Whether they agree or disagree on the specifics, the proposed Northern Gateway and Keystone XL pipelines are important for St. Paul, according to local and provincial leaders.
The Keystone XL, an over 2,500 km pipeline running from the Athabasca oilsands to Texas, and Northern Gateway, a 1,177 km pipeline from Brudeheim, Alberta, to Kitimat, B.C., are two projects that have been at the forefront of the oilsands debate.
While a panel is currently taking place in Edmonton regarding the Northern Gateway pipeline, which would pipe crude oil, or bitumen, to Asian markets via oil tankers, U.S. President Barack Obama has temporarily squashed Keystone XL after receiving a 60-day deadline from Congress to make a decision on whether to build earlier this month.
TransCanada is the project owner and can reapply, if it reroutes the pipeline around the Sandhills region in Nebraska where the Ogallala aquifer is located, which supplies eight states with water for drinking and irrigation.
Alberta’s NDP leader Brian Mason said the project would be “letting jobs and investment go down the pipeline to Texas,” in an interview with the Journal.
“We wouldn't have nearly as much problem with the pipeline if it was for upgraded synthetic crude oil than we do with bitumen,” Mason said. “The United States is a good friend, but sometimes they take advantage. I agree that you want to have more markets, but that still begs the question, the market for what? I think we should be in the business of selling upgraded product and not bitumen.”
St. Paul Mayor Glenn Andersen said he agreed with Mason and asked why oil isn’t being upgraded here, suggesting it would create long term employment in the area to support oil coming from the sands.
“If you build it, they will come,” Andersen added, regarding building upgraders in Alberta, an argument both proposed pipelines face. Others claim the province simply doesn’t have the manpower to upgrade.
“There’s some people in the U.S. that are waiting to have work,” Andersen argued. “I believe that if there’s nothing there, people will come here. I think we have the technology and we can find people. We’ve got to think innovatively to stay in business.”
Andersen and Town council passed a motion of support for the Northern Gateway pipeline in 2011.
“I feel northeastern Alberta is the economic driver for Alberta and I think it's very important that we look for different markets to put Alberta on the international stage rather than just have one client. When America's economy went down you saw Alberta's go with it and I think we learned a lot from that.”
St. Paul – Westlock MP Brain Storseth said Alberta is upgrading roughly 63 per cent of the oil that leaves the province and though he agreed that more upgrading is necessary, the labour force does not have the capacity to keep up with the increase in the amount of bitumen expected to be produced. Nor is it beneficial to rely solely on the United States as a customer, he added.
"Right now we're selling our oil at a discount to the United States because they're really the only true partner we have to sell our oil,” Storseth said.
“Marketing 101 says you need more than one client if you want to optimize your product. The Americans like having a capitalist supply with us and at the end of the day they know ours is a safe and secure source of oil, but they're not paying a premium for it. Quite frankly, they've become more difficult to deal with in the last several years. Very protectionist under this Obama liberal government."
Storseth said the environmental aspect regarding these two pipelines, especially the Northern Gateway, has been a little overplayed.
“There's a regulatory board that looks at that and deems whether it's appropriate. I do believe we'll find that there aren’t any problems. The biggest thing I hear environmentalist talk about is the inlet around Kitimat and fears of these big tankers coming in. The narrowest point of this inlet is one mile wide. It's an ideal place to be doing this because it's a deep-water inlet.”
Enbridge has said double hulled vessels will be used to transport oil, “so they're doubling up on their safety aspects,” added the MP.
“Agriculture has always been the backbone of this community and it always will be,” he continued. “It helps us through the ups and downs of the oil patch. Oil patch jobs are good jobs. It's helping to boom our economy and it definitely helps this community and it's going to help the Lakeland in the northeast in general, but we do have to make sure as a government to be prepared for that, and this Gateway project I believe is a key part of that.”
Storseth is confident jobs and economic growth will be coming to places like St. Paul and along the coast of B.C.
“This would also be creating jobs in British Columbia in and around the Kitimat area, which has been devastated by the recession,” Storseth said. “The economic development is going to come with the increase in bitumen production, the oilsands and the production that is going on in our area. It's expanding into the St. Paul area slowly but surely.”
“I think it's about due diligence,” St. Paul County Reeve Steve Upham said, regarding the pipelines. “I think the technology is there and all the work standards are there. It's just making sure the correct oversight is there and that there's no shortcutting down in the construction process as well as addressing the concerns of the communities along the way.”
According to its website, Enbridge introduced a ground-breaking Aboriginal Benefits Package “to create local and regional economic opportunities.” The oil and gas company is offering a 10 per cent equity ownership in the estimated $5.5 billion project, which the website said will generate approximately $280 million in net income to neighbouring aboriginal communities over the first 30 years in the lifetime of the project.
However, Shawn Atleo, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations recently told a news conference in Ottawa last week that aboriginal bands had “the right to free, prior and informed consent” over projects affecting their territory, according to a report in Reuters.
“We need to move away ... from the notion that we are only stakeholders when it comes to major projects,” Atleo told the news conference. “Whether it be a pipeline or a mine, First Nations have real rights (and) those rights must be recognized when it comes to any development in this country.”
Storseth said in his dealings with First Nations in Ottawa that they support the decision to build the Northern Gateway pipeline, yet there is still debate on who will actually construct it.
“Most of the First Nations who have come to Ottawa and talk to me have been pretty much on side with it,” he said. “They're getting 10 per cent of the profit off this pipeline. Some are saying we don't want to have to be sending our young people to go work for oil companies. We want oil companies working for us.”
