Kinder Morgan AGM
Photo credit: Reuben George (via Facebook)
May began with a trip to oil’s heartland, a fitting place to begin this month’s wild roller coaster ride. On May 8th, I travelled to Houston, Texas with Rueben George of Tsleil-Waututh Nation (TWN) to attend Kinder Morgan's AGM for the second year in a row. Just like last year, our message was straightforward: TWN will not consent to their Trans Mountain Expansion (TMEX), and investors need to understand that the project faces significant risk and uncertainty.
In the year since our last visit, the company’s share price has fallen by 60%, and they had to slash their dividend by 75% to avoid being downgraded to junk bond status by credit rating agencies. They also walked away from two pipeline proposals with significant community opposition, the Palmetto Pipeline in Georgia, South Carolina and Florida, and North East Direct (NED) Pipeline through New England.
In advance of the AGM, WCEL organized a meeting with opponents of the Palmetto, NED, and Keystone XL pipelines to share learnings and strategies and to increase unity amongst our groups. We learned a whole lot about Kinder Morgan’s playbook, and heard a lot of familiar tactics: bullying, buying off and burying their heads in the sand…more to come in a future blog post, but you can read a bit about the meeting here.
Solar gift
Melina Laboucan-Massimo and Association of Manitoba Chiefs Grand Chief Derek Nepinak gift a solar panel to TWN Chief Maureen Thomas and elder Leonard George. (Photo: Eugene Kung)
The ride continued on the day after returning to Vancouver (May 12), when we were honoured to witness the gifting of solar panels to TWN for their leadership on TMEX. Indigenous leaders from across North America – including Association of Manitoba Chiefs' Grand Chief Derek Nepinak, Kanesetake Mohawk Grand Chief Serge Otsi Simon, Faith Spotted Eagle and Phil Lane Jr. of Yankton Sioux, Melina Laboucan-Massimo of Greenpeace and the Lubicon Cree First Nation, Clayton Thomas-Muller of Mathais Colomb Cree Nation and 350.org, UBCIC Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, Jewell James of Lummi Nation, and Deborah Parker of Tulalip Tribes – came together to gift five solar panels to the Tsleil-Waututh Nation. The panels are to be used in TWN’s new green administration building which, along with the Solar Panel for their daycare, demonstrates that a transition to renewable energy is not only possible, it is happening now.
Here’s some fun trivia: some of the solar panels were the same ones that Prime Minister Trudeau declined to accept after he was elected last fall.
Water ceremony
Eugene, Jessica and WCEL summer student Sina Kazemi paddling for peace. (Photo: Robert Holler)
TWN’s leadership continued the next day, May 13th. A proud moment came for WCEL staff when we were invited to participate in a water ceremony in Burrard Inlet, at the Kinder Morgan Westridge Marine Terminal. Indigenous leaders who had gifted the solar panel joined TWN leadership, including Ta’ah Amy George (of “Warrior Up” fame), and took to the water in ocean canoes. We paddled across Burrard Inlet to Kinder Morgan’s terminal where prayers and ceremony were conducted for safety and protection of the inlet that has sustained them for millennia.
Supplemental ‘transition phase’ panel announced
The ride continued into the next week, which started with the announcement of a three-member panel to conduct a supplementary transition review of the Trans Mountain project – an attempt by the federal government to fulfill an election promise to “restore the public’s faith in our broken regulatory process.” But mistrust of the flawed NEB process is widespread. As Rueben George of TWN said: “it’s hard to unscramble an egg.”
Despite its limitations, the panel’s upcoming community consultations are an opportunity to let Prime Minister Trudeau hear loud and clear that the TMEX project is a bad deal, with risks that far outweigh the rewards. Stay tuned to learn more about how to participate when details of the consultations are announced in the coming weeks, here on our blog and at forthecoast.ca.
Burrard Inlet Science Symposium
West Coast Environmental Law tweet from the Tsleil-Waututh Science Symposium.
On May 19, TWN hosted the Burrard Inlet Science Symposium, which brought together municipal, provincial and federal policy makers, academics and ENGOs to discuss the health of Burrard Inlet and start work on improving the Inlet’s environmental conditions. At the Symposium’s opening, TWN’s Chief Maureen Thomas announced the Burrard Inlet Stewardship Council – to be led by local First Nations to continue and expand the work of stewarding and restoring Burrard Inlet.
NEB recommendation
Staff Counsel Eugene Kung and Reuben George speak to media in the wake of the NEB recommendation on Kinder Morgan. (Photo: Ben West)
Finally, on the same day as the Symposium, May 19, the National Energy Board released its conditional recommendation for the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. Unsurprisingly, the Board recommended the project, subject to 157 conditions.
The NEB’s recommendation was no surprise – the NEB was set up to recommend projects, particularly after former Prime Minister Stephen Harper gutted our environmental laws at the request of the oil industry. As a result, the NEB’s review of TMEX was fundamentally flawed – limiting public participation, refusing to make emergency response plans public, excluding climate change and marine shipping from its scope, time travelling and even refusing to consider the leading scientific evidence on the challenges of cleaning up a spill of diluted bitumen in order to stay on schedule.
We profoundly disagree with some of the NEB’s key findings: that the risk of a spill is low, and that the significant adverse effects on aboriginal cultural practices and our local endangered southern resident killer whales are justifiable. Further, as we have written, the economic case of getting oil to tidewater has disintegrated in recent months. And for those who take comfort in the conditions, don’t forget that the Auditor General of Canada found just a few months ago that the NEB was failing to track, let alone enforce, the conditions it set on projects.
But the ride is not over yet. The NEB recommendation is far from the last word on TMEX. The Federal Cabinet will make its decision in December of 2016, after the supplementary transition phase panel conducts its process along the pipeline route. First Nations continue to be staunchly opposed, and it seems destined for the courts – something the NEB apparently recognized, when it stretched out the deadline of its recommendation until 2021.
Finally, the Federal Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (ECCC) released its preliminary assessment of TMEX’s upstream GHG contributions, noting that it could add 17 million tonnes of CO2 per year, about 10% of 2014 emissions in the oil and gas sector. ECCC is receiving feedback on its draft assessment until June 19, so stay tuned for further details.
The wild roller coaster ridewill continue over the coming months and years with lots of ups and downs, but this month was a clear reminder that an informed and engaged public, acting strategically and paddling together, can achieve great things – like stopping a pipeline and restoring Burrard Inlet.
By Eugene Kung, Staff Counsel