stones and Molotov cocktails towards the Israeli military and settler vehicles that pass through the area on Route 55.

Nevertheless, like the nearby city of Qalqilya, Azzun is considered a “peaceful town” from the Israeli security perspective, located in an area under full Israeli control and surrounded by settlements from all sides. Israel’s ability to “secure the area” is deemed crucial, and due to Azzun’s proximity to Gate 9, the main gateway to Israeli settlements in the northern West Bank, Israeli forces can reach the heart of the town and shut things down within minutes.

Except for the youths who throw rocks and the occasional Molotov cocktail, Azzun hasn’t typically presented a “security threat” to the Israelis. That all began to change after October 7.

“Resistance in Azzun used to be non-armed, involving stones and Molotov cocktails. Then everything changed after October 7…people felt suffocated; all roads between cities were closed, and workers were prevented from entering the occupied ‘48 territories for work,” a resident of Azzun told Mondoweiss, saying that the youth of the village became increasingly disillusioned and frustrated with what they were witnessing both in Gaza and in the West Bank.

As the youth became more frustrated, the nature of Azzun’s resistance to the Israeli occupation started shifting when young men in the village began to take up arms. Whispers began to circulate of the emergence of the “Azzun Brigade.”

According to sources close to the brigade, the brigade consisted of friends from the town who refused to align themselves with any political affiliation. They relied on their own incomes to finance the brigade and would carry out shooting operations toward the settlements that surrounded Azzun while using their weapons to confront Israeli forces during raids.

Just as soon as the youth of the village began to resist, Israel intensified its crackdown. In the three months after October 7 alone, eight Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in Azzun, including several resistance fighters who were assassinated in targeted Israeli operations.

“October 7 is not the sole reason for this situation [the rise of armed resistance], but the brutality of the occupation in dealing with Palestinians. There are more martyrs in Azzun who were not resistance fighters and yet were executed. This has made the youth harbor even more resentment toward the occupation that kills us,” the resident, who requested anonymity, told Mondoweiss.

On January 2, Israeli forces raided the village, assassinated four young men, and confiscated weapons from them. The young men were allegedly responsible for carrying out a double operation, using an IED to detonate an Israeli military vehicle and targeting Israeli soldiers with gunfire. The assassination of the four young men sent shockwaves through the small town.

A young man, S., one of the close associates of the fighters in the town, told Mondoweiss, “The youth who were assassinated were still at the beginning of forming the resistance brigade. Their assassination has impacted the rest of the youth in one way or another.”

“Before the assassination, the determination of the youth in the town was stronger; approximately 60-70 young men were waiting for the Israeli raids so they could engage in resistance,” S. said. However, after the assassination of the four young men and the arrest of five other resistance members in the town, S. says the youth now live in fear of a similar fate.

When asked if this means the resistance stops when Israeli forces invade the town, he answered without hesitation, “No.”
Why resistance escalated

The cases of Qalqilya, Azzun, Bir al-Basha, and Sir in Jenin, as well as Tubas in the Jordan Valley, indicate a growing movement of decentralized resistance in the West Bank in the aftermath of October 7.

Political analyst Ayman Youssef believes that resistance is gradually expanding from the refugee camps in the northern West Bank to other cities and the countryside in response to Israel’s heavy targeting of the resistance infrastructure in Jenin (Jenin refugee camp), Tulkarem (Nur Shams and Tulkarem refugee camps), Nablus (Balata refugee camp), and Jericho (Aqbat Jabr refugee camp).

“Today, there is an escalation in the level of resistance in the rural areas of Jenin, from Yamoun and Kafr Dan, and from Arraba and Ya’bad, to Jaba’ and Qabatiya. Additionally, resistance is spreading in cities like Qalqilya and Tubas and the surrounding villages,” Youssef told Mondoweiss.

The first reason for this spread, Youssef states, “is that the occupation carried out harsh operations and clear displacement in the refugee camps of the northern West Bank through direct targeting, arrests, beatings, and destruction in Jenin, Tulkarem, Nablus, and Aqbat Jaber. This might have compelled the resistance to move to new areas.”

“For example, in Jenin, clashes are not only in the camp but also in the eastern neighborhood and the Marah area, which are neighborhoods in the city,” Youssef continues. “It has then expanded to Qabatiya, Jaba, and Ya’bad.” There are all villages surrounding Jenin city.

The formation of these newer groups outside the refugee camps, Youssef said, encourages other groups to emerge and expand to other areas outside the city.

The other primary reason for this shift and growth in resistance tactics, according to Youssef, is October 7.

“The entire West Bank ignited and showed solidarity with the massacres committed by Israel in Gaza. There is a clear state of sympathy and solidarity with what is happening in Gaza. Israel’s tightening grip on the West Bank and daily attacks, where almost no area is invaded without martyrs, leads the youth to resort to resistance to defend their towns and cities.”

As for the third reason for the spread of a decentralized model of armed resistance in recent months, Youssef suggests it could be a security decision by the political factions and organizations to “lighten the burden on the camps,” which have been a haven for resistance and have borne the brunt of Israel’s post-October 7 crackdown in the West Bank.

The PA stands in the way

As the resistance develops, Israel is not the only one seeking to quash the fighters and the formation of new groups. The Palestinian Authority (PA), which has worked in recent months and years to suppress the rise of armed resistance, is also getting involved.

In Azzun, the young fighters are under pressure both from Israel and the PA.

“The Palestinian Authority closely monitors things here, to a very large extent, and works to prevent the arming of the youth. If any young man wants to be a fighter, the PA will arrest him the next day,” says the young man S.

“Earlier, the four martyrs [killed on January 2] had prepared 11 explosive devices for resisting the occupation, and the PA confiscated them…Before these events, there was no presence of the Palestinian Authority in the town at all,” he said.

