Update On The Canadian KinderMorgan TransMountain Pipeline -- Now It's Getting Serious - Wine Boycotts -- March 10, 2018

Update on the Canadian's Kinder Morgan TransMountain pipeline from Alberta to British Columbia that is being held up by British Columbia. Burnaby is back in the news. I've blogged about Burnaby before; here is one link. With a name like that, I keep thinking Burnaby is in Australia. Whatever.

A reader writes:

A relative of ours lives in yuppie, high-rise, water-view Vancouver - so she's surrounded by urbane "Keep it in the ground" pacifist socialists.  She's lived and worked around the world and has a great grasp on the fact that when the USA sneezes, Canada catches cold. 

About a month ago she said it would take an army to get the expanded TransMountain (KinderMorgan) pipeline through Burnaby to the coast.  Just a couple days ago, she totally re-read her tea leaves and said it will happen sooner than she ever thought.

Background tidbit: There's been a tiff between Alberta's Governor Rachel Notley (Alberta wants to ship oil, obviously) and the governor of BC.  Alberta had banned the import of BC wines -- 😏

Trudeau has oddly enough cut through some of Burnaby's red tape in the permitting process.

Anyway - apparently there was some well managed publicity that seemed quite effective.  The gist was that USA was supporting the obstruction of Canadian pipeline expansion in an attempt to sell US oil and decrease Canadian competition.  There was also other publicity along the same lines blaming the Russians.  She summarized by saying that now the argument is framed such that if you don't support pipeline expansion you aren't a patriot.

I chuckled and told her throughout all the twists and turns of DAPL, we had never blamed the Canadians.

So, that's the background. Today, an article from oilprice.com: Alberta is ready to decide on the nuclear option -- stop shipping oil to the refineries in British Columbia! And it turns out the vignette related above is absolutely accurate -- right down to the "wine embargo." From the linked article:

Alberta’s government may be considering a suspension of crude oil shipments to British Columbia in the latest episode of what is turning into a drama series starring Canada’s biggest oil producer and its neighbor who wants to stop the extension of a crude oil pipeline to its coast.

In the provincial government’s Speech from the Throne, Alberta’s Lieutenant Governor Lois Mitchell said that all options for retaliation against B.C.’s opposition to the Trans Mountain expansion are on the table. Mitchell recalled a decision by a former Alberta PM in the early 1980s to reduce oil flows to refineries in eastern Canada by 15 percent in reaction to the federal government’s National Energy Program that Alberta saw as a threat to its energy industry.

[BC took action to stop the pipeline.] In retaliation, Alberta announced a boycott on B.C. wine imports and on electricity imports. B.C. changed its mind about a proposal to change the rules for shipping oil through its territory that would have reduced oil flows for the duration of a study on oil leak response mechanisms. The study would have taken about a couple of years and many saw the proposal as a stalling tactic.

The federal government, meanwhile, has so far proved incapable of making the two provinces kiss and make up. At a recent meeting with the public, PM Justin Trudeau reiterated that Ottawa stood behind the Trans Mountain expansion, and that has been about it from the referee.

With such a history, it was only a matter of time for Alberta to strike back with something bigger than a wine boycott.

I never realized the BC wine industry had that much influence. Truly amazing.