THE ENERGY EAST PIPELINE PROJECT
by Susan H. Shane
If you drove between Temagami and North Bay last summer, perhaps you noticed the huge billboard declaring opposition to Energy East. I did, and I wondered “What is Energy East”?
The Energy East Pipeline Project is a proposal by TransCanada Corp. TransCanada is best known for its Keystone XL Pipeline Project. In 2015 President Barack Obama and the U.S. State Dept. decided to oppose approval of this pipeline which would have carried Canadian crude oil across the U.S. to the Gulf of Mexico.
The Energy East project involves a 4500 km-long pipeline running from Alberta to New Brunswick. It turns out that most of this pipeline already exists and is now carrying natural gas from Saskatchewan to Cornwall, Ontario. The new Energy East plan involves converting this pipeline to carrying crude oil from tar sands deposits, building additional pipeline in six provinces, and building numerous oil-related facilities. The pipeline would carry 1.1 million barrels of crude oil per day across Canada. This pipeline already lies within meters of Lake Temagami (see map in link below).
The most controversial aspect of Energy East is that the pipeline that cruises along the edge of our lake would be carrying, not relatively environmentally-gentle natural gas, but much more environmentally-destructive Alberta bitumen-based oil. The oil industry calls the source of bitumen “oil sands”, while the environmental community calls it “tar sands”. According to National Geographic (2009) mining bitumen requires stripping 100 feet of soil off the land and using tons of water and chemicals to pull the 10-15% bitumen out of the sand and convert it to a synthetic crude oil. Not only is the extraction and production of oil from bitumen disastrous for the environment, the oil produced is uniquely hard on pipelines. A 2013 Scientific American story (“Does Tar Sand Oil Increase the Risk of Pipeline Spills?”) reports that the higher temperature and higher pressure required to send this type of oil through pipelines increases corrosion and rupture and, in the upper midwest of the U.S., resulted in a 3.6 times greater likelihood of a spill than the average pipeline spill risk.
TransCanada filed its application for Energy East with the National Energy Board of Canada in October 2014. Environmental groups, communities and indigenous groups have commented and caused numerous changes to the pipeline plan. One of the biggest events in the review process occurred in Sept. 2016 when the three-person panel assigned to review the project stepped down because of suspected bias. New panel members are being sought, and the review process remains on track to come to a final decision about the pipeline in March 2018.
Locally, neither the Temagami First Nation (TFN) nor the Temagami Lakes Association (TLA) have taken official positions on Energy East. Chief Paul stated that the TFN has “identified several concerns” about the project. In June 2015 the Temagami Town Council passed a resolution conditionally supporting Energy East, providing that water sources are reasonably protected. Mayor Lorie Hunter says that the Council favors the pipeline because of potential jobs and tax revenues. The North Bay MP (Minister of Parliament) opposes Energy East passing through the Trout Lake watershed.
article published in the Temagami Times, Winter 2017 (click on link below and then select Temagami Times -- Winter 2017)
