Note by Roger Annis
September 10, 2013–The governors of six New England states and premiers of four eastern Canadian provinces met in Quebec on September 8 and 9 for their
annual conference. They have reportedly agreed on the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and deal with the consequences of climate change. But those nice words don’t amount to much because they are simultaneously signaling cautious agreement if not enthusiasm to expand the transport of fossil fuels by rail and pipeline through their jurisdictions.
Enclosed below are three news reports on the conference.
At least one government among the group –New Brunswick–is proceeding as fast as it can in expanding the fracking of natural gas in the province. It is also lobbying hard with the Canadian government in favour of construction of the ‘Energy East’ tar sands pipeline to connect to the port of Saint John and the Irving Oil refinery in that city.
Maine Governor Paul LePage thinks Energy East is a “great project”. Quebec Premier Pauline Marois is casting a nervous glance over her shoulder at a wary and skeptical public in her province and says a pipeline shouldn’t run through “sensitive environmental areas”. (Is there such a thing as a “non-sensitive” environmental area?)
Marois’ environment minister, Yves-François Blanchet, tells the Montreal Gazette that the oil train disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec on July 6 leaves him favorable to the pipeline proposal.
My background article on all this is here.
Roger Annis
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Energy issues debated at meeting of premiers, N.E. governors
Kevin Dougherty, Quebec Bureau Chief, The Gazette, Sept 9, 2013
LA MALBAIE — Quebec Premier Pauline Marois dined Sunday night with her counterparts from the four Atlantic provinces and six New England states in the storied Manoir Richelieu hotel.
Overlooking the St. Lawrence River, the Manoir Richelieu was the centre of summer resort activity in Quebec’s mountainous Charlevoix region in the first half of the 20th century, when the town was known as Murray Bay. Montreal’s anglophone elite and wealthy Americans would travel down the St. Lawrence from Montreal on steamer ships to Murray Bay, away from the stifling summer heat of Montreal.
Marois, who holds the rotating chairmanship this year, is host of the 37th annual Conference of New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers. The two-day event focused on energy issues this year.
The initial program called for discussions on the energy future of the region, where Quebec and now Newfoundland are vying to sell export power from their hydroelectrical dams, as well as greater use of energy-efficient vehicles and adaptation to climate change.
New Brunswick has been pushing for pipeline transportation, crossing Quebec, to bring Western Canada crude oil to the Irving Oil refinery in Saint John, N.B.
Quebec’s reservations about pipelines have softened since the July 5 Lac-Mégantic disaster, when a runaway train of 72 tank cars, carrying Western crude, roared into the town of 6,000, near the Quebec-Maine border, exploding and killing 47.
The fire and explosion destroyed about half the downtown area and rendered the remainder inaccessible until June 2014, when cleanup of crude-contaminated soil is expected to be completed.
Western crude now is cheaper than offshore crude oil from the North Sea, North Africa and Venezuela that refineries in Quebec, the Maritimes, as well as in New England, have relied on.
But because there are no pipelines from the U.S. and Canadian West to the eastern refiners, they have turned to rail transport.
The Lac-Mégantic catastrophe has the premiers and governors thinking there has to be a safer way to bring in Western crude, boosting the case for pipelines.
Quebec Environment Minister Yves-François Blanchet, who has questioned the environmental impact of Enbridge Inc.’s proposal to reverse an existing pipeline to bring Western crude to Montreal, told The Gazette the Lac-Mégantic disaster has caused him to reconsider the pipeline alternative.
In addition to Lac-Mégantic, Marois has a one-on-one meeting planned with Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Kathy Dunderdale to discuss hydroelectrical projects in Labrador.
Newfoundland plans to build a $7.6-billion, 824-megawatt hydroelectrical project at Muskrat Falls, downstream from the 5,428-megawatt Churchill Falls dam, operated by Hydro-Québec.
Newfoundland is still bitter about a 1969 agreement giving Churchill Falls power to Hydro-Québec for 0.25 of a cent a kilowatt hour, dropping to 0.20 of a cent a kilowatt hour from 2016 until 2041.
Dunderdale wants to export Muskrat Falls power to New England using undersea transmission lines to Newfoundland and then from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia.
At the July meeting of the Council of the Federation in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Marois proposed discussing the situation with Dunderdale at the La Malbaie meeting.
Maine governor voices support for Energy East pipeline project across Canada
By Kevin Bissett, Canadian Press, September 9, 2013
LA MALBAIE, Que. — The governor of Maine is lending his support to TransCanada’s proposed west-east pipeline, saying his state would welcome Alberta’s oil. The transportation of crude was a key issue as the New England governors and Eastern Canadian premiers held their annual meeting Monday in La Malbaie, Que., where Gov. Paul LePage expressed his support for the $12-billion development.
“I think it’s a great project,” LePage said. “I think we need the oil and I think we need gas. Although I would prefer it to be natural gas, it is oil and it’s needed.”
