The approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline by the B.C. premier Christy Clark is good news to local leaders.
On Wednesday, Clark announced that her government had given the political and environmental green light to the $6.8-billion Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline in exchange for a portion of the profits from the oil shipments. The expansion will twin an existing pipeline that will ship oil from Edmonton to Burnaby.
“It is all good news,” Glenn van Dijken, MLA for Barrhead-Morinville-Westlock, said.
“Part of the need for getting pipelines through to other jurisdictions is getting other governments to promote the advantages of our product getting to markets safely and absolutely pipelines are the safest means of transporting that project to the West Coast.”
The Wildrose MLA said that the approval of the pipeline makes him optimistic the project will get underway although he said he is still concerned that anti-pipeline protesters and campaigners will be able to slow down the process.
“I’m concerned with the delays that these types of groups will continue to force on the construction project as we move forward,” van Dijken said.
Premier Rachel Notley said she acknowledges that there will be opposition but many people who oppose the pipeline will come around after the promised updates to marine safety on the coast. The federal government will give British Columbia an additional $1.5 billion for marine safety as a result of the pipeline project.
Despite some pushback, the project has now been approved on both the federal and provincial levels with kudos being paid to Alberta’s Climate Leadership Plan.
The federal government said that approval would not have come without Alberta’s Climate Leadership Plan. The plan features a provincial carbon tax rolled out on Jan. 1 2017, which implemented a $20 per tonne price on carbon.
Van Dijken doesn’t think that social licence played a large part in Premier Clark’s decision.
“Social licence is a political term and I want these pipelines approved on the science and the quality of the project and its ability to ensure they are doing everything within their power to meet all the standards that are put before them,” van Dijken said. “Social licence is very, in my view of it, quite easily manipulated.”
Construction for the project is slated to begin in late 2017 and is anticipated to finish in 2019. Kinder Morgan said the project will create more than 15,000 jobs in construction. As part of the deal, Kinder Morgan will hire B.C. workers whenever possible.
