Indigenous Pipeline Protesters Harass Oil Tanker

15th Octo­ber The Tsleil-Wau­tuth First Nation and envi­ron­men­tal­ists have crossed Bur­rard Inlet in tra­di­tion­al canoes to protest U.S. oil giant Kinder Morgan’s $5B plans to expand its Trans Moun­tain pipeline.

Pro­test­ers dodged tankers as they sailed close to the Westridge Marine Ter­mi­nal, in a bid to stop Kinder Mor­gan near­ly tripling the capac­i­ty of the pipeline, which car­ries crude oil from the Alber­ta oil­sands to tankers in Van­cou­ver.

When com­plet­ed, the pro­posed expan­sion is expect­ed to increase capac­i­ty in Trans Moun­tain from the exist­ing capac­i­ty of 300,000 bar­rels per day to 850,000 bar­rels per day.

The protest comes as cab­i­net min­is­ters and senior bureau­crats head to British Colum­bia as part of a major gov­ern­ment push to mol­li­fy oppo­nents of build­ing oil pipelines to the West Coast.

The new Harp­er ini­tia­tive fol­lows a report from the prime minister’s spe­cial pipelines rep­re­sen­ta­tive in British Colum­bia, David Eyford, who told Harp­er last month that nego­ti­a­tions with First Nations are a mess.

Sources say Eyford urged the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment take the lead role in deal­ing with Indi­an bands on both the pro­posed expan­sion of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Moun­tain pipeline and Enbridge’s North­ern Gate­way project.

The Trans Moun­tain line stretch­es 1,150 kilo­me­tres between Edmon­ton and ter­mi­nals in the Van­cou­ver area and Wash­ing­ton State. It car­ries heavy and light crude oil, as well as refined prod­ucts such as gaso­line and diesel.

It has been involved in sev­er­al recent spills includ­ing more 100,000 litres of light crude oil that was spilled at Kinder Morgan’s Sumas ter­mi­nal in Jan­u­ary.

Mean­while, an Enbridge offi­cial says the com­pa­ny expects a deci­sion from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment on its pro­posed North­ern Gate­way pipeline by mid-2014, mean­ing the pipeline could be mov­ing oil by 2018.

The North­ern Gate­way pipeline pro­posed by Enbridge would deliv­er 525,000 bar­rels of petro­le­um a day to a tanker ter­mi­nal in Kiti­mat, on the north coast of B.C.