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Lots reached the harbor--which is the ocean. Long time ago now, but I recall quite a few oiled birds with that one.


Re-spending Much more capacity existed pre-Harper, who cut a huge chunk of it. It hasn't recovered to its previous state and won't, even with the new money influx.


That aid, oil spills are probably over-rated as far environmental impact is concerned. They certainly aren't benign but the local shit hemorrhage over the Marathassa spill--about 3000 liters of bunker fuel, I think--was way out of whack from the damage it had the potential to cause.

   

Notley had the interesting idea of stopping freight trains from Vancouver from entering Alberta just by demanding an inspection of every third rail car on the basis of safety. Like, why should we let those trains enter our province unless we can be sure that they're 100% safe? The bottleneck that would result in short order, within the space of a few days, would be hilarious to see.

   

And they aren't obligated so someone else makes more money. Give them a reason. A bunch of jobs slinging a shovel for long enough to qualify for EI and a handful at the loading dock isn't doing it, is it?
BIG FUCKIN HINT: they're paying $1.50 a litre there cuz there's not enough refining capacity there. Up the quota and loans to upgrade Parkland (ex Chevron refinery), talk about retarting another of the old ones.
Promises of lots of real jobs and cheaper gas prices works better than a couple jobs and even higher gas prices.

   

Yeah, true enough. The grand opening of the pipeline will be accompanied by another spike in gas prices. lol

   

If you're too lazy to read the links I posted, that's your problem, but the Fed's plan addresses many of the problems that existed under Harper's lax regulatory system.

   

Alberta has plenty of refineries and it's smallest produces as much as BOTH of the ones in BC. FWIW, most of what goes through the existing KM pipeline are refined products for the BC market, not oil for export, but that may change if BCers piss off Alberta voters so much that they vote for that nutjob Kenney.

   

While upgrading a shuttered refinery is a nice idea, I doubt you'll find a company willing to spend a couple billion to do it - it's too risky, especially because its service life would probably only be a couple decades and might not generate enough to pay back its capital costs.

TMX will probably drop gas prices, because the lower mainland would no longer be constrained by the production limits of the tiny Burnaby refinery (55,000 BPD) and would be able to access the production from much larger refineries in Alberta. But if the pipeline went from 300,000 BPD to 900,000 BPD, there would be plenty of room for growth in diesel fuel, jet fuel and gasoline for a long time.

   

Right now I'd say Kenney is all but guaranteed to win the next Alberta election, especially after his open threat to BC to go nuclear over the pipeline. I respect what Notley's tried to do but she's made two major mistakes in dealing with Horgan. One, she didn't realize how much the BC NDP are now dominated by no-compromise environmentalist fanatics. And two, even more importantly, she badly over-estimated that Trudeau meant it when he says the feds are supporting her. Nothing she's done, the carbon tax or any of the other environmental regulations, have succeeded in gaining that "social license" Trudeau keeps yammering about. As such, even with industry support, it's been a wasted effort. And Trudeau doesn't give a damn about Alberta anyway, not when he's got ten or a dozen or whatever Liberal seats in the Vancouver area to placate. He'd sell out Alberta in an instant to keep that Liberal base intact.

Extremist times call for extremist measures. That's why Kenney will win, because what BC's set off in Alberta (ever since Christy Clark first brought up the whining about the pipelines over the now-dead Northern Gateway) is a wave of extreme reactionary anger. As a gutter populist Kenney is more able to rally that anger to his own benefit, way more than Notley is. He'll be a hero if he declares an economic war over the pipeline. The negatives will come in afterwards for Alberta though when he resorts to the good ol' boy way of doing things in right-wing Alberta, ranging from giving too much influence to social conservatism to another round of Klein-style Austerity Hero gamesmanship.

   

It’s a pity the rest of Canada didn’t side more with NL in its Churchill Falls dispute with Quebec over the decades, now due to run until 2041at least. This pushed our man Danny into the disastrous Muskrat Falls development and power lines through the Maritimes.

   

Most of the rest of Canada back then probably did morally side with Newfoundland in that egregious rip-off of their share of the hydro resources. Unfortunately for everyone else the power of the feds that supported Quebec guaranteed that Newfoundland would lose.

   

Like I said, I'm a fence sitter. It would have been an easier sell for me if it were refined. But meh. Oil spills mean money for me anyways, so I guess I shouldn't bitch too much. ha ha ha

   

Having worked on multiple pipelines, one with some genuinely intense National Energy Board oversight, I can tell you that today they're built to one of the most stringent construction codes in this country. Is 100% safety guaranteed? Of course not, but tell me what else that's built by humans anywhere has that kind of assurance attached to it. More importantly there's multiple levels of post-construction and in-operation safety inspection checkpoints that are performed on yearly, semi-annually, and even daily bases. Opponents acting like this pipeline, especially after the attention it's been given, is going to be made out of cardboard tube held together with duct tape are being deliberately disingenuous, if not openly lying about the nature of the engineering, construction, and inspection that goes into putting a project of this size together.

   

You have more common sense than the current Premier of BC. As for the boycott of BC wine it backfired.

   

The deal was unjust and would never been upheld this long against any developing nation - Canada would have been shamed into tearing it up long ago. However, that in no way justifies our collective crazy decision to go for Muskrat Falls which may now bankrupt the province and add to the federal debt.

   

It isn't Horgan who's running BC it's Weaver and this is one of his talking points. Without Weaver's support the BC NDP are dead in the water because as it stands now Weaver and his Environuts are the balance of power in our province.



British Columbia Liberal Party 42

BC NDP 41

​BC Green Party ​3

Independent 1

​​Total 87


​



So Notley's right to be pissed that another NDP branch office is going off the reservation because it shows just how fragmented their party still is despite all the rhetoric to the contrary.

But if anyone wondered what proportional representation would look like all they have to do is look at BC where the party with the least number of seats is the party calling the shots.

   

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