Ralph

[Glacier]

In your Sept. 8 edition, the article “Goodale wants faith in process restored” quotes Regina Liberal MP Ralph Goodale as saying “not an inch of pipeline was built” under the previous Conservative government. This is completely untrue. There were four major pipeline projects applied for, built and completed under the Conservatives.

They are the Enbridge Alberta Clipper (from Hardisty, Alta., to Gretna, Man., before turning south to Superior, Wis.), the TransCanada Keystone (from Hardisty to Haskett, Man., before turning south to Cushing, Okla.), the Kinder Morgan Loop (from Hinton, Alta., to Rearguard, B.C.) and the Enbridge Line 9B Reversal (from North Westover, Ont., to Montreal).

Pipeline projects such as these are especially important to Saskatchewan’s economy because of the abundance of oil and other resources in this province and also because the pipes are manufactured at Evraz North America’s major facility just north of Regina.

It is my hope that private-sector pipeline projects such as these will be allowed to continue now the Liberals are in power.

http://leaderpost.com/opinion/letters/r ... -pipelines

[maryjane48]

sask has actual oil compared to tar sands . its still hard to clean but miles better than oil sands sludge

[The Green Barbarian]

sask has actual oil compared to tar sands . its still hard to clean but miles better than oil sands sludge

what are tar sands? And Sask has a lot of heavy oil, that's true, but of course, the enviro-nuts don't understand the difference as they are too lazy to read anything outside of their own insipid dogma.

[Hurtlander]

In your Sept. 8 edition, the article “Goodale wants faith in process restored” quotes Regina Liberal MP Ralph Goodale as saying “not an inch of pipeline was built” under the previous Conservative government. This is completely untrue. There were four major pipeline projects applied for, built and completed under the Conservatives.

Kinder Morgan twined a huge section of their Trans Mountain pipeline all the way through Jasper National Park and most of the way through the BC side of the Rockies to RedPass, just east of Tete Jaun Cashe.

[Glacier]

Kinder Morgan twined a huge section of their Trans Mountain pipeline all the way through Jasper National Park and most of the way through the BC side of the Rockies to RedPass, just east of Tete Jaun Cashe.

Though to be fair to the Liberals, this project was approved long before the Conservatives came to power. And it's a good thing too because I doubt any government today (whether Liberal or Conservative) would be able to get such a project approved.

[hobbyguy]

I agree with Glacier, partly because of the nature of the projects proposed.

Folks have realized, for a variety reasons, that export pipelines are a negative value to the "Main St." reality. There is no lasting economic benefit (once construction is done, it is primarily a "Wall St." benefit with a tiny trickle of tax money). Export pipelines do not affect the price at the pumps, nor help to secure future supply for Canadians. The increased tanker traffic winds up adding risk and costs at the "Main St." level. People then use a wide variety of "nimby" tactics to oppose export pipelines because they have a gut feeling that the export pipelines only detract from their lives in general.

The oil/bitumen pipeline folks have made this negative feeling even worse. They have, and continue to, operate in a high handed and careless fashion. Then they try to overcome that negative perception with slick ads - but nobody believes them because their actions continue to be high handed and careless. Trust is a fragile thing, difficult to build, easy to destroy, and extremely difficult (almost impossible) to rebuild. When folks like the Northern Gateway folks put out submissions like they did, which was total rubbish on the economics and many other areas (CERI reports at the same time contradicted them) they lose anyone who rationally gives them a look. Kalamazoo, Lac Megantic, and many other instances along with the current actions against the Sioux in the Dakotas just continues to say to folks, "We are a bunch of jerks and we don't care about you".

In the Canadian context, the cozy up with the Harper Conservatives did more damage. The "streamlining" of review processes may or may not have made sense, but the implementation, turning the NEB into a "captive regulator" has pretty much permanently destroyed the credibility of the NEB. Especially given the recent resignation debacle over conflicts of interest.

So unless the industry decides that 1. export pipelines are not going to get built and 2. that replacing eastern Canadian imports with refined products is a profitable route and 3. that they are really going to be responsible actors and 4. we get a new NEB process that really makes sense to the public... then there will indeed be no pipelines built.

Even then, I have my doubts that the NEB or the Industry can rebuild credibility and trust. Without those two things, they are dead dodos.