The “conceptual” route map for TransCanada’s cross-country pipeline sees oil routed east near Highway 7, through the former municipality of Richmond, then south near Malakoff Road. From there it will transport oil through environmentally sensitive lands around the Rideau River before passing through the waterway. The pipeline will then continue further southeast, through North Grenville, a neighbouring municipality that includes Kemptville.
TransCanada plans to retrofit the underused 3,000-kilometre Canadian Mainline natural gas pipeline, which already runs through the region, so it can carry crude oil from Alberta’s oilsands to refineries on Canada’s East Coast.
A 1,400-kilometre extension has also been proposed to carry oil as far as Saint John, N.B., where Irving Oil has a refinery.
The project is intended to help reduce Eastern Canada’s dependence on imported oil, while offering Alberta oil companies better access to shipping ports where crude can be loaded onto oil tankers and sent overseas. TransCanada has said it would like to see the crude oil flowing east as early as 2017.
The proposal still needs regulatory approval from the National Energy Board (NEB) as well as approvals from Natural Resources Canada and other federal departments.
Jamie Kereliuk, business leader of regulatory applications at the NEB, said TransCanada has not yet filed an official application with the federal regulator. Once an application has been filed, the NEB starts a 15-month process of evaluating the proposed pipeline route, holding public consultations to hear from residents that may be affected and examining any environmental impact.
Kereliuk would not comment on TransCanada’s proposal specifically and said the NEB can’t speak about a proposal until an official application is filed by the company. One requirement of such proposals, however, is that the builder must be open and transparent about their intentions, he said.
To that end, TransCanada has already started about to speak about its plans with communities along the proposed route.
Calls to Mayor Jim Watson’s office inquiring whether TransCanada has approached the city were not returned. A spokesman for the mayor said no meetings have taken place between the mayor and TransCanada.
However, according to the City of Ottawa’s lobbying registry, on April 17 a TransCanada representative met with city officials including city manager Kent Kirkpatrick and deputy city manager Nancy Schepers, with some subsequent correspondence. On June 10 another TransCanada representative met with George Young, Watson’s senior adviser for communications and operations, with correspondence continuing through Monday.
The company has also approached the Municipality of North Grenville and informed officials of its intentions, according to Mayor David Gordon. Gordon said the meeting with the firm was done as a “courtesy” to alert the municipality and its residents to the company’s plans. He said he’s in favour of the project and welcomes any jobs and economic benefits that may come with it.
In a statement, TransCanada spokesman Phillippe Cannon said the move to refit natural gas lines will help the company complete the proposed pipeline quickly with minimal disturbance to nearby residents.
“The advantage of this pipeline is that almost 70 per cent of it is already in the ground as the Canadian Mainline,” said Cannon. “Re-using existing infrastructure and paralleling existing rights-of-way will result in much less environmental and community disturbance than building an entirely new pipeline.”
Cannon said electronic leak-detection systems will be installed to allow the company to monitor operations 24 hours a day from its Calgary control centre. The flow of crude can be shut down in a matter of minutes using shut-off valves installed every 30 kilometres along the pipeline and near sensitive areas such as river crossings.
Cannon said this isn’t the first time the company has used old natural gas lines to transport crude. A smaller pipeline between Alberta and Winnipeg was converted more than three years ago and has transported more than 400 million barrels of oil without incident, he said.
The pipeline’s proposed path would funnel crude oil through the region’s rural residential areas, many of which are dependent on wells for their drinking water.
Calls to Environment Canada about the potential environmental impact of the project went unanswered Monday. (The department’s communication staff were unavailable because of Quebec’s St. Jean Baptiste Day.)
Maryam Adrangi, a climate and energy campaigner with the Council of Canadians, said the proposed route will bring massive amounts of crude through some of the province’s most densely populated areas and said not enough has been done to educate Ontarians about the project and the potential dangers it poses.
“Communities on the ground are going to face the real costs,” she said. “If there is a pipeline spill, will TransCanada take responsibility? Or will the City of Ottawa have to be there trying to do what they can. Where is the accountability?”
TransCanada isn’t the only company that has announced plans to move crude oil from Alberta’s oilsands to new markets. Enbridge Inc. wants to expand the capacity of some pipes in the Great Lakes region — especially the Line 9 pipeline, which would move massive amounts of crude to Montreal through southern Ontario. Adrangi said the Line 9 proposal, which has attracted protests, will also see crude oil moved through highly populated areas as it is transported east.
The new pipelines eastward are thought to be of greater importance to Alberta’s oil industry after opposition to the Northern Gateway pipeline, which would have transported more crude through British Columbia to oil tankers at ports on the West Coast, and uncertainty over the fate of TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport crude oil into the United States.
Original Article
Source: ottawacitizen.com
Author: Vito Pilieci
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