NEB ‘Reconsideration Report’ a New Low for Failing Agency
How rinky-dink can the National Energy Board get?
With its so-called “reconsideration report” on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, the board has plunged into the shallows once again.
After a federal court struck down the project’s original approval because it failed to consider the impacts of increased tanker traffic or consult meaningfully with First Nations, the board pretended to revisit these issues in 155 days.
In so doing they conducted another flawed paper exercise that will be challenged in the courts again.
But this time around the board did admit that the pipeline and associated tanker traffic could devastate orcas, threaten the marine economy with the risk of oil spills and erode Indigenous cultural practices on the coast.
But hey, the benefits are so worth it, the NEB concluded.
And how did the board calculate the benefits?
The Canadian government, which now owns the 65-year-old pipeline, simply dug up the same 2015 Muse Stancil report commissioned by Kinder Morgan to justify the pipeline four years ago.
How’s that for a new standard of laziness?
And what assumptions did the outdated report make?
Well, Muse Stancil said Canada stood to make billions provided that oil prices would be above $100; assumed the Canadian dollar would be on par with the U.S. greenback; that other pipelines would not be built; that increased supply will win higher prices in Asia; and that all bitumen is subject to a North American discount — when in fact only a third is subject to such pricing.
None of these assumptions hold any water today.
Oil prices have slumped and entered a whole new era of volatility. At the same time the Canadian dollar keeps treading water.
Meanwhile two other approved pipelines, Line 3 and Keystone, will likely ease any supply bottlenecks.
“The disconnect is huge,” says economist Robyn Allan. “The board has now underestimated marine risks just to approve a project whose economic benefits don’t exist.”