Trans Mountain protest camp dismantled, arrests made
BURNABY — The RCMP arrested protesters Thursday as officers enforced a court injunction to dismantle a protest camp at a site where the Trans Mountain pipeline ends in Burnaby.
Cpl. Daniela Panesar said police began enforcing an order obtained by the City of Burnaby last week from the B.C. Supreme Court. The detachment said 11 people were removed from the site known as Camp Cloud.
“Five were subsequently arrested and have since been released from custody,” the RCMP said in statement. A family of three living at the camp was being helped to acquire emergency shelter, police. said.
Environmental activist Tzeporah Berman, who works with the Watch House group that has an Indigenous protest site near Camp Cloud, said she understood the arrested demonstrators promised to stay away.
“The folks agreed to sign the terms and they were released,” she said.
Officers moved in after talking with camp residents in the hope that they would obey the injunction and leave within a 48-hour deadline set by the court, the RCMP said.
That deadline passed Sunday and protesters at the camp said Monday they were prepared to protect their sacred fire, which has been burning since the camp was set up late last year. They said they planned to tie themselves to structures rather than obey the injunction.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Geoffrey Gomery was specific in the injunction that the fire needed to be put out because it was burning in dry conditions near an aviation fuel tank farm. Camp residents had refused requests to extinguish the fire despite the increasing risk of wildfires.
RCMP placed a large exclusion zone around Camp Cloud on Thursday as the dismantling began. They said they would arrest anyone, including media, who violated the zone.
“Our paramount concern is safety,” said Panesar. “We ensure that everybody is out of the exclusion zone and then the City of Burnaby can come in and start cleaning up the protest site.”
City crews brought heavy equipment into the camp shortly after the arrests and began removing belongings and bringing down structures.
Dipak Dattani, Burnaby’s acting city manager, said crews were doing an inventory of any personal property, as well as of the structures on the site.
“Once that is done, we will then start looking at dismantling. To give you a date or time, it’s hard for me to say right now because we just got on the site.”
Hazardous materials, needles or other dangerous items were among the things crews were checking for before dismantling could begin, Dattani said.
Peaceful protests are still permitted, but when public safety is threatened, the City of Burnaby has to act, he said. The Indigenous protest site wasn’t included in the injunction application. The City of Burnaby allowed the Watch House to stay because it had already agreed to several key conditions, including removal of its sacred fire. “The city asked it to be removed so there was a proper ceremony with Indigenous elders and [the sacred fire] was removed until after the fire ban,” Berman said.
Camp Cloud has grown since last November when opponents of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion parked a trailer at the gates of the Kinder Morgan tank farm on Burnaby Mountain.
The camp grew to include twostorey structures, several vehicles and a makeshift shower.
RCMP said that since March they’ve arrested 217 people under a court-ordered injunction that restricts protesters from within five metres of sites in Burnaby where work related to the pipeline expansion is underway.
It has also become a rallying point for demonstrators opposed to the pipeline’s expansion, which would more than triple the amount of bitumen and other oil products moving from near Edmonton to Burnaby for shipping overseas by tanker.
As opposition built against the expansion, the federal government offered $4.5 billion to purchase the project. Kinder Morgan is presenting that offer to its shareholders and expects the sale will be approved this month or in September.
The purchase price, which includes the existing pipeline, pumping stations, rights of way and the Westridge marine terminal in Burnaby, does not cover the costs of building the new pipeline, previously estimated at about $7.4 billion.
CALGARY — Potential delays in the completion of the Keystone XL pipeline following a U.S. judge’s order mean that Western Canadian oil producers could suffer current price discounts for a longer period of time, industry spokesmen say.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Brian Morris ordered additional environmental study of the altered route through Nebraska for TransCanada Corp.’s proposed pipeline.
The potential setback illustrates how difficult it has become to relieve market access woes that have resulted in larger-than-usual price discounts for Western Canadian crude, said Chris Bloomer, CEO of the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association.
“We need the pipeline, we need it yesterday and we need more market access across the board,” he said in an interview. “We’re not getting a fair price for our crude in the U.S. because of a lack of capacity. That’s just fundamentally an issue.”
The difference between Western Canadian Select and New York benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude was about $25 US per barrel on Wednesday, down from peaks over $30 US this year but higher than historic averages in the mid-teens.
“These [decisions] need to continue to be calls to action for Canada to get its own house in order and get a diversified customer base,” said Tim McMillan, CEO of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
He pointed out almost all Canadian exports go to the U.S. even though Canada has the largest coastline in the world, lamenting that pipelines to take oil to tidewater such as Northern Gateway and Energy East projects were cancelled.
Crude-by-rail exports from Canada reached an all-time record high of 199,000 barrels per day in May, up from about 131,000 bpd in May 2017, despite higher costs and a poorer safety record than pipeline shipments, Bloomer said.
The U.S. lawsuit was brought by plaintiffs including the Indigenous Environmental Network and Northern Plains Resource Council after Nebraska state authorities approved an alternative route to the one TransCanada had proposed through the state.
The groups argued the U.S. State Department violated several acts in issuing a presidential permit for the pipeline without a proper environmental assessment of the changed route, but the judge rejected their request to revoke the permit issued by U.S. President Donald Trump after he took office last year.
TransCanada spokesman Terry Cunha said the company was studying the ruling and had no immediate comment.
Environmental groups cheered the decision and called for TransCanada, which has not officially sanctioned the project, to abandon it.
“Today’s ruling is a victory for clean water, climate, and communities that would be threatened by the Keystone XL pipeline,” Sierra Club senior attorney Doug Hayes said in a statement.
“This proposed project has been stalled for nearly a decade because it would be all risk and no reward, and despite the Trump administration’s efforts, they cannot force this dirty tar sands pipeline on the American people.”
The proposed 1,897-kilometre, $10-billion Keystone XL pipeline would carry crude from Hardisty, Alta., to Steele City, Nebraska.
Two other export pipelines, the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline being sold to the federal government and Enbridge Inc.’s Line 3 pipeline replacement, also face uncertainty.
In 2017, Canada’s oil supply was 4.2 million bpd, which exceeded existing available pipeline capacity, according to CAPP.
In June, CAPP predicted total Canadian oil production will increase to 5.6 million bpd by 2035 mainly due to a rise in oilsands production to 4.2 million bpd from 2.65 million bpd in 2017.