U. S. pipelines also under fire

Re: The tide is turning on Tides, March 21 As an American working to advance our energy renaissance, I was struck by former B. C. justice minister Suzanne Anton’s recent article decrying the “particularly egregious” and “blatant U. S.- based interference in Canadian energy policy.” Canadians should be outraged by U. S.-based organizations funding opposition to much-needed new Canadian energy infrastructure.

As a member of the Energy Builders coalition in the United States, our organization represents workers and businesspeople who build the pipelines that deliver oil and natural gas from America’s rich shale formations and Canada’s oilsands bounty to consumers throughout North America and, increasingly, globally. America’s recent rapid rise in production, closing in on the status of net energy exporter, has been made possible by new pipelines.

The U. S.- based groups cited by Anton as f unding and mobilizing illegal protests against the Trans Mountain and ( t he now suspended) Energy East projects in Canada are also attacking virtually every American oil and gas pipeline project. Theirs is a wildly wrong- headed crusade to “keep it in the ground,” by “cutting the veins” ( pipelines) to “kill the heart” (production).

Here’s a rich irony. The U. S. House of Representatives Science Committee recently published a report finding that Russian government-funded entities are channelling resources and otherwise supporting American anti- pipeline zealots. Canadians might want to check to see if Russians are also stoking anti- pipeline discord in Canada for the same purpose. But then why should the Russians bother, when their witting or unwitting accomplices in the U. S. extremist movement are doing Russia’s dirty work in Canada for them? Canadians have every reason to be as concerned about U. S.- based meddling in their internal affairs as Americans are about Russian meddling in theirs.

Let’s not only hope they fail; let’s mobilize in both countries to make certain they do. Toby Mack, president and CEO, Energy Equipment & Infrastructure Alliance