In recent weeks, seven resistance fighters in the Jenin Brigade have been arrested by PA security forces. On February 9, the Jenin Brigade, through its Telegram account, expressed condemnation for the arrest of its members and the confiscation of their weapons, stating, “These individuals [the PA forces], by their actions, align themselves with the occupation and its settler gangs in their aggression against our people.”

In the Jenin camp, Iyad Al-Azmi, the father of the martyr Amjad Al-Azmi, whose body is held by Israel, blames the Palestinian Authority as being a major factor in hindering the development and progress of resistance groups in the West Bank. Al-Azmi says that through the PA, Israel is able to prevent the resistance from moving from the northern West Bank to the south, and from the camps outward to surrounding towns and villages.

Al-Azmi said that he believes that the PA fights against the resistance in the West Bank because the resistance and its factions threaten the existence of not just Israel but the PA as well — a commonly-held criticism and belief in the occupied West Bank.

But like many other Palestinians across the northern West Bank, including in villages like Azzun, al-Azmi believes that what efforts the PA is undergoing to quash the resistance may slow down its progress and growth to other areas of the West Bank, but it will not stop it.


SHATHA HANAYSHA is a Palestinian journalist based in Jenin in the occupied West Bank.

ALL CAPITALI$M IS STATE CAPITALI$M

Oil producers hope next Canadian government can fund ambitious carbon capture program
Heather Yourex-West 


Since last summer, up to 70 per cent of the carbon dioxide produced at the NWR Sturgeon Refinery northeast of Edmonton has been pumped into the ground.

CNRL (Canadian Natural Resources Limited) Horizon oil sands upgrader near Fort McMurray, Alberta. 

The Canadian Press Images/Larry MacDougal

It's carried to a storage facility via the Alberta trunk line, a pipeline that took more than a decade and hundreds of millions of provincial and federal government dollars to build.

In the first year, more than a million tonnes of carbon dioxide has been stored underground. It's an example of how the oil and gas sector can decarbonize, and Canada's five largest oil producers believe it can be done across the entire oilsands within the next three decades.

"If Canada doesn’t find a way to decarbonize its oil and gas sector, there just simply won’t be a market for the product," said Chris Severson-Baker, Alberta regional director for the Pembina Institute.

"If we want to stay in the business of providing oil and gas to a market that is declining but also demanding a better product from a carbon perspective, then we’re going to have to do a number of these things."

READ MORE: Several Canadian oilsands operators commit to become net zero emitters by 2050

It's why oilsands giants Suncor, Cenovus Energy, Canadian Natural, MEG Energy and Imperial launched the Oilsands Pathways to Net Zero initiative earlier this year.

The plan, which aims to get the industry to net-zero by 2050, is anchored by a multi-billion dollar carbon capture and storage plan that would see a trunk line built between oilsands facilities in northern Alberta to an underground storage hub near Cold Lake.

"There's nobody better to do this than the oil and gas companies, but it's going to take some time in order to put this together," said Mike Monea, President of Monea CCS Services, a leading expert on carbon and capture and storage technology.

"Without carbon capture and storage, we will never be able to meet our (emission reduction) commitments."

The Oilsands Pathways to Net Zero proposal would reduce emissions by 68 megatonnes by 2050, which represents about a nine per cent reduction of Canada's total greenhouse gas emissions (when compared to 2019 levels), but the plan comes with a hefty price tag as well.

It would cost $75 billion, and the industry says it's not prepared to foot the bill alone.

READ MORE: O'Toole supports reviving Northern Gateway pipeline in appeal to indigenous communities

The companies involved with the Pathways Initiative declined a request for an interview, but in an e-mailed statement to Global News, a spokesperson pointed to similar investments made by governments in the U.K. and Norway.

"Following the election, we look forward to working with the federal government to develop an achievable plan to net-zero that will kick start the development of clean technologies across Canada and make Canada a global leader in the next generation of energy production," the coalition of companies said.

But Pembina Institute's Severson-Baker believes the tens of billions of potential government dollars could be better spent someplace else.

"It would make sense to take that additional public funding and put it towards industries that are going to be part of the economy in a carbon-constrained future for years to come rather than putting it towards something where the world is actively trying to get away from using that commodity."

THE REALITY IS THAT CCS IS NOT GREEN NOR CLEAN IT IS GOING TO BE USED TO FRACK OLD DRY WELLS SUCH AS IN THE BAKAN SHIELD IN SASKATCHEWAN
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-myth-of-carbon-capture-and-storage.html

ALSO SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=CCS

After a decade out in the cold, 2020 is shaping up to be the year of the pipeline
Legal wins and investor interest breathing new life into projects that have been on hold for years

AFTER ALL THAT WHINING BIG OIL HITS IT BIG AGAIN 

Demonstrators rally in 2018 in favour of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion outside the Alberta Legislature, in Edmonton.David Bloom/Postmedia


February 10, 2020

CALGARY – A year ago, Enbridge Inc.’s $9-billion Line 3 and TC Energy Corp.’s US$8-billion Keystone XL pipeline projects, as well as, of course, the $12.6-bilion Trans Mountain expansion had been mired in regulatory or legal delays for so long that there were questions about whether they would ever be built.

Indeed, the past decade was largely one to forget for Canadian pipeline companies trying to build major new export projects.

Pro-pipeline supporter demonstrates on Parliament Hill in Ottawa as part of a convoy from Alberta in 2019. Errol McGihon/Postmedia

All the delays, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe told an audience at the Canada Institute in Washington on Friday, resulted in negative economic impacts that extend beyond the energy sector.

For instance, about 10 per cent of Saskatchewan’s energy products are currently moving on rail cars, he said, which creates challenges for other sectors looking to move their products.

“We’re cramping our rail capacity, capacity that we actually need if we’re going to continue producing things that should be on rail, like our agrifood products, like our timber products,” Moe said, speaking alongside Alberta Premier Jason Kenney.

But there are signs that the pipeline industry is finally turning around. Major court wins in the first six weeks of 2020 have cleared the way for construction to begin on the Line 3 and Keystone XL pipelines in the U.S. and to continue on Trans Mountain.


