The National Energy Board's support — with 157 conditions — for the Trans Mountain pipeline twinning is not likely to assuage the concerns of Port Moody and Belcarra residents.
The city and village citizens who live across from the proposed project— and whose officials were intervenors at the NEB hearings on the project — probably have more questions than answers about the recommendations released Thursday.
For one thing, they are likely wondering who is responsible if an oil spill occurs from a tanker in B.C. waters because the NEB confirmed that Trans Mountain is only responsible for the pipeline and problems issuing from its Westridge Marine Terminal in Burnaby.
Unfortunately, the NEB report doesn't look into whether the shippers or the authorities governing, patrolling, monitoring and protecting B.C. waters are capable of dealing with a major spill, other than to say shippers must have spill-response plans, and it acknowledges the company's commitment to work with agencies to reduce response times along the tanker routes and within Burrard Inlet.
In other words, we have to take it on faith that the most important responsibilities — protection of coastal waters — will be carried out.
The NEB does acknowledge concerns raised by Belcarra about lighting and Trans Mountain has promised to do what it can to limit nuisance lighting. But for the most part, concerns about chemicals, bird and animal strikes, wave effects and other environmental issues were not deemed enough of a concern to scrap the project.
The NEB will require ongoing monitoring of a number of environmental issues, most notably emissions, which it admits will contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, and there will be ongoing community benefits, which today total $6.44 million, according to Trans Mountain.
For Canadians wondering Why oil? and Why Now? — given the problems in Alberta and China, including low oil prices and a stagnating economy — the NEB justified the project as being important to the country's economy.
The shippers have said they will need the oil and the NEB is taking them at their word, although the shippers must file guarantees before the project can go ahead.
Whether it would be better to diversify to other energy sources instead of relying on "dirty oil" was outside of the the scope of the NEB review.
It is now up to the federal Liberal government to decide whether this project is a modern nation-building opportunity or an outdated resource-extraction economic strategy that will contribute to climate change.
