Local impact of pipeline pondered

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This article was published 20/02/2017 (2614 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If Douglas Tingey had his way, “dilbit” would become a household word discussed around kitchen tables across southern Manitoba.

The Winnipeg lawyer, who specializes in international trade and foreign investment, was in Steinbach last week to deliver a lecture on the proposed Energy East pipeline and its potential negative effects on the natural environment.

The event was a joint effort by the South Eastman Transition Initiative and the Provencher Green Party Electoral District Association.

In the Southeast, the pipeline would see an existing natural gas pipeline repurposed to transport dilbit—bitumen diluted with natural gas condensates to achieve a desired viscosity—from Alberta and Saskatchewan to petroleum refineries and terminals in Quebec and New Brunswick. The route of the $15.7 billion pipeline would bring it close to communities like Lorette, Ile des Chenes, Ste Anne and Falcon Lake, Tingey told his audience.

If approved, the 4,500 kilometre pipeline would carry 1.1 million barrels of crude oil daily, he said, citing statistics corroborated by TransCanada, the company that built the natural gas pipeline in the 1970s and that applied, in October 2014, to build the Energy East pipeline.

Numerous pump stations and new sections of pipeline would also be required in several provinces, including Manitoba, Tingey noted. He also asserted that the project is considered by its supporters to be critical to the expansion of oil production in all three prairie provinces.

Tingey noted the pipeline application, which had passed the National Energy Board’s regulatory hurdles and was entering the hearing stage, had to be restarted when a conflict of interests was uncovered, setting the project back two years. He pegged the likelihood of the pipeline application receiving approval at less than 50 percent.

Tingey, who is open about his opposition to the “monster pipeline project,” dubbed the pipeline “a hangover” from former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s energy policies. However, Tingey argued he was not a “rabid environmentalist,” but rather, a businessman concerned about long-term climate change, short-term environmental degradation, and “a host of First Nations issues” raised by the pipeline proposal.

Many in attendence at the meeting were concerned about the pipeline route’s crossing of the Winnipeg aqueduct and numerous watersheds, including many that drain into the Red River, Assiniboine River, and Lake Winnipeg. According to Tingey, significant risks are posed to ecological habitats and drinking water sources if the pipeline was to leak or burst. Unlike refined petroleum, Tingey said, spilled dilbit sinks and bonds to sediment, and cannot simply be skimmed off the surface of a body of water. This makes clean-up more difficult, he said.

The possibility of an explosion was also on attendees’ minds, with Tingey observing that burning dilbit produces thick, noxious black smoke that could cover a city the size of Steinbach and adversely affect the health of its citizens.

As the evening concluded, attendees also discussed ways to reduce carbon emissions on small and large scales, and pondered the best strategies for nudging consumers toward greener lifestyle choices.