Choking off jet fuel would send Horgan a message
It will cost Alberta, but the effort will pay dividends, Vitor Marciano says.
Premier Rachel Notley’s government has passed Bill 12 which gives her the right to turn off the oil and gas taps to B.C. That’s a good thing. It shows that Notley is serious and that she understands the existential implications of Alberta becoming landlocked.
The NDP government of B.C. has launched a constitutional challenge to Bill 12. It is very likely that some helpful B.C. judge will give them an injunction against Alberta using Bill 12 until the legal issues are sorted out.
Notley has options that avoid using the powers in Bill 12. So what should the premier do?
Instead of using Bill 12 to stop the flow of oil and gas to B.C., she should use the power of the marketplace and buy all the Alberta jet fuel that is currently scheduled to go to B.C. in the next two months. Pay the refiners a few dollars more than B.C. and put it in storage. It might cost us a few million but it will be a worthwhile investment.
If B.C. wants to landlock Alberta on principle, Alberta should work to ground Vancouver airport (YVR) out of respect for the same principle.
Cutting off the jet fuel that we sell to B.C. via the existing Trans Mountain Pipeline will leave YVR dependent on jet fuel from two other sources: jet fuel refined at the Chevron refinery in Burnaby which is piped to YVR via the Trans Mountain Jet Fuel pipeline (different from the Trans Mountain pipeline); and jet fuel barged to YVR from the United States.
Because of this, Alberta should immediately begin negotiations with Albertabased Parkland Fuel Corp. to buy the Burnaby Chevron refinery. We should also try to purchase Kinder Morgan’s 41-kilometre Trans Mountain Jet Fuel pipeline. Now, I don’t usually go for government buying businesses, but sometimes you must make strategic acquisitions and investments. Owning these two Lower Mainland energy assets would protect Alberta from B.C. politics.
Notley needs to make this painful for the politicians running B.C., without making it painful for the portion of the B.C. population who didn’t elect Horgan’s government and who don’t support its economic and constitutional malfeasance. Sticking to B.C. wines might have been fun, but the voters in wine country didn’t elect Horgan. Neither did the voters in the rest of the interior or in northern B.C.
On the other hand, the Lower Mainland and parts of Vancouver Island voted for Horgan and the Greens and we should offer to respect their moral superiority by helping them avoid the carbon impact of international flights.
If these British Columbians are sincere, they will be delighted by our forced grounding of YVR — it will help save the planet! If Vancouver needs to cease being an “international city” to protect the environment and reduce greenhouse gases, that is surely a price these voters are prepared to pay.
I suspect that B.C. may not be sincere and thus they will speed up the building of a pipeline which is currently under construction to bring U.S. jet fuel to YVR. You read that correctly.
While B.C. is saying that Alberta can’t export oil through a pipeline to Burnaby because of the environment, they are quietly building a pipeline terminal on the Fraser River to bring in U.S. jet fuel. Massive barges of jet fuel will be towed up a river which has Canada’s most important salmon fishery to feed Vancouver’s desire to get anywhere in the world with direct flights.
The importation of foreign fuel is entirely regulated by the federal government. If the federal Liberals start the process of reviewing the permits through which U.S. jet fuel crosses the border, it may also get the attention of B.C.’s government. The combined attention of Alberta and Ottawa on the issue of jet fuel might get Horgan’s government to sit down with Alberta and the federal government and solve this problem. Or, they could reject all of this and stand on principle.
Let’s see if principles matter if the consequence is the grounding of YVR and the end of Vancouver as an “international city.”