TransCanada (TSX:TRP) Corp.’s Energy East Pipeline project, which still has to clear regulatory reviews, would ship up to 1.1 million barrels of crude per day from Alberta to Quebec in 2017. A 1,400-kilometre extension would be built to ship oil to the Irving Oil refinery in Saint John, N.B., a year later.
LePage said he would prefer to see oil shipped by pipeline rather than rail cars, citing the train derailment in Lac-Megantic, Que., a disaster he said was a “perfect storm” involving aging equipment and human error. The tracks used to transport western oil to New Brunswick pass through Maine.
Pat Binns, the Canadian consul general to New England, said the Energy East Pipeline is drawing more attention south of the border. “It could be important for the northeast of the U.S. in terms of where its oil comes from,” Binns said. “There’s a few years down the road before all this happens, but people are looking at the options.”
New Brunswick Premier David Alward, who left the meeting early to address a TransCanada board of directors meeting in Fredericton, said he continues to try to convince Quebec Premier Pauline Marois of the merits of the development. He said a steering committee set up by both provinces is reviewing the project.
Marois, who has remained non-committal on the proposal, said Monday she has concerns that would need to be resolved before it has her support. “We have to make sure that we assess the situation as to where a pipeline might go and what impact that might have on a sensitive environmental area,” she said.
The premiers and governors also passed a resolution urging federal authorities in Canada and the U.S. to take all necessary measures to ensure the safety of railway transport of hazardous materials. Marois said the agreement was important given what happened in Lac-Megantic.
“This is very urgent because we lost people in this tragedy, we lost the centre of a small city and we polluted a lake,” she said of the July 6 disaster. The train was destined for the Irving Oil refinery in Saint John when it caught fire and exploded. Forty-seven people were killed or presumed dead.
Irving Oil plans to construct a $300-million marine terminal in Saint John to expand shipping capacity, a decision it has said was prompted by private sector interest in the Energy East Pipeline project.
Environmental groups have cautioned the proposal poses a fresh set of risks to the country’s water supply if spills occur. First Nations groups have also expressed concerns about the project, saying they will not support it unless environmental protection and aboriginal and treaty rights are guaranteed.
New Hampshire Gov. Margaret Wood Hassan said all methods of carrying oil must be carefully scrutinized, including pipelines.
“All modes of transportation have their safety challenges and what we must be doing is using best practices for whatever the mode of transportation is,” Hassan said.
Resolution calls for greater rail safety
New England states, eastern Canadian provinces present common front
By Kevin Dougherty, Quebec Bureau Chief, The Gazette, September 10, 2013
LA MALBAIE — All six governors of New England states and the five eastern Canadian provinces joined Monday in adopting a resolution calling for greater rail safety in the wake of the Lac-Mégantic disaster.
Addressed to U.S. President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the resolution focuses on the transport of hazardous materials, such as crude oil, noting the 47 dead and the destruction of Lac-Mégantic’s downtown. Stricter measures “must be adopted without delay in order to prevent future tragedies of this type,” the resolution says, calling for the “sharing of information and best practices” in railway safety.
Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee, who co-chaired the two-day meeting of the New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers conference with Quebec Premier Pauline Marois, noted that changing energy markets mean large quantities of crude oil from Western Canada and shale gas now are carried by train.
And Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin, saying “words cannot express our sorrow and horror about what happened in Quebec,” noted the accident was in Quebec near the Maine border, but could just as easily have happened in Maine.
“We are one family when it comes to transportation infrastructure,” Shumlin said “We want to assure safety and to avoid the kind of tragedy that the people in Quebec and their families have had to suffer through.”
Shumlin said he and other New England governors would see Obama in January, “and I’m sure that he will be receptive.”
Marois, as the Canadian co-chair of the conference, will send the resolution to Harper. She said she plans to ask the prime minister to “work with us” to prevent a repetition of Lac-Mégantic. “It is certain that the fact we have increased a lot the volume of oil carried by rail transport, while we have not revised the rules, increases, without doubt, the risks,” Marois said.
And Marois said using pipelines instead of rail transport of oil also carries risks. Strict rules must be adopted and applied, she said. “Because lives are at stake.”
In recent years, safety rules were loosened, she noted, citing the case of Lac-Mégantic wherein a small railway, with less experience carrying crude oil than large carriers, was allowed to transport oil with only one crew member on the train.
Marois also questioned the inspection process for small railways and the adequacy of their insurance coverage.
The Monday session of the conference opened with the presentation to Marois and Chaffee, on behalf of the cross-border organization, of an award from the Climate Group for their commitment to dealing with climate change.
Mark Kenber, CEO of the London-based Climate Group, called on the governors and premiers to invest in energy efficiency, saying this is the cheapest, most effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“Climate change is here,” Vermont’ s Shumlin told the meeting, noting heavy rain and snowfalls, previously uncommon in the region, now are common.
Lindsay Rustad, of the U.S. department of agriculture, said that by the end of this century, precipitation would rise by another 7 to 14 per cent and average temperatures would be 2.9 degrees C higher.
The governors and premiers agreed they must reduce greenhouse gas emissions and deal with the consequences of climate change that are the new reality.