What a difference a new decade makes. We’re kind of into a new world
Canadian Energy Pipelines Association chief executive Chris Bloomer

“What a difference a new decade makes,” said Canadian Energy Pipelines Association chief executive Chris Bloomer, referring to a massive change in sentiment in the Canadian oil and gas pipeline industry following the string of legal wins. “We’re kind of into a new world.”

On Monday, the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission voted to re-approve the Line 3 pipeline across the state, removing the last obstacle there for Enbridge. On Tuesday, the Federal Court of Appeal dismissed the last remaining legal challenge to Trans Mountain.Alberta Energy Minister Sonya Savage speaks to several thousand pro pipeline protesters rallying at Stampede Park during the Global Petroleum Show in Calgary in June, 2019. Gavin Young/Postmedia

“We can’t handle any further delays,” Alberta Energy Minister Sonya Savage said of the three major oil pipeline projects.

Savage said Alberta is currently in a “perilous situation” because of the failure in recent years of other pipeline projects, such as Northern Gateway (which she worked on while at Enbridge until 2015) and Energy East. The result was that a glut of oil built up in the province as total oil production surpassed export pipeline capacities.
Indigenous rail blockades over Coastal Gaslink pipeline cause chaos for Ontario travellers
Cost to build Trans Mountain pipeline jumps 70% to $12.6 billion
With its legal hurdles all but cleared, Trans Mountain's challenges move to a different court — the street

Over the past four weeks, following favourable decisions on Keystone XL, Line 3 and Trans Mountain, she said “it feels like the type of day when the clouds are lifting” and is confident the projects will move quickly now.

Others are similarly optimistic.

“We have more certainty about the Trans Mountain project than at any time in the past,” Trans Mountain Corp. chief executive Ian Anderson said during a news conference on Friday. “There isn’t anyone who could have pictured the journey we’ve been on the for the last number of years.”

It wasn’t all good news. The updated cost estimate for building the 590,000-barrels-per-day pipeline expansion to the West Coast have jumped 73 per cent to $12.6 billion from $7.3 billion in 2018.Trans Mountain construction underway in Alberta. Trans Mountain

About half of those higher costs, Anderson said, resulted from changes such as having more thick-walled pipeline sections after the federal government bought the pipeline system from Houston-based Kinder Morgan Inc. in 2018 for $4.5 billion.

Other additional costs were because of market changes. At the time construction first started on Trans Mountain in 2018, Anderson said there weren’t any other pipelines being built.

But since construction was delayed by a Federal Court of Appeal ruling, TC Energy is in the process of building the $6.6-billion Coastal GasLink project through northern British Columbia and gearing up to build Keystone XL, while Enbridge is also readying to build the U.S. portion of Line 3.

One result of the improved outlook for both oil and natural gas pipelines is that analysts believe generalist investors might be interested in jumping back into Canadian oil and gas stocks. Investors have generally shied away from the industry, but some strategic countercyclical investors stayed behind and bought up assets worth billions of dollars.

“There has been an uptick in venture capital and private equity looking at the midstream sector in Canada,” said Alan Ross, regional managing partner at Borden Ladner Gervais LLP in Calgary.

Ross said Canadian pipeline and midstream assets, such as natural gas gathering and processing facilities, have been undervalued in recent years because of regulatory and court delays to major export pipeline projects.Miles of unused pipe, prepared for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, sit in a lot in 2014 outside Gascoyne, North Dakota. Major court wins in the first six weeks of 2020 have cleared the way for construction to begin on the Line 3 and Keystone XL pipelines in the U.S. and to continue on Trans Mountain. Andrew Burton/Getty Images files

“Given some of the market access issues, some of the midstream assets have been overlooked over the last number of years,” he said, adding that sentiment has been improving with legal and regulatory wins by major pipeline companies. “A rising tide floats all boats.”

Eight private-equity firms and the private-equity arms of major Canadian pension funds have sponsored new companies such as SemCAMS Midstream ULC, North River Midstream Inc., Steel Reef Corp. and others in countercyclical investments that cut against much of the pessimism in the sector.

In addition to launching new midstream companies, major institutional investors have said they believe Canadian pipeline assets are undervalued and some, like New York-based KKR & Co. Inc. and Alberta Investment Management Corp. (AIMCo), have been buying into pipelines such as the Coastal GasLink project.

AIMCo also bought an 85-per-cent stake in TC Energy’s Northern Courier oilsands pipeline last year for an undisclosed sum.

“One thing that I think a lot of people investing on the private-equity side have picked up on — and some of those are pure private-equity interests and some are more infrastructure investors — is there’s an awareness that there’s a bit of a disconnect between public and private valuations in this space,” said Ben Hawkins, senior vice-president, infrastructure and timber, at AIMCo, which manages $108.2 billion of Alberta’s public-pension assets.

“I do think the current environment is still favourable,” he said, adding that AIMCo is still “keen to look for opportunities.”

Others see value in Canadian midstream assets, too.

For example, Brookfield Infrastructure Partners LP struck one of the largest Canadian energy-sector deals in the past two years when it spent $4.3 billion to buy natural gas infrastructure assets from Enbridge and then launched North River Midstream Inc.

“As we were looking for ways to deploy capital, we turned to Canada because one of the things about the Canadian basin is we actually thought the contractual profile tends to be better (than the U.S.) for a lot of these assets,” said Brian Baker, managing partner at Brookfield Asset Management’s infrastructure group, noting that Canadian midstream assets are usually underpinned by longer contracts than those in the U.S.

He said there have also been more institutional and private-equity investors looking to invest in U.S. midstream infrastructure, raising valuations to the point where his team saw more compelling value in Canada.

