Despite making serious written accusations about the National Energy Board, the city has abandoned its legal challenge of the NEB’s approval of a 35 km expansion of Enbridge’s Line 10 oil pipeline across rural Hamilton. The NEB has other problems to worry about, especially a federal blue-ribbon panel report last week that recommended it be dismantled.
The city’s opposition to the pipeline decision focuses on the failure of the NEB to consider council’s demand that the old pipe be removed rather than simply decommissioned and left in the ground. Local citizen opponents also criticize the Board’s refusal to consider the climate change implications of tripling the capacity of the export pipeline as well as the limits imposed on public participation – both issues highlighted in last week’s report by the panel appointed by Prime Minister Trudeau to “restore public trust” in the NEB.
The panel found that “Canadians have serious concerns that the NEB has been ‘captured’ by the oil and gas industry with many Board members who come from the industry that the NEB regulates, and who – at the very least appear to – have an innate bias toward that industry.” It also pointed to “irreconcilable” differences in federal policies that the NEB can’t address.
“On the one hand we have a clear expression of high level government policy and targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” concludes the report. “However, at the same time, the same federal government (in partnership with the provinces) is exploring the creation of large pipeline projects which inherently signal planned increases in our overall production and continued global and domestic use of fossil fuels, an objective that is seemingly at irreconcilable odds with Canada’s stated goal of reducing emissions and moving away from fossil fuels.”
The Line 10 project in Hamilton will replace a 12 inch pipe with one that is 20 inches in diameter that would accommodate an extra 130,000 barrels of oil per day. When burned that is equivalent to daily emissions of twelve coal-fired electricity plants – twice the number closed by Ontario over the last decade to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
In its review of the Line 10 project the NEB maintained its long-standing policy of refusing to consider climate change. But a new NEB panel set up this month on the proposed Energy East pipeline has unveiled plans to examine both upstream and downstream climate impacts of that project.
The Hamilton 350 Committee has pressed the Trudeau government to overturn the Line 10 approval and order new hearings if the regulator is replaced as recommended by the expert panel report. They want to ensure that climate impacts are evaluated, and that the Enbridge project is subject to the federal environmental assessment it has escaped by being undertaken in segments.
The city’s legal challenge on Line 10 was filed in February. It argued “that Enbridge should be required to remove the decommissioned portion of the existing Line 10 pipeline, assuring that site remediation is performed as required.” The city also contended that leaving the pipe in the ground was “incompatible with present and future land use” and pointed to “impacts to environmentally sensitive areas such as wetlands, water crossings, non-cultivated lands and habitats for species at risk.”
It took particular exception to the NEB’s failure to notice the written request to the Board asking for the pipe removal. The judicial review application points out that “in the letter of comment [originally sent to the NEB] the city … requested that Enbridge be required to remove the decommissioned portion of the pipeline” but inexplicably “in the decision, the NEB states that no participants expressed any concerns regarding Enbridge’s proposed decommissioning activities.”
The legal challenge was “discontinued” by the city in mid-April without explanation. The only indication that councillors discussed the matter was on March 22 when “direction provided to staff in Closed Session … respecting potential litigation” was approved along with a decision to keep the matter secret.