This piece also appears on Policy Note, by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

In the past year, an energy dispute for the ages has played out in Canada, culminating in the federal government announcing it will buy an aging oil pipeline for $4.5 billion and then twin it with a new high-capacity pipeline that would move massive amounts of diluted bitumen from Alberta to tidewater in British Columbia.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s vow that “we’re going to get that pipeline built” has been music to the ears of Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, but has struck a discordant note with B.C. Premier John Horgan, who continues to oppose the project on the grounds that a tanker spill would cause irreparable harm to Canada’s west coast and to B.C.’s coastal economy.

But as federal and provincial leaders continue to squabble over the proposed westward movement of Alberta’s “land-locked” bitumen via the Trans Mountain pipeline route, there’s a giant elephant in the room that nobody’s talking about.

What about the exploding trade in fossil fuels moving east from British Columbia into Alberta and points beyond?

There is a deep irony at play in the high drama we are witnessing: heavy oil production in Canada’s petro province of Alberta is powered, in part, by a glut of cheap natural gas in North America, which gas producers in B.C. have helped to create.

B.C. is also helping to prop up Alberta’s oil industry by shipping it lots of extremely valuable “gas liquids” — by-products of natural gas which are essential to dilute heavy oil or bitumen so that it can move more readily through pipelines.

But you wouldn’t know that by looking at most media accounts.

Much of that out-of-sight, out-of-mind energy flow is also, paradoxically, heavily subsidized by the B.C. government. Once again, it barely rates a mention in the mainstream press.

In the last 10 years, B.C. has effectively become a preferred supplier to its neighbour, the oilsands powerhouse just to the east: a reality with grim implications for the environment and economy in Canada’s two westernmost provinces, to say nothing of our global climate.

So, to stimulate discussion about where we are heading with the west-to-east energy trade that is actually happening (as opposed to the dramatically expanded east-to-west trade that might one day happen), consider the following.

“Our” natural gas is effectively theirs

Alberta’s oilsands industry is the top consumer of natural gas in Canada, accounting for one quarter of all the natural gas used in the country. Much of that gas is combusted to generate steam that is pumped below ground, to “liberate” the thick oil. As oilsands operations expand, more natural gas must be consumed. It is to the industry’s benefit to see lots and lots of natural gas produced from whatever quarter, and of even greater benefit to the industry if increased gas production results in a glut of marketable gas, which keeps prices low.

In the ten years ending in 2017, Alberta-bound shipments of natural gas from northeast B.C. increased by more than 230 per cent. In fact, virtually all of the sizeable increase in B.C.’s overall gas production went to its neighbour to the east. Some of that gas was used in Alberta; the majority then moved farther east to markets in central Canada and the United States.

Contrary to B.C. Energy Minister Michelle Mungall’s frankly embarrassing assertions that continued natural gas drilling and fracking is necessary so that British Columbians can bask in the warmth of their gas fireplaces, and so those lucky enough to afford it can cook salmon on their gas barbecues, the overwhelming majority of natural gas drilled and fracked from the ground in northeast B.C. goes to others. It is not used in this province.

If the pilot lights ever wink out in the fireplaces in British Columbians’ homes, it won’t be because of B.C.’s own natural gas consumption, but rather the province’s subsidized gas production (the biggest subsidy of which is the extremely generous breaks on gas royalty payments that the B.C. government grants natural gas producers).

Those subsidies are a powerful inducement to the industry, particularly in the Montney Basin, the southernmost of the two big natural plays in the province, where there’s plenty of natural gas. But there is also plenty of something else, which is the only thing that is really driving industry profits these days.

Gas liquids: The big cash prize

Within the Montney Basin, which includes operating areas near the communities of Fort St. John, Dawson Creek and Chetwynd, the favoured drilling sites are those containing large amounts of naturally occurring “wet” gas liquids, as opposed to the “dry” conventional natural gas or methane. The most important of those liquids are pentane and condensate, which are used to dilute bitumen or heavy oil, thus allowing it to flow through pipelines. Hence the name “dilbit.”

Condensate is also sometimes called natural gasoline. In addition to flowing to the surface at drilled and fracked gas wells, it is also separated from the dry gas at gas processing plants.

The big user of all the wet gas that B.C. produces? You guessed it. Alberta’s heavy oil industry. Last year, according to B.C.’s Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, B.C. produced a record 19.7 million barrels of condensate, slightly more than one fifth of Alberta’s production. Without B.C., Alberta’s oilsands producers would have had to ramp up condensate shipments from the U.S. to make up the difference.

So lucrative is the trade in those liquids that Encana Corporation, one of the biggest players in the Montney Basin, says that its “continued margin expansion” in the region will be “driven” by the increasing volumes of gas liquids that it produces.

Encana operations, Farmington, B.C. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

According to a corporate presentation prepared by Encana in July, the company aims to produce up to 65,000 barrels per day of gas liquids at its Montney Basin operations by the fourth quarter of 2018. That would then mean that Encana alone produces nearly 24 million barrels per year of Alberta-bound liquids. Other major gas liquids producers that also have substantial holdings in liquids-rich zones in the Montney Basin include Tourmaline Oil Corp. and ARC Resources Ltd.

