While NDP leader Tom Mulcair was getting slammed from all sides last week for his soft support of Trans-Canada’s Energy East pipeline, Ontario’s energy regulator, the Ontario Energy Board (OEB), issued a report saying the $12 billion oil sands pipeline isn’t worth the environmental risk.
“The big beneficiaries for pipelines,” says the OEB, “are those jurisdictions that put the product into the pipeline and those that take it out.”
While almost half of TransCanada’s proposed pipeline will run through Ontario, the OEB says the province would see little economic benefit from carrying 1.1 million barrels a day of crude from Alberta to refineries in Quebec and New Brunswick.
In fact, the OEB found that the project could end up making consumers pay more for natural gas. Part of Trans-Canada’s 4,600-kilometre pipeline plan involves converting a pipeline that currently carries NG. The OEB says the effect would be a reduction in the natural gas supply and increased prices.
The report, commissioned by Ontario Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli, sums up the situation neatly: “This will result in an imbalance between the risks of the project and the expected benefits for Ontarians.”
After hearing from more than 10,000 citizens, including First Nations and Metis living along the proposed route, the OEB says, “The number one concern [is] the threat of an oil spill in their local lakes and rivers.”
The report suggests rerouting the line to avoid environmentally sensitive areas and waterways, and recommends a full review of TransCanada’s safety record while raising concerns about sections of existing pipe patched with plastic tape to prevent leaks.
Still, environmentalists say the OEB gave Energy East’s climate change impacts short shrift. OEB consultants concluded that with or without the pipeline, much of the 1.1 million barrels slated for Energy East would still move by train and that Energy East would, at worst, spike Canada’s emissions by 7.8 million tonnes by 2035. That’s a much smaller climate impact than was projected by the Pembina Institute. In a 2014 report, Pembina estimated that the proposed pipeline would enable over 30 million tonnes of upstream carbon emissions every year.
The Council of Canadians isn’t thrilled. “The serious climate pollution consequences of filling the Energy East pipeline… would unleash enough pollution to undo the good done by phasing out coal in Ontario.”
Environmental Defence charged that the OEB’s analysis was based on “outdated and inaccurate information.”
For the government’s part, Chiarelli has said that Ontario will be taking citizen concerns to the feds and the National Energy Board (NEB), which have final say over pipeline construction.
It remains to be seen if the province will dig in its heels as British Columbia has over Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline. The BC government has warned that it will deny provincial permits to Ottawa and Enbridge if its five conditions aren’t met.
Ontario and Quebec initially issued seven conditions for Energy East, but controversially dropped plans to consider upstream greenhouse gas emissions from the tar sands as one of them.
However, the odds are increasingly stacked in TransCanada’s favour.
On July 31, the Friday before the August 2 election call, the Harper government quietly appointed a consultant on the Kinder Morgan pipeline to the NEB.
The press certainly gave more attention to the right-leaning Fraser Institute’s new study claiming that pipelines like Energy East are less risky than shipping oil by trains.
But Environmental Defence’s Tim Gray calls the study a red herring and says it’s not an either-or situation. “You’re going to end up with both exploding trains in your backyard and leaking pipelines.”
ecoholic@nowtoronto.com | @ecoholicnation
