Can a pipeline unite a nation?
Historians are skeptical about railway comparisons, and say tugging at Canadian heartstrings is just a public relations strategy, writes LAUREN KRUGEL.
To hear some proponents of the Energy East project tell it, the moment the taps open on the $12-billion oil pipeline will be as significant as when the last spike was driven into the Canadian Pacific Railway almost 128 years ago.
Linking western crude to eastern markets would be a huge undertaking — the proposal, which would carry crude through Ottawa and the surrounding area, would be the most expensive project in TransCanada Corp.’s more than 60-year history — but some observers are dubious Energy East will one day be worthy of its own Heritage Minute.
Tugging at Canadians’ patriotic heartstrings is a “smart and usable PR strategy” to get the public on side with the project, said Claire Campbell, an historian at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
“But I don’t think it is going to be written about as the new national dream by historians 100 years from now.”
Sean Kheraj, an historian at York University in Toronto, said it’s far from the first time Canadian business leaders and politicians have used nationalistic rhetoric to drum up support for controversial proposals.
For instance, Canada’s first prime minister, John A. Macdonald, used lofty language to entice Parliament to spend huge amounts of public funds on the railway during the late 1800s.
“It seems very clear that there’s an express political purpose behind this to try and use nationalism as a way to motivate consent from Canadians for permission to construct the project,” Kheraj said.
Earlier this month, TransCanada announced with great fanfare that it had enough commercial support to go ahead with Energy East, which would send 1.1 million barrels of crude a day across six provinces.
The conceptual map for the project shows the pipeline making use of an existing natural gas pipeline that would be refitted. It runs east near Highway 7, through the former municipality of Richmond, then south near Malakoff Road. From there, it runs through environmentally sensitive lands around the Rideau River before crossing the waterway. The pipeline will then continue further southeast, through North Grenville, a neighbouring municipality that includes Kemptville.
The TransCanada announcement was an important mile- stone, but Energy East needs to clear many hurdles before shovels can hit the ground, not the least of which would be obtaining regulatory approval. Environmentalists have vowed to fight the project and it’s not clear whether Quebec is behind the project. On Thursday, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne said environmental concerns have to be at “the centre of the discussion” about any pipeline proposals.
At a news conference, company chief executive Russ Girling likened Energy East to “bold ventures” like the Canadian Pacific Railway, the Trans- Canada Highway and the company’s own cross-country natural gas main line.
“Each of these enterprises demanded innovative thinking and a strong belief that building critical infrastructure ties our country together, making us stronger and more in control of our own destiny,” he said.
TransCanada referred to the thousands of jobs that would be created during construction, and their associated economic spinoffs, as well as the “energy security” it would provide eastern Canadians — a 700,000 barrel-a-day market — whose fuel mostly originates from abroad.
Building the pipeline will require droves of tradespeople, such as pipefitters and welders, generating benefits to the stores and restaurants that serve them and the hotels that house them, TransCanada executives said. However, once pipelines are up and running, they require relatively little manpower to operate.
Energy East would supply crude to refineries in Quebec and New Brunswick, displacing imports from overseas. But a big part of its raison-d’etre is also to export crude from Saint John, N.B., to markets as far afield as India.
As a whole, Canada is a net exporter of both crude oil and refined products, said Roger McKnight, senior petroleum adviser at En-Pro International in Oshawa, Ont.
He said the main beneficiaries of Energy East would be Alberta oil producers, eastern refineries and TransCanada itself. He doesn’t see Energy East lowering prices at the pump.
If TransCanada had an easier time getting approval for its Keystone XL pipeline connecting Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast, he said, Energy East would be nothing more than an “afterthought.”
“Energy East, in my opinion, is a last gasp to get this product to a market.”