But here’s where the irony of the B.C. government’s objection to the Trans Mountain project grows even thicker. Like all of that Alberta-bound natural gas, the lucrative gas liquids heading to Alberta are used to prop up the petro province’s heavy oil industry. They are essential in allowing thick, unrefined Alberta oil and bitumen to move through pipelines. Paradoxically, B.C.’s eastern-bound gas liquids could one day facilitate the westward movement of diluted bitumen through that new pipeline that Ottawa and Alberta are so intent on building.

Subsidizing the cross-border gas and liquids flow

For years, the B.C. government has encouraged fossil fuel companies to produce more natural gas and liquids by offering generous discounts on the royalties that companies pay to British Columbians on each unit of gas produced.

Those discounts are primarily in the form of “deep well credits.” Successive provincial governments have allowed companies that drill deep natural gas wells to claim a portion of the drilling costs as credits, which are then reimbursed by the province in the form of lower royalty payments.

More recently, those credits have also been extended to companies that drill horizontal wells, despite the fact that both deep wells and horizontal wells are now standard industry practice.

The end result is billions fewer dollars flowing into provincial coffers and from there into public programs like health and education. In the last 10 years, according to figures supplied by Cathy Mou, markets analysis manager for B.C.’s Energy Ministry, the difference between the gross royalty charges to companies drilling for natural gas and gas liquids in northeast B.C. versus the net royalty payments they actually made was close to a combined $5 billion. A significant factor behind those reduced payments were the above-mentioned credits.

Just how much individual companies have benefitted from those subsidies, however, is something that the B.C. government keeps secret. In March, the B.C. government formalized this secrecy by appending a new “confidentiality” provision to an amended Petroleum and Natural Gas Act. The amended Act, Ministry of Finance officials now claim, expressly forbids them from disclosing such information.

In short, British Columbians are no longer allowed to know what, precisely, individual fossil fuel companies operating in the province pay in royalties and receive in credits.

One day after the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives first reported on the confidentiality provision and the ministry’s refusal to release company-specific royalty payment information, Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver asked Energy Minister Mungall about the matter during Estimates Debate.

“My question to the Minister is: is she comfortable with this, given the stark contrast to the forest industry, in which the volume of timber harvested by specific companies is publicly available information? What is the justification for this level of secrecy?” Weaver asked.

“My understanding,” Mungall replied, “is that this is very similar, actually, with mining in that the Ministry of Finance has determined that a best practice is to treat royalties, in terms of their privacy, the same way as you would treat individual income tax. We want to protect that privacy information for industry in the same way that we would protect privacy information for individuals.”

Mungall scrupulously avoided responding to Weaver’s questions regarding the forest industry, which was a notable omission. Notable because any member of the public with a little know-how can use a database maintained by the provincial government and free to users to learn precisely how much timber is logged by individual companies in B.C. and what those companies pay to the province in return. In other words, members of the public are entitled to know what logging companies pay in stumpage fees (essentially a royalty payment for a publicly owned resource) but they are not entitled to know what fossil fuel companies pay in natural gas royalties.

The hidden subsidy

B.C.’s generous trade in natural gas and wet gases with Alberta carries with it enormous ecological costs, almost all of which are borne by Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities located in the northeast region.

This includes stunning and repeated violations of provincial laws, for example fossil companies building dozens of unlicensed dams to trap water for use in their increasingly intense fracking operations — dams built under the watch of the fossil fuel industry’s own dedicated regulator — the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission (OGC).

It also includes evidence of groundwater contamination at potentially hundreds of gas wells in the remote northeast of the province, evidence that the OGC withheld from the public for four years and apparently never bothered to share with successive provincial energy ministers.

A total of 92 unauthorized dams used to impound water for fracking operations have been identified in B.C. All have been built on private lands within the Agricultural Land Reserve. This photo shows a dam near the Pine River in Farmington, B.C. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

It also includes evidence of natural gas companies repeatedly breaking rules to protect threatened wildlife species, with the OGC once again withholding that information from the public.

It also includes evidence of mounting liabilities at abandoned well sites where insufficient industry funds have been posted to cover environmental reclamation costs, and where the provincial government may now be on the hook to cover clean-up costs.

And it also includes disturbing evidence of massive amounts of methane leaking into the atmosphere at numerous gas well sites and wreaking climatic havoc. Given this, it is entirely conceivable that if the day ever came when a major liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility — or more accurately, a liquefied fracked gas plant — was built in B.C., the greenhouse gas emissions associated with that gas would put it on par with coal.

These are the consequences of B.C. adding to the temporary glut of natural gas on the North American market and producing more and more gas liquids for use in Alberta’s oilsands industry. More consequences will almost certainly become apparent as increased gas drilling and fracking occurs in northeast B.C., and the fossil fuels produced head east.

So let’s take just a little closer look at what it means to be a petro state lackey.

B.C.’s condensate sales to Alberta skyrocket

In 2008, fossil fuel companies operating in northeast B.C. produced 27.4 billion cubic metres of marketable gas. A decade later that production, fuelled largely by advances in shale gas drilling and fracking, stood at nearly 48 billion cubic metres.

Even more pronounced has been the explosive cross-border flow of gas liquids to Alberta. In 2007, fossil fuel companies produced 2.97 million barrels of condensate. Today, that