“We were trying to look in areas where there’s a little bit less competition (for deals), just given that there’s a lot of negativity around Canada,” Baker said, adding that regulatory overhauls and reviews in Canada have driven away many would-be investors, leading to more enticing valuations for long-term private investors.Supporters hold signs during a United We Roll Convoy For Canada pro-pipeline rally in front of Parliament Hill in Ottawa in 2019. David Kawai/Bloomberg

But analysts are sensing opportunities in the public markets, too.

“We see a potential $20-billion oil pipeline expansion opportunity for the Canadian pipeline industry related to exports to the U.S. and global markets,” BMO Capital Markets analyst Ben Pham said in a research note this week.

He rated Enbridge, TC Energy and Gibson Energy Inc. as outperformers and suggested smart investors would be accumulating shares.

“In the past three years, every single proposed pipeline export project has faced timing delays and created rifts between Western Canadian provinces and Indigenous communities,” Pham said. “But in the next three years, it is possible that several pipelines could actually get built, providing the Western Canadian energy industry more than adequate pipeline capacity to spur additional oilsands development.”

Recent years have been “long, hard, challenging,” CEPA’s Bloomer said, adding that pipeline companies have had to adapt to the challenges presented by the legal and regulatory delays.

“Everybody on all sides of this issue has learned a lot,” he said.

Bloomer said he hopes the Supreme Court of Appeals Court decisions in recent weeks have created some precedence for how pipelines are proposed, permitted and approved in the future.

“From all sides, we’re a lot smarter than we were,” he said.

With files from Naomi Powell
 Email: gmorgan@nationalpost.com | Twitter: geoffreymorganRELATED STORIES


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1342 ACROSS THE OCEAN BLUE

Italian sailors knew of America 150 years before Christopher Columbus, new analysis of ancient documents suggests

RESCUING TEMPLARS IS WHAT WE DO

by Taylor & Francis

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

New analysis of ancient writings suggests that sailors from the Italian hometown of Christopher Columbus knew of America 150 years before its renowned 'discovery'.

Transcribing and detailing a, circa, 1345 document by a Milanese friar, Galvaneus Flamma, Medieval Latin literature expert Professor Paolo Chiesa has made an "astonishing" discovery of an "exceptional" passage referring to an area we know today as North America.

According to Chiesa, the ancient essay—first discovered in 2013—suggests that sailors from Genoa were already aware of this land, recognizable as 'Markland'/ 'Marckalada' – mentioned by some Icelandic sources and identified by scholars as part of the Atlantic coast of North America (usually assumed to be Labrador or Newfoundland).

Published in the peer-reviewed journal Terrae Incognitae, the discovery comes ahead of Columbus Day 2021, alternatively celebrated as Indigenous Peoples' Day across many states in the US. The findings add more fuel to the fire for the continuing question of 'what, exactly, did Columbus expect to find when he set out across the ocean?' and come following a period in which his statues have been beheaded, covered with red paint, lassoed around the head and pulled down, set on fire and thrown into a lake.

"We are in the presence of the first reference to the American continent, albeit in an embryonic form, in the Mediterranean area," states Professor Chiesa, from the Department of Literary Studies, Philology and Linguistics at the University of Milan.

Galvaneus was a Dominican friar who lived in Milan and was connected to a family which held at the lordship of the city.

He wrote several literary works in Latin, mainly on historical subjects. His testimony is valuable for information on Milanese contemporary facts, about which he has first-hand knowledge.

Cronica universalis, which is analyzed here by Chiesa, is thought to be one of his later works—perhaps the last one—and was left unfinished and unperfected. It aims to detail the history of the whole world, from 'Creation' to when it was published.

In translating and analyzing the document, Professor Chiesa demonstrates how Genoa would have been a "gateway" for news, and how Galvaneus appears to hear, informally, of seafarers' rumors about lands to the extreme north-west for eventual commercial benefit—as well as information about Greenland, which he details accurately (for knowledge of the time).

"These rumors were too vague to find consistency in cartographic or scholarly representations," the professor states, as he explains why Marckalada wasn't classified as a new land at the time.

Regardless though, Chiesa states, Cronica universalis "brings unprecedented evidence to the speculation that news about the American continent, derived from Nordic sources, circulated in Italy one and half centuries before Columbus."

He adds: "What makes the passage (about Marckalada) exceptional is its geographical provenance: not the Nordic area, as in the case of the other mentions, but northern Italy.

"The Marckalada described by Galvaneus is 'rich in trees', not unlike the wooded Markland of the Grœnlendinga Saga, and animals live there.

"These details could be standard, as distinctive of any good land; but they are not trivial, because the common feature of northern regions is to be bleak and barren, as actually Greenland is in Galvaneus's account, or as Iceland is described by Adam of Bremen."

Overall, Professor Chiesa says, we should "trust" Cronica universalis as throughout the document Galvaneus declares where he has heard of oral stories, and backs his claims with elements drawn from accounts (legendary or real) belonging to previous traditions on different lands, blended together and reassigned to a specific place.

"I do not see any reason to disbelieve him," states Professor Chiesa, who adds, "it has long been noticed that the fourteenth-century portolan (nautical) charts drawn in Genoa and in Catalonia offer a more advanced geographical representation of the north, which could be achieved through direct contacts with those regions.

"These notions about the north-west are likely to have come to Genoa through the shipping routes to the British Isles and to the continental coasts of the North Sea.

"We have no evidence that Italian or Catalan seafarers ever reached Iceland or Greenland at that time, but they were certainly able to acquire from northern European merchant goods of that origin to be transported to the Mediterranean area.

"The marinarii mentioned by Galvaneus can fit into this dynamic: the Genoese might have brought back to their city scattered news about these lands, some real and some fanciful, that they heard in the northern harbors from Scottish, British, Danish, Norwegian sailors with whom they were trading."

Cronica universalis, written in Latin, is still unpublished; however, an edition is planned, in the context of a scholarly and educational program promoted by the University of Milan.

