Ottawa’s tanker ban favours B.C., hurts Alberta
Bill C-48 contains all the ingredients for another bitter fight over energy exports
Bill C-48, Ottawa’s tanker moratorium for B.C.’s north coast, cloaks a spectacular hypocrisy that will not surprise Albertans.
The moratorium will not affect B.C. exports of its own liquefied natural gas. The province’s plan for a super-port to ship this product to Asia is good to go.
But Bill C-48 would ban shipments of a host of Alberta’s secondary “condensate” products, as well as bitumen and even partially upgraded bitumen.
The loss of the Asian condensate market alone will cost this province billions in investment and thousands of jobs, according to Alberta government estimates.
Premier Rachel Notley and her energy minister, Marg McCuaigBoyd, have been deeply worried about this for more than a year. But they kept the dispute in the background while the Trans Mountain pipeline deal was in play.
That changed suddenly Tuesday when UCP Leader Jason Kenney asked Notley if she’d urge the Trudeau government to withdraw the bill.
There’s little chance of that. It passed third reading May 8 and is now before the Senate.
But Notley actually gave Kenney an answer. She said McCuaig-Boyd has written Ottawa to complain that “the tanker ban in its current iteration is too broad and may well limit opportunities.”
The energy department emailed letters exchanged by McCuaig-Boyd and Federal Transport Minister Marc Garneau.
On Nov. 9 last year, the Alberta minister pointed to a casual betrayal of earlier promises.
She wrote that during consultations, Ottawa repeated several times that “the moratorium would exclude naphtha or condensate.” Garneau himself had said as much in a response.
But that changed radically by the time the bill was tabled.
McCuaig-Boyd wrote: “The subsequent expansion of the list of products to include condensates is very concerning as it significantly jeopardizes our efforts to diversify our economy, putting thousands of jobs and billions of dollars at risk for our province and the country as a whole.”
This “will affect several future projects with the potential to reach new, high-value markets in Asia.
“Prohibiting shipments from the strategic deepwater ports on the north coast of B.C., which can deliver products to Asian markets with a full-day advantage over other Pacific ports, will have profound and long-standing economic consequences for the entire country.”
Even B.C. has a gripe. The broader moratorium could ban offshore shipments of products from the huge Montney shale formation that straddles the northwestern border between Alberta and B.C.
In her letters, McCuaig-Boyd points out that Alberta has been upgrading oil and gas “both as an important development policy and because it will support our transition to a lower carbon future.”
B.C. Premier John Horgan has no problem with cross-border shipment of upgraded products. Green Leader Andrew Weaver agrees.
Now, Ottawa will deny exports that aren’t even controversial to the B.C. government.
Bill C-48, in its current form, also kills any hope of First Nations partners building the Eagle Spirit pipeline from Fort McMurray to Prince Rupert.
The proponents hoped to make the line acceptable to other Indigenous people by shipping partially upgraded bitumen.
Bill C-48 now classifies partially upgraded bitumen as a “persistent oil.” It is therefore banned.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in B.C. on Tuesday to chat up Indigenous leaders. Ottawa keeps making noises about First Nations investment in Kinder Morgan.
It’s a cynical game.
For coastal radicals, First Nations owners are much riskier targets.
Why, then, does Ottawa try to regulate Eagle Spirit out of existence? Perhaps in hopes the investment will migrate to the Lower Mainland.
One common thread here is that if a petroleum product comes from Alberta, it will never leave our ocean shores without a hell of a fight.
The blatant discrimination of Bill C-48 deserves a whole new brawl.
The subsequent expansion of the list of products to include condensates is very concerning as it significantly jeopardizes our efforts to diversify our economy.