CBC News - Money - Mackenzie gas pipeline approved by NEB
Why does Big Oil always get their way? Please go to this website and read what the environmental impact of this pipeline is going to have on the area!:
http://www.naturecanada.ca/take_action_raise_voice_protect.asp
How quickly Politicians forget!!:
"On May 9, 1977, Berger's report was released in Ottawa. Significantly, Berger titled his report Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland, for above all he wanted the world to know that though the Mackenzie Valley may be the route for the biggest project in the history of free enterprise, people also live there."
"Berger warned that any gas pipeline would be followed by an oil pipeline, that the infrastructure supporting this "energy corridor" would be enormous — roads, airports, maintenance bases, new towns — with an impact on the people, animals and land equivalent to building a railway across Canada."
source:http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2010/12/16/f-mackenzie-valley-pipeline-history.html
"At the Joint Review Panel's hearings in 2007, Nature Canada argued that the full impact of the project on the lands, water and wildlife of this unique environment would leave an unacceptable footprint. If allowed to proceed, the project would:
Fragment habitat for bears, caribou and wolves
Harm fish and fish habitat by increasing sediment deposition into rivers and streams
Permanently damage important breeding or staging areas for millions of geese, tundra swans and other migratory birds
Cause forests to be clear cut and heavy machinery deployed to construct the infrastructure and the new underground pipelines
Impose development on First Nations lands before the Dehcho and Sahtu peoples complete their own land use plans and
Accelerate the effects of climate change in the Mackenzie Valley."
source:http://www.naturecanada.ca/enews_jan10_mackenzie.asp
"First proposed in the 1970s, the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline has been criticized for being a giant step in the industrialization and colonization of the primarily-Indigenous north. The development needed to keep gas flowing through the pipeline would affect a massive area of pristine wilderness. Maps projecting the impact of the rapid expansion of northern natural gas exploitation show a dense web of access roads, drilling locations and pipelines covering a vast area (shown in yellow on the map) around Deh Cho, or the Mackenzie River." source of map:http://www.dominionpaper.ca/files/weblogs-img/regionmap.jpg
Guess which direction all of the oil from this region is going? South to the United States!
"The pipeline project has raised concerns by environmental groups. The Boreal Forest Conservation Framework calls for protection of fifty percent of the 6,000,000 square kilometres (2,300,000 sq mi) of boreal forest (of which the Mackenzie Valley is a part) in Canada's north. Groups such as the World Wildlife Fund of Canada are pointing out that in the Northwest Territories' Mackenzie Valley, only five of the 16 ecoregions that are directly intersected by the proposed major gas pipeline or adjacent hydrocarbon development areas are reasonably represented by protected areas."
"The Sierra Club of Canada opposed the pipeline due to its perceived environmental impacts such as fragment intact of boreal forests along the Mackenzie River and damage of habitat for species such as Woodland Caribou and Grizzly bear. Sierra Club also argues that Mackenzie gas is slated to fuel further development of Alberta's tar sands, which produces the most damaging type of oil for the global atmosphere, through another pipeline to Fort McMurray. The Pembina Institute argues that carbon dioxide from the Mackenzie gas project and the fuel's end use would push Canada's greenhouse gas emissions 10% further away from its Kyoto Protocol commitment." (source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackenzie_Valley_Pipeline )
Isn't this bit of news interesting? :
"The Mackenzie Valley line also faces competition from the proposed $30-billion Alaska gas line. That 2,670-kilometre-long line could ship four billion cubic feet of gas per day from Alaska’s Arctic to the lower 48 states beginning in 2018."
"Two companies are competing to build the project, and gas producers are negotiating shipping contracts now."
"Many observers believe only one Arctic line will be built and the Northwest Territories, and other pipeline supporters, are using that to put pressure on federal lawmakers."
Source:http://www.financialpost.com/news/okays+Mackenzie+Valley+pipeline+onus+Imperial/3989151/story.html
Look what happened in October relating to the building of this pipeline:
"A joint review panel assessing a $16.2-billion northern pipeline proposal has chastised the federal government for lacking transparency in an attempt to reject environmental protection measures recommended for the project in the Mackenzie Valley.
In correspondence made public this month, the chairman of the panel, Robert Hornal, criticized numerous recommendations from the government, including its suggestions that the environmental protection measures should be rejected on the grounds that they would "constrain future development in the North.!!!!"
"Hornal had previously called the government to task for proposing a confidential process for modifying the environmental protection recommendations, describing the request in an Aug. 30 letter as a "fundamental breach of the basic principles that the panel's review process is to be open and transparent," and accountable to the public."
"In the October letter, Hornal also noted that the governments of Canada and the Northwest Territories were rejecting 28 out of its 115 recommendations, while in some of the other cases it offered vague explanations suggesting it was also rejecting recommendations it claimed to accept in principle."
source: http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/Ottawa+slammed+stance+Mackenzie+Valley+pipeline+project/3674904/story.html
Big Oil has won the right to destroy an ecosystem in Canada! This time it is the ecosystem of Northern Canada.
Why hasn't the NEB listened to scientists and environmental groups who have indicated that " pipeline builder Imperial Oil hasn't accounted for permafrost melting under the pipeline. Nor has it considered the effect of higher sea levels and longer storm seasons along the low-lying gas fields that would serve Canada as well as the United States."
"It's really the frozen ground that creates the structure that protects the pipeline," said Stephen Hazell, conservation director of the Sierra Club of Canada. "You could get shearing of the pipeline. ... Whole slopes could subside as the permafrost melts."
In an interview, Hazell pointed out that two of the project's main gas fields, which lie right along the Beaufort Sea, are only 5 feet above sea level and are already prone to spring flooding. And a four-year study released last year by 300 scientists from eight countries estimated the sea level would rise by about 3 feet by the end of the century.
Hazell also said Imperial hasn't adequately explained how it would build a pipeline able to stay intact despite losing the permafrost it sits on.
Two federal government departments echoed Hazell's concerns.
"The Mackenzie Basin has experienced some of the greatest warming in the circumpolar North in the past 50 years," said Jim Vollmarshausen of Environment Canada. "Climate variability and change poses a serious threat to the viability and integrity of the project."
Natural Resources Canada expressed similar reservations.
(source:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11383809/ns/world_news-world_environment/ )
Once again the environmental concerns of a Big Oil project have been mitigated and cast aside, in favor of the initiation of a project funded by Big Oil!!