Countdown begins to discover where Columbus came from

---

More information: Paolo Chiesa, Marckalada: The First Mention of America in the Mediterranean Area (c. 1340), Terrae Incognitae (2021). DOI: 10.1080/00822884.2021.1943792

Provided by Taylor & Francis 

Indigenous-led group still pursuing Trans Mountain ownership as costs spiral

Construction costs for the pipeline have risen to US$30.9 billion

The Canadian Press
Published Mar 17, 2023 •

Pipes for the Trans Mountain pipeline are unloaded in Edson, Alta. 

PHOTO BY JASON FRANSON/THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES
Article content

CALGARY — An Indigenous-led initiative says it is still pursuing ownership of the Trans Mountain pipeline, in spite of the project’s ballooning price tag.

Project Reconciliation managing director Stephen Mason says his group isn’t going away just because Trans Mountain Corp. announced last week that construction costs for the project have risen to US$30.9 billion.

The Trans Mountain pipeline was bought by the federal government for US$4.5 billion in 2018 after previous owner Kinder Morgan Canada Inc. threatened to scrap the pipeline’s planned expansion project in the face of environmentalist opposition.

Construction on the pipeline is still ongoing, and is expected to be completed later this year.

The federal government has indicated it does not wish to be the long-term owner of the pipeline, and has said it is open to the idea of Indigenous ownership.

But due to existing contractual agreements with oil shippers, only 20 to 25 per cent of the rising capital costs of the project can be passed on to oil companies in the form of increased tolls.

Indigenous-led prospective buyer 'not going away' even as Trans Mountain costs spiral

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Project Reconciliation in Calgary working to facilitate 

purchase for 129 First Nations

Amanda Stephenson · The Canadian Press · Posted: Mar 17, 2023 

A replacement pipeline segment is lowered into the Coquihalla River

 by Trans Mountain near Hope, B.C., on Aug. 9, 2022. (Trans Mountain)

An Indigenous-led initiative is still pursuing ownership of the Trans Mountain pipeline, in spite of the project's ballooning price tag.

"We are not going away, just because it's $30.9 billion. We are entering into the early stages of negotiations," said Stephen Mason, managing director of Project Reconciliation, a Calgary-based group that is working to facilitate the purchase of a major equity stake in the pipeline for the 129 First Nations along the route.

"Yes, there are a couple of other proponents out there, but I think the federal government has recognized our readiness."

The Trans Mountain pipeline — Canada's only pipeline system transporting oil from Alberta to the West Coast — was bought by the federal government for $4.5 billion in 2018 after previous owner Kinder Morgan Canada Inc. threatened to scrap the pipeline's planned expansion project in the face of environmentalist opposition.

Construction on the expansion is still ongoing, and it's expected to be completed later this year.

However, capital costs of the project have been steadily spiralling. Last week, Trans Mountain Corp. announced its estimated price tag for the project has increased once again, this time to $30.9 billion — a 44 per cent increase from the $21.4-billion cost projection placed on the pipeline expansion project a year ago, and more than double an earlier estimate of $12.6 billion.

The federal government has indicated it does not wish to be the long-term owner of the pipeline, and has said it is open to the idea of Indigenous ownership.

But due to existing contractual agreements with oil shippers, only 20 to 25 per cent of the rising capital costs of the project can be passed on to oil companies in the form of increased tolls. (Tolls are the rates oil companies pay to ship product on a pipeline).

A report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer last June found the federal government stands to lose money from its investment in the pipeline, and suggested that if the project were cancelled at that time, the government would need to write off more than $14 billion in assets.

Mason did not say what his group is prepared to bid for a stake in the pipeline, but he said the ultimate selling price will only be what a buyer is willing to pay and will therefore reflect the anticipated return on investment.

"It's commercial value. It doesn't matter (who the buyer is), they will only pay what the commercial value is and what the tolls will support," he said.

Trans Mountain Pipeline project 80% done

The pipeline expansion employed an average of 2,409 people in the Valemont area.

Arthur Williams
a day ago


Trans Mountain's 600-bed work camp, located just outside Valemount, 

is seen in an undated handout photo.

The $30.9 billion project to expand the capacity of the Trans Mountain Pipeline is close to 80 per cent complete, and on track to be done by the end of the year.

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The expanded oil pipeline is expected to be mechanically complete this year and in operation in the first quarter of 2024, according to information released by the company. The project employed an average of 2,409 people in the Valemount/North Thompson section of the project between October and December last year.

“Canada has among the world’s highest standards for the protection of people, the environment, and Indigenous participation when building major infrastructure projects. By including these commitments into the project design and development from the beginning, we have ensured the project will provide economic benefits to Canadians well into the future,” Trans Mountain Corp. president and CEO Dawn Farrell said.

Once the expansion project is completed, the pipeline’s capacity will nearly triple from 300,000 barrels per day to 890,000 barrels per day. The 1,150-kilometre pipeline between Strathcona County, Alta. and  Burnaby was first built in 1953.

An independent economic impact assessment on the project conducted by Ernst & Young LLP (EY) in March estimated that during construction the project will contribute a total of $52.8 billion in gross output, including $11 billion in wages. Once complete, the project is expected to contribute to $17.3 billion to the economy, including $2.8 billion in wages, over the next 20 years.

 OPINION

The Trans Mountain pipeline purchase has been a (necessary) failure

GLOBE AND MAIL 

THE EDITORIAL BOARD

PUBLISHED YESTERDAY

In the spring of 2018, the American pipeline company Kinder Morgan gave up on the Trans Mountain oil pipeline, despite having government approval to triple its capacity between Edmonton and Vancouver.

It was a fraught time in the oil business. Prices for Canada’s No. 1 export were low for a fourth consecutive year, yet rising output in the oil sands stoked worries about adequate pipeline capacity.

The federal Liberals were about to pass major climate legislation, including a carbon tax. They had also approved two large export pipelines – TMX and Line 3 to the U.S. Midwest – but rejected a third, Northern Gateway in British Columbia. A fourth project, the Alberta-to-Texas Keystone XL, was mired in the U.S. courts.

