— by Floyd McKay for Crosscut.com —
In Big Energy’s massive rush to export oil and coal from inland United States and Canadian mines and wells to the hungry power users of Asia, there’s a leader. First-past-the-post honors go to Northern Gateway.
The Canadian government has approved the plan to send Alberta tar sands oil to northern British Columbia for export.
It took Enbridge, a Calgary-based company, 12 years to get approval from the Canadian government, and approval comes with 209 conditions and promises of lawsuits, political retribution and perhaps civil disobedience on the part of opponents.
So, even the approval may provide a cautionary tale for other export contenders on both sides of the international border: It will take a long process to get that first permit and it may come with a lot of hard-to-manage baggage.
(To read the full article, go to https://crosscut.com/2014/06/23/environment/120645/british-columbia-oil-pipeline-enbridge-questions/)
