Today in the Parksville Qualicum Beach News, our readers will find the first part of a multi-part series on the issues surrounding Kinder Morgan’s proposed expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline, investigating the history, science, Indigenous reaction, politics and economics of the controversial project.
The full series will appear on our website, PQBNews.com starting May 26. Our online version of this story includes additional background, photos and video.
We think most people would be surprised at how Kinder Morgan’s current Trans Mountain Pipeline system is embedded within everyday lives and within the fabric of B.C. and beyond.
Fuel for airplanes at Vancouver International Airport, and gas for most vehicles in the Lower Mainland arrives via a 41-kilometre pipeline through Kinder Morgan’s Burnaby tank farm, currently ground zero of protests in the campaign against the company’s embattled plan to twin its main pipeline running 1,150-km near Edmonton to B.C.
And as part of the complex network of pipelines criss-crossing the continent carrying crude to refineries, a branch of the main line transports Alberta crude to a terminal at Sumas near Abbotsford to feed refineries in northwestern Washington State.
The first part of our series produced by journalists in Black Press newsrooms across British Columbia, chronicles Imperial Oil’s Alberta find in 1947, the first pipeline finished in 1953, exploration of the oilsands as well as growing opposition to the pipeline project. The number of those arrested now stands at more than 200 and protest organizers say more than 24,000 people have signed pledges to do “whatever it takes to stop Kinder Morgan.”
Our multi-part series also reviews the politics of the project, with three separate governments involved, B.C. and Alberta at the provincial level, and the federal government, as well as the legal moves made by each.
The federal government is willing to provide Kinder Morgan with some form of financial security for it to continue with the project, and negotiations with the company are underway as their self-imposed May 31st deadline approaches.
In our readers’ poll recently, 52 per cent of PQB News readers voted in favour of the pipeline project. Although a highly unscientific sampling, it shows how divisive the subject is in BC.
— Parksville Qualicum Beach News