The spectre of TMX’s demise spooked Ottawa. Alberta wanted pipelines, especially to the West Coast to reach Asia, but no one in industry stepped up. Ottawa paid Kinder Morgan $4.5-billion for the existing pipeline and the expansion, whose budget was $7.4-billion. The deal was billed as a “sound investment opportunity.” Ottawa suggested it would sell before construction was complete.

Five years later, Canadians still own the pipeline and TMX’s budget is, as of last week, $30.9-billion, up more than 40 per cent from a $21.4-billion estimate a year ago and four times greater than in 2018. It is supposed to be moving oil by this time next year.

The cost escalation – and the consistent understating of costs by Trans Mountain Corp., the company Ottawa bought – is a financial disaster. But the project is a political necessity: the landlocking of Alberta oil would have had disastrous consequences for national unity.

Several independent analyses last year, including one by the Parliamentary Budget Officer, showed Ottawa will lose money on Trans Mountain – and that’s when TMX’s cost was $9-billion lower. TMX now looks like the biggest industry bailout in the country’s history, coming as the oil industry is enriched by windfall profits.

Trans Mountain casts the blame, of course, on inflation and supply chains. It also blames mountainous terrain in B.C., where the old pipeline runs alongside a major highway. It even blames the challenge of building a new pipeline through urban areas of B.C.’s Lower Mainland. One wonders why pipeline executives and engineers were surprised to discover mountains and cities during construction.

A year ago, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland declared no more public money for TMX. So Trans Mountain got a $10-billion loan from the banks – guaranteed by Ottawa. Trans Mountain is again looking for loans. Presumably, Ottawa will again guarantee the debt. It’s not public money, but Canadians will be on the hook for it.

Bankers have told Ottawa the expanded pipeline will make an EBITDA operating profit of $2.4-billion a year. This appears ambitious. Capacity will triple to about 900,000 barrels a day – but annual EBITDA profit at 300,000 b/d is about $200-million, less than 10 per cent of the expected profit.

Ottawa still wants to sell the pipeline. It has shielded Trans Mountain from some debt, holding it instead in several public entities: Canada Development Investment Corp.’s TMP Finance Ltd., and the “Canada Account” at Export Development Canada. Companies that will ship oil are also shielded, responsible for only a small portion of the new costs.

But once oil flows, and if it garners a higher price per barrel as Ottawa and industry promise, oil company profits will be bolstered. Alberta’s treasury could see several extra billion per year. The only losers are Canadian taxpayers.

TMX, however, could be pragmatically cast as a necessary evil. In 2018, the prospect of no new pipeline at all seemed grim. TMX solves the capacity question – Canada will never need another new oil pipeline again. And when it opens, it will lessen Canada’s dependence on U.S. buyers.

Of the pipelines planned in the 2010s – TMX, Northern Gateway, Keystone XL and Energy East – it was always TMX that made the most strategic sense. Still, when Canadians look back in 2050, spending more than $30-billion on a fossil fuel pipeline, all of the cash either public money or backed by the public, will not seem like the savviest investment.

It’s clear that TMX has not turned out to be a sound investment opportunity, as Ottawa first said. To the contrary, it’s a failure, financially speaking. But given Canadian political realities, TMX is a necessary failure.

The northern B.C. pipeline you’ve never

heard of — Enbridge’s Westcoast Connector

The Coastal GasLink pipeline is currently B.C.’s most infamous — with the arrests of Indigenous land defenders and journalists, repeated environmental infractions and celebrity activism from the likes of Mark Ruffalo, Greta Thunberg and Leonardo DiCaprio.

But the list of controversial pipeline projects in the province doesn’t stop there.

There’s Pacific Trails, which would parallel the Coastal GasLink route across Wet’suwet’en territory and Prince Rupert Gas Transmission, a pipeline intended to cut through the Kispiox Valley — a proposal that brought members of the Gitxsan Nation and locals from all walks of life together in opposition. And, of course, there’s the federally owned Trans Mountain pipeline, which continues to be met with fierce opposition from First Nations and allies along the route as construction impacts ecosystems, most recently disrupting salmon runs on the Coquihalla River.

And, waiting in the wings for its chance to ship fracked gas from northeast B.C. to overseas markets, is a project quietly clinging to the dream of a liquified natural gas (LNG) boom that was promised more than a decade ago. It’s called Westcoast Connector Gas Transmission.

If you’ve never heard of it, you’re not alone.

Owned by multinational pipeline company Enbridge, the project was first proposed in 2012 and approved by the B.C. government in 2014 — around the same time as Coastal GasLink and on the heels of Enbridge’s ill-fated Northern Gateway bitumen pipeline. At that time, it was a Spectra Energy project. In 2017, Enbridge acquired Spectra and all of its assets, including the proposed pipeline, for $37 billion.

That year, Shell scrapped a planned liquefaction and export facility near Prince Rupert that would have received gas from the pipeline and, despite opposition from some stakeholders, Enbridge applied for and received a five-year extension to the project’s approval in 2019. When that extension was granted, the company was told it must have “substantially started” the project by Nov. 25, 2024. To date, that hasn’t happened. With the deadline nearing, stakeholders along the pipeline route received notice of the company’s intent to file for a rare second extension.

According to B.C.’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy, only two projects have ever received a second certificate extension — Seabridge’s KSM mine on the Alaska border and Taseko’s New Prosperity mine on Tsilhqot'in First Nation territory.

If the extension isn’t granted, they’d need to start the lengthy environmental assessment process all over again.

“There is a ton of new information since 2014 — new information on climate, new information on Indigenous Rights and new protected areas,” Naxginkw Tara Marsden, who works on land use planning and governance issues with the Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs, told The Narwhal in an interview. “As a whole I can't see all of that being ignored in an extension request, but we'll see.”

