INGREDIENTS SIMMERING FOR A PIPELINE DEAL

Even if B.C., Alberta agree, the PM would have to build public support

Albertans were rightly skeptical when the B.C. Liberals began touting the prospects for sending them our hydro electricity to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions from coal- and natural gasfired generation.

After all, this province had scarcely been receptive to Alberta’s push to moving more of its oil to tidewater through B.C.

“We won’t be buying more power if we can’t get our resources to market,” said Alberta Energy Minister Marg McCuaig-Boyd when asked about B.C.’s hydro scheme earlier this year. “We’ll do what’s best for Albertans and Alberta’s economy.”

Nor could Premier Rachel Notley resist reflecting on the irony of B.C.’s promoting construction of an electrical transmission line into her province while putting up barriers to oil pipelines from Alberta.

“It’s not separate,” she told reporters in a March 4 teleconference form Fort McMurray, ground zero for oilsands development. British Columbians “need to understand that is tied to inter-jurisdictional product distribution infrastructure — like pipelines to carry bitumen to tidewater … That just has to happen.”

Far from taking offence, B.C. Energy Minister Bill Bennett all but endorsed the Alberta premier’s exercise in transactional analysis.

“I completely understand and have absolutely no problem with the province of Alberta linking the two,” Bennett told the Calgary Herald when the Alberta government’s comments were relayed to him.

“We in B.C. are not opposed to other Canadians getting their products to the West Coast at all,” he continued. “I think we can work through this and find a way to do business together.”

He hastened to say that did not mean the province was backing away from its five conditions for pipeline approval. But as more than one observer noted, one of those conditions was that “B.C. receives a fair share of the fiscal and economic benefits of a proposed heavy oil project.”

If Alberta were to agree to take delivery of substantial amounts of B.C.-generated hydro power, that might provide an answer to the “what’s in it for us?” item on the list of conditions.

But that was a long way from saying that the two provinces were anywhere near reaching a deal on those lines. Plus, as Premier Christy Clark has noted, there is another player in the piece, namely the newly elected federal government.

Amid hints Ottawa was coming around to the need to approve a pipeline to the coast, Clark was asked earlier this month where her govern- ment stood regarding support for the proposed twinning of the existing Kinder Morgan pipeline through B.C.

She replied that of the five conditions laid out back in the summer of 2012, the one that needed the most attention was the requirement for “world-leading response, prevention and recovery systems” for marine oil spills.

“The No. 1 area where there is a gap, I would argue, is on coastal spill response — vital for all the people who work here, vital for everybody in British Columbia because we love our coast,” Clark said.

“The federal government has not made the investment in the coast guard that is required to even protect us currently, and so if there is going to be any expansion of heavy oil movement up and down the coast, the federal government still has a lot of work to do on coastal spill response. That work is underway, but it is not complete yet. Until we see it completed and we know that it meets the standards that British Columbians expect, we won’t be approving any of those proposals.”

Lest there be any doubt what Clark was hinting at, the list of green infrastructure possibilities her government presented to their federal counterparts specifically cited investment in a “worldleading marine-rescue tug capability.”

That same fraught-with-green-possibilities list also suggested Ottawa help pay for an electrical transmission line, known as an intertie, to link the B.C. and Alberta power grids.

“Expanded intertie capacity would increase the ability for B.C. to provide flexible, dependable clean electricity and capacity to Alberta, which would also support the development of wind generation in Alberta and the phaseout of coal,” according to the B.C. Liberals.

Clark herself heightened the pitch in a meeting with reporters at the end of the first ministers meeting on climate action in Vancouver last month.

“We could save three to six megatonnes in carbon emissions for Canada if we upgraded that intertie between BC Hydro and Alberta to support Alberta getting off coal. That would be part of British Columbia’s contribution, part of Alberta’s contribution and part of the federal government’s contribution if we could find a way to make it happen. We should get working on the biggest projects that are going to save us the most in greenhouse gas emissions as fast as we can.”

Putting all this together, one glimpses the outline of a possible deal involving the three governments.

Alberta agrees to buy hydro power from B.C. to reduce emissions and build social licence for continued development of the oilsands. Ottawa helps fund construction of the intertie and the necessary marine oil-spill facilities on the West Coast. B.C. then announces that its five conditions have been met.

Purely speculative, of course. And even with all those elements in place, premiers Clark and Notley couldn’t carry the deal on their own.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would also need to spend some of his political capital to build public support for the pipeline as a national project being built in the national economic interest.

We in B.C. are not opposed to other Canadians getting their products to the West Coast at all. I think we can … find a way to do business together. BILL BENNETT, B.C. energy minister