It seemed to be, as New York Mets manager Yogi Berra famously said,
Deja vu all over again.
A multi-billion dollar pipeline project
to deliver Canadian petroleum, from Alberta to refineries
in Texas, was stopped in its tracks on November 10th, 2011,
when the American state department declared that a decision
on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline
would be delayed until 2013.
More than three decades earlier,
a plan to construct a pipeline from the Canadian Arctic
to the United States, the Mackenzie Valley pipeline was derailed.
But not because of a state department veto,
or any other major American opposition.
It was stopped by a coalition of Canadian native
and environmental groups, opposed to the project.
Groups that found a sympathetic ear in Justice Thomas Berger,
whose inquiry into that pipeline proposal recommended
a ten-year moratorium on any such development.
Although these two cases are far from identical,
they pose rather similar questions about Canada,
US relations and the politics of energy mega-projects.
To begin with, such projects always include the United States
as the ultimate destination for some,
or all of the energy resources located in Canada.
The massive hydroelectric developments undertaken since the 1970s
in Northern Quebec and in Labrador
would not have been contemplated, financed, and built
or at least not on their actual scale,
without the expectation of contracts
with energy hungry markets in the Northeast of the United States.
Electricity generated in Canada, much of it at James Bay,
Quebec and Churchill falls, Labrador, has supplied
American consumers for decades.
More such projects whose scale and viability depend on exports
to the US are anticipated, including the Conawapa generating station
on the lower Nelson river in Manitoba.
The proposed Keystone XL pipeline,
whose future appears to be placed in doubt
by the state department's 2011 announcement,
would be the largest pipeline carrying Canadian petroleum
to the United States, but it would not be the first.
Indeed, there already exists a web of oil and natural gas pipelines
crossing the Canada, US border, including the trans-Canada,
Alliance, Enbridge, Maritimes in Northwest, and Kinder Morgan pipelines.
Some of the oil and gas that they carry
has been transported to all Canadian pipelines
to connect with these international ones.
Oil from Canada currently accounts for about
fourteen percent of total us consumption,
and Canadian gas exports are about
twelve percent of total consumption in the U S.
The dollars in jobs at stake in this energy trade
are significant, to say the least.
In 2010, the value of Canada's energy exports to the United States
was about eighty billion dollars,
which represented about one fifth of the total value
of Canadian exports that year,
and close to one third of the total value
of our exports to the United States.
As home to proven oil reserves whose size is surpassed
only by those of Saudi Arabia.
Alberta is the province whose public revenues,
private investment, and employment prospects
are most affected by this energy trade.
But Saskatchewan, Quebec, Newfoundland, Labrador,
and some other provinces also drive major economic benefits
from their energy exports to the American market.
But at what cost?
This increasingly has been the question asked by energy
mega-project attractors at home and abroad.
It is not a question that is asked
only when it comes to Alberta's oil sands.
Hydroelectric developments, whose promoters are quick to describe
them as carbon free sources of green energy
have obvious environmental consequences,
as well as the effects they may have on the native populations
that are often located close by.
These sorts of impacts aside,
some dispute the very premise of energy mega-projects.
Namely that we should continue to use as much energy,
as we do regardless of its source.
So, the Keystone XL pipeline and the oil that it would carry
from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico is not alone
in being in the cross hairs of critics.
But the scale of the project, the characteristics of the oil
that it would transport, and the argued consequences
of the process used to mine it and transform it into a liquid
that can be moved through pipelines
and refined into gasoline and home heating oil,
attracted worldwide attention
and powerful opposition in the United States.
It is a mega project that has generated mega opposition.
Unlike other mega-projects, or at least to a far greater degree,
much of this opposition has to do with what critics charged
will be the probable contribution of further oil sands development
to global climate change.
Unlike conventional oil that emerges in liquid form
from reservoirs trapped under the ground,
or under the ocean floor,
the oil found in the oil sands is in the form of the bitumen.
This is a viscous material that in its natural state
is useful for paving roads, but not much else.
But if the sand and other impurities are removed,
a process that requires a lot of water and energy.
And if the heavy oil is diluted with natural gas,
it may be transported through pipelines
and refined into end products.
get at the bitumen, trees and whatever else is on the surface
of the earth must be stripped away and soil and gravel removed
until the oil sands deposits are reached at a level that is
usually fifty to seventy five meters below the surface.
By 2011, an area the size of Edmonton had already been mined.
The production that would be required if the Keystone XL pipeline
were eventually to be approved,
would result in a vast expansion of this territory.
Between the deforestation that this would involve,
the energy that would be consumed
in order to process the bitumen into a transportable state,
and the carbon that would be released in the atmosphere
as a result of the process of refining this heavy oil,
the pipelines detractors claim that its impact on climate change
would be significant and unacceptable.
But it appeared to be something other than fears of global warming
that stomped the Keystone XL project in its tracks,
at least for the time being.
While environmentalist were busy calculating
what they claim to be the climate cost of the project.
Key decision makers in the United States we're calculating
the political cost of support for, or opposition to the pipeline.
Republican governor of Nebraska, one of the five states
that would be crossed by the proposed pipeline route,
was under intense pressure from Nebraskans
who were worried that the root pass through
the Sandhills region of their state,
the location of a huge aquifer that supplies water
for the state's largest cities, Lincoln, and Omaha.
And for much of Nebraska's agricultural water needs.
The governor, should be added, faces re-election in 2012.
Anyone who knows something about the interior
in West of the United States will have heard the old saying that,
whiskeys for drinking and water's for fighting.
It's a fair bet that most the farmers and ranchers
wanted the Republican governor to say no
to the Keystone XL pipeline, passing through Nebraska,
at least to insist on major changes in the path that
it would cut across their state, seldom saw eye to eye
with the environmentalist whose opposition was based on
they thought would be its effects on the climate.