In addition to the extension, the company recently asked the B.C. government for permission to shorten the pipeline by removing a section of its proposed route in the northeast, 100 kilometres of which overlaps a First Nations’ territory at the heart of a 2021 B.C. Supreme Court ruling on Treaty Rights.

The landmark ruling, often referred to as the Yahey decision after former chief Marvin Yahey, found the province guilty of infringing on Blueberry River First Nations’ rights by permitting and encouraging widespread industrial development.

Here’s what we know about the project and its proposed changes.

The 850 kilometre pipeline — roughly 700 kilometres if B.C. approves the amendment request — would tap into existing infrastructure in the northeast and transport fracked gas to the west coast for liquefaction and export.

The project, as approved, is described as “a pipeline system consisting of either one or two adjacent pipelines” and would be capable of moving 8.4 billion cubic feet of fracked gas daily. That’s four times the amount Coastal GasLink plans to transport during its first phase of operations.

The Westcoast Connector pipeline would not traverse Wet’suwet’en territory — where Hereditary Chiefs oppose the Coastal GasLink project. Its route would cross the province further north, including transecting Gitxsan and Gitanyow territories and crossing the Skeena and Kispiox rivers — both important salmon and steelhead rivers.

Enbridge noted in its recent letter to the environmental assessment office it is “actively developing the project” to build the first Westcoast pipeline and “continues to work on development opportunities for the second pipeline in the future.”

But the company told The Narwhal in an email the “project is in the early stages of development” and final decisions haven’t been made on whether it will proceed, or when.

“The Westcoast Connector Gas Transmission project is not yet approved — we still require additional permits,” a spokesperson wrote.

The environmental assessment approval is the major hurdle for projects but, when construction is imminent, the pipeline will require permits issued by the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission. Permitting is a regulatory process and applications can be submitted for multiple activities at one time. Those applications draw on technical studies conducted during assessment.

The project was originally slated to deliver gas to one of several proposed liquefaction and export facilities near Prince Rupert, none of which are still on the table. Now, the project is listed as a potential supplier for the proposed Ksi Lisims LNG plant on Nisg̱a’a territory. Ksi Lisims is a partnership between the Nisg̱a’a Nation, a consortium of Canadian gas producers called Rockies LNG and Texas-based Western LNG.

Enbridge hadn’t filed an extension request with the province prior to publication, but it is signaling that this will be the next step.

In July, Enbridge made a presentation to Terrace city council citing the main reasons for extending its certificate as the COVID-19 pandemic and the Blueberry River First Nations court decision. The company told the council it spent $10 million on the project in 2022 and noted it is actively engaging potential LNG terminal developers and gas producing partners.

“At this point we’re still engaging with Indigenous nations to better understand their perspective and we have not confirmed any commercial partners,” Enbridge told The Narwhal in an emailed statement. “If this project proceeds, we will be completing an environmental protection plan that will specify the measures required to protect wildlife.”

The company said it is considering applying for the extension but does not know when that might happen.

Gavin Smith, a lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law, told The Narwhal he’s concerned an extension could pave the way forward for a flood of related requests.

“We have seen both with Taseko’s New Prosperity and with KSM in recent years willingness from the provincial government to effectively bend the rules about how long [environmental assessment] certificates are supposed to remain valid,” he said. “Those rules exist for a good reason, which is that … certificates are granted on a lot of complex information, input from communities and so on, that can become stale-dated if left for too long.”

The Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy told The Narwhal every request is carefully reviewed and the context of the request considered.

“For any extension request, the environmental assessment office and statutory decision-maker consider it on its own merits and its specific circumstances through a robust and transparent process,” the ministry wrote in an emailed statement.

Marsden said an additional concern is how the province handles feedback from communities.

“When they came to us with the KSM extension, they said, ‘What's changed? Is there new information you'd like to share?’ ” she explained. “We shared new information — there's climate change, there's new recognition of Indigenous Rights and requirements for consent. And [the province] came back and said, ‘Well, that's not how we define new information.’ ”

“There's no definition of what new information is, it's this really circular argument of whatever you say doesn't really matter but we are going to go through this process of seeing if you have anything new to say.”

The ministry argued the KSM decision did reflect input from First Nations and other stakeholders, noting the extension included extra conditions that provide the province with “an additional level of regulatory oversight to require that management plans remain current and reflect the best available science and management practices.”

Smith said by extending approvals past legislated guidelines, B.C. could be setting the stage for future conflicts.

“Look at the changing legal realities around implementation and recognition of the [United Nations] Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that were not at the forefront 15 to 20 years ago,” he said. “Those types of changes are relevant to how environmental assessments are carried out.”

In a word: no.

While the extension request would buy Enbridge breathing room until 2029, it’s not the only way to keep the proposed pipeline alive. If a project is deemed to be “substantially started” — a determination made by B.C.’s environmental assessment office partly on sunk costs and on the scale of work completed — it effectively locks in the approval indefinitely.

For example, the Pacific Trails pipeline, that Enbridge bought from Chevron and Woodside Petroleum in early 2022, received “substantially started” designation in 2016. This means its certificate — which was granted in 2008 based on studies conducted in the years prior — remains valid regardless of any changes on the land.

“It's good for forever, essentially,” Marsden said. “It's a big investment of money, but then they're safe in terms of not having to ever re-apply.”

She said the KSM extension and the imminent request from Enbridge show how companies “want to keep riding the market — they want to keep waiting for that sweet spot where they're going to get the prices and they're going to be able to build this thing.”

With governments worldwide pledging major emissions reductions as part of climate commitments, the fossil fuel industry continues to pivot to different business models. The push to export gas from B.C. reserves was initially pegged as a means to “transition” from other fuels such as coal.

But prevailing science now agrees that methane — the main component of natural gas — poses even more of a threat to the climate than conventional fossil fuels. In an April press release, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that methane emissions need to be reduced by more than 30 per cent by 2030 to limit warming to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels.

“Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible,” Jim Skea, with the panel, said.

