In Alberta, fossil fuel development talk gets spread at schools too. Not only from the kids who have parents working in the business but even from Alberta MPs.
North Vancouver Liberal MP Jonathan Wilkinson, formerly the minister of fisheries, oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, was sworn into his new role in Ottawa on Wednesday, Nov. 18. He takes over the portfolio from Catherine McKenna and is tasked with pushing through a controversial pipeline project in B.C.
Wilkinson intends to carry through on the Liberal’s plan to transition to clean energy technology and said the Trans Mountain pipeline project will help.
According to ‘Dogwood’, Alberta premier Jason Kenney demanded Justin Trudeau replace Catherine McKenna as environment minister, claiming she was “anti-pipeline”. They says he’s to work promoting Kenney’s #1 priority: a massive expansion of the Alberta oil sands – and the pipelines and oil tankers it will require.
Kai Nagata, Communications Director at Dowood writes, “Wilkinson may be a Liberal, but when it comes to the Trans Mountain oil tanker project he’s on the same team as Jason Kenney.
"Wilkinson has final say over Teck’s gargantuan new oil sands mine proposal. The Frontier project would be twice the size of Vancouver, pumping out 260,000 more barrels of bitumen a day. But it can only be built if Trans Mountain is there to carry away the oil.
That’s why Wilkinson is on a media tour, greenwashing the pipeline as part of ‘Canada’s climate plan’”.
This week, Bloomberg reports that companies like Cenovus Energy, Gibson Energy, Imperial Oil, and MEG Energy “are looking to remove condensate and other light oils from the oilsands bitumen they produce, so they can get more of it onto rail cars,” adding that “doing so would dramatically reduce the cost of shipping crude by rail to the U.S. Gulf Coast, which otherwise can cost twice as much as shipping by pipeline.”
The project will be located northwest of Conklin, between Fort McMurray
and Lac La Biche, and produce about 12,000 barrels of bitumen per day.
The proposal is to use a steam-assisted gravity drainage technology,
which the government says reduces the environmental impact.
“This project is in the best interest of Alberta, and is another
example of how we are responsibly developing our resources. Moving these
projects forward shows that Alberta is open for business, and we are
dedicated to encouraging investment in our province,” said Energy
Minister Sonya Savage in a written release.