As they say, politics sometimes make strange bedfellows.
And this was just such a case.
If, however, the only political obstacle was public opinion in Nebraska.
It's likely that a compromise in the pipelines
route could have been reached.
But governor Dave Heineman of Nebraska is not the only politician
with a re-election fight looming on his horizon.
President Obama is also standing for re-election in 2012,
and important parts of the democratic party base
expect him to say no to the pipeline.
This is after all the president who as a candidate for the job
back in 2007 was greeted with enthusiastic approval from
party activists when he said, and I quote,
“let's be the generation that frees itself from the tyranny of oil.” Unquote.
Could the president turn his back on this sentiment
and give us approval to what Nassau climate scientist
Dr. James Hansen has described as quote,
“disastrous global climate impacts”, unquote.
t he claims would ensue from accelerating
the development of Alberta oil sands.
Many Canadians might be surprised to learn that this
issue has been near the centre of the
American environmental movement’s agenda for several years.
To say nothing of the criticism that has been heaped on the oil
sands from groups and politicians in the European union.
John Podesta, former chief of staff to president Bill Clinton
and currently the director of the centre for American progress,
a liberal think tank, speaks for virtually everyone
“oil extraction from tar sands is polluting,
destructive, expensive, and energy intensive.” Unquote.
But environmentalist are not the only ones with a dog in this fight,
nor are they the only ones with President Obama's ear.
Organized labour, another part of the democratic party base,
is by and large supportive of the pipeline.
Its support is due to the thousands of well-paying union jobs
that are expected to be created during its construction.
Labour was disappointed when the state department announced
a decision would be delayed until 2013,
although it took some solace from the fact that
the delay is not necessarily defeat.
So, the president's party is divided.
Some democratic politicians actually supporting the pipeline.
While others are adamantly opposed.
The shadow of the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico
hung over the conversation on the Keystone XL pipeline.
But so too did the fact of an official unemployment rate
of nine percent, the real rate being significantly higher,
and a continuation of anaemic economic growth in the United States.
In addition, there was an important national security
argument that seemed likely to be used against
the president in the 2012 election campaign.
It went like this, wouldn't it be a good thing to supply more
of America's energy needs from Canada, a neighbour, friend,
and ally, instead of from countries
whose relationship to the United States is at best ambivalent,
This was the message delivered by Republican congressmen,
conservative talk show hosts, and spokespersons for
the American petroleum industry, and for much of American business.
It was also a message that the Canadian and Albertans government
sought to drive home in both Canada and the United States.
In an ad placed in the influential Washington post
the premier of Alberta reminded Americans that Alberta
was already their country's largest supplier
of crude oil and added that quote,
“when considered in the context of other leading suppliers of crude,
including Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Iraq, Angola and Algeria,
the energy security benefits of oil from Alberta are clear.” Unquote.
Cross-border advertising skirmishes raged from 2010,
when corporate ethics international and American native groups
bought billboard advertising and waged
a web campaign against the oil sands.
Alberta's ad in the Washington post, barely more than a drop
in the bucket of an American media system
awash with advertising messages,
and an ad that generated far more attention and controversy
in Canada than in the United States,
followed a year later by an ad paid for by
a Calgary based advocacy group called ethical oil.
The thirty second ad contrasted reliance on oil
from Saudi Arabia, a country where, the ad correctly stated,
women do not have the right to drive cars,
where their legal testimony counts for only half that of a man's,
and where women must have the permission of their husband,
father, or another male family member
in order to work, or leave their home.
It was not an accident that the first ad placement
was on the Oprah Winfrey Canada network.
Where the predominantly female viewership might be expected
to be understandably incensed at these reminders
of women's second-class status in the Saudi kingdom.
Whether this would convince viewers that further oil sands development
based on exports to the United States is more ethical than reliance
on oil from a repressive regime, it is not entirely clear.
In any case, advertising in Canada would do nothing
to change public opinion in the United States.
The ad sponsor eventually bought time on the Fox business network,
but this ad placement was a classic example of preaching to the faithful.
Ethical oil would doubtless have bought advertising time
on channel with a much larger viewership, Fox during the X-Factor,
or survivor would have produced some serious exposure,
but the cost would have been prohibitive.
Prime minister Harper has called the Keystone XL pipeline,
a complete no brainer.
But his certainty that it is good for Canada, and good for the United States
is not shared by all political leaders on the Canadian side of the border.
The NDP opposes the project.
One of its leadership candidates, Brian Topp calling an example of the
quote, “dumb market economy we're living in.” Unquote.
As in the United States, there are a few Canadian voices
that are not squarely for, or unyieldingly against the Keystone XL pipeline
and the expansion of oil sands development
that would follow its approval.
Depending on who you listen to this mega-project
is either an economic bonanza, and an insurance policy
dependence on oil from parts of the world
racked by conflict and ruled by undemocratic regimes,
or an environmental apocalypse waiting to happen.
Will it experience the same fate as the McKenzie Valley gas pipeline,
which almost fourty years
after being proposed still has not been built?
It depends.
The fate of the McKenzie Valley mega-project
was shaped principally by forces in Canada.
That of the Keystone XL mega-project will be determined
mainly by forces in the United States.
The election of a Republican president in 2012
would almost certainly guarantee that it gets the green light,
a democratic sweep of Congress and the white house
would almost certainly kill it, at least for several years.
A continuation of weak economic growth,
or a major disruption of the supply of oil from the middle East,
are wild cards that could tip the balance toward the pipeline projects
backers even if president Obama is re-elected.
This is a struggle whose outcome has huge implications for Canada,
but where the final outcome will be decided in the United States.