But open market prices for natural gas remain high, in part because of the energy crunch caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Companies like Enbridge still see potential profits from developing projects like Westcoast Connector.

“Given how completely crazy the global LNG markets have been this year, I can imagine that Enbridge may see some real upside to keeping the project alive,” Clark Williams-Derry, energy finance analyst with the Ohio-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, told The Narwhal.

“In my view, Enbridge is making an economic calculation: there's a benefit to keeping the project alive, there's a cost to keeping it alive and there's a cost to letting it die,” he explained. “They're weighing the costs and benefits — and seem to be deciding that the benefits are worth the costs.”

He said keeping the project on the table is low-risk, financially.

“If you declare the project dead, development costs have to be written off and recognized as a loss,” he said. “Plus there also can be ‘soft’ costs for letting a project die — costs to executives' reputations, to investors' views about a company's future prospects, etc.”

“Meanwhile, it often doesn't take a whole lot of money or effort to keep a project alive,” he added. “A bit of paperwork, a bit of staff time now and again.”

Marsden said the province needs to ask some tough questions about where B.C. is heading in terms of its economy in light of climate change.

“Do you want to risk a bunch of other things that are at play to ensure this industry is prioritized? Or do you want to take a pause and reconsider things?”

The request to remove a section of the pipeline route seems like an example of a fossil fuel company adapting to minimize conflict on Indigenous Rights issues.

In a letter to B.C.’s environmental assessment office in May, Enbridge wrote that “removing the first 138 kilometres of the pipeline from the project as certified will reduce potential cumulative effects on Treaty 8 territory, including those within Blueberry River First Nations territory.”

However, a spokesperson for the company told The Narwhal in an email that “the removal of a 138 km [section] of the pipeline route … is not related to the Yahey decision.” Enbridge did not respond to follow up questions apart from noting the company determined the section “would no longer be required.”

Just how far reaching the impacts of the Yahey decision will be is still unknown but in the short-term, B.C. has put the brakes on any new development on Blueberry River First Nations territory. In October, the province and nations reached an interim agreement that allows projects approved before the court ruling to proceed, but pauses any new authorizations or permits as the nation negotiates a final agreement with the province.

That means if those “additional permits” Enbridge said it needs to move forward are for work on the territory, the project could be tied up for an unknown amount of time.

Blueberry River First Nations opposed the Westcoast Connector from the outset.

During the project’s environmental assessment, the nations’ lands and resource department flagged numerous concerns, submitting a comprehensive report on cumulative impacts. In one of multiple letters filed to the province, the community expressed frustration around the consultation process, saying the few opportunities given to provide feedback were “no more than opportunities to blow off steam.”

That October 2014 letter continues: “Aside from the [environmental assessment] process, there has been no engagement by the provincial Crown in consultation with [Blueberry River First Nations] on the project or on the larger LNG development proposed in B.C., including on the very significant development that will be induced in our territory as a result of the construction and operation of LNG facilities on B.C.’s coast, serviced by pipelines from [our] territory.”

Earlier, in a June 2014 letter, the nation wrote that it was “deeply troubled by the conclusion that there are no identified potential effects of the project on … habitation, hunting, fishing, trapping or gathering practices.”

Despite Enbridge’s statement that its desire to shorten the pipeline is not related to the Yahey decision, that June letter was echoed in its amendment request. By removing the section, the company wrote, the project would reduce or eliminate potential impacts on critical caribou habitat, 50 wetlands, 135 water crossings and “hunting, trapping, fishing and plant gathering locations, trails and travelways, habitation sites and gathering and sacred sites.”

The Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy confirmed it is reviewing the request and told The Narwhal it will “provide an opportunity for federal, provincial, and local governments, and First Nations and Indigenous people to provide advice and inform the … review.”

The ministry said responding to a request like this typically takes three to six months.

In the era when Westcoast Connector was first proposed, it was just one of many LNG projects brought to municipalities and First Nations across northern B.C. The province cast its net wide to gain support, signing agreements with numerous band councils and other forms of First Nations governments under John Rustad, the former minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation. (Rustad was recently removed from the Liberal caucus for publicly promoting climate change denial.)

Enbridge told The Narwhal it was “pre-emptive” to ask questions about its relationships with First Nations and did not supply any information about agreements it may have with communities along the pipeline route. However, a provincial government webpage shows that six Indigenous governments have signed benefits agreements in support of Westcoast Connector or associated infrastructure — though many of them signed before Enbridge was in charge.

“Spectra was a very well established company in B.C.,” Marsden said. “They had many natural gas pipelines that were sort of familiar to people and had really dedicated a lot of time and resources to building quite strong relationships.”

But, she said, Enbridge is a different company.

“Many of the nations, including Gitanyow, opposed the oil pipeline that Enbridge proposed with Northern Gateway. With the reputation of Enbridge and what their interests have been in trying to get oil to the west coast, that's a huge concern for me, personally, and for others as well at Gitanyow. Is this an attempt to try and get another oil pipeline through? We don't have that certainty and until we do, it’s still a potential threat.”

The pipeline also faces potential opposition from the Gitxsan Nation.

In early August, a Gitxsan house group, Wilps Gwininitxw, declared 170,000 hectares of territory an Indigenous Protected Area, where it will prioritize maintaining an intact watershed that’s home to mountain goats, wolverines and grizzlies. The area is just upstream of the Westcoast pipeline route and TC Energy’s Prince Rupert Gas Transmission line. In a statement released following the announcement of the protected area, the house group noted both pipelines would “directly affect Wilps Gwininitxw by crossing our salmon-bearing rivers and streams.”

“In the absence of meaningful provincial or federal government action to protect the Skeena watershed from industrial development, Wilps Gwininitxw is unilaterally declaring their territories protected.”

It is unclear how the Indigenous Protected Area will impact the pipeline project should it proceed to permitting and construction.

Matt Simmons, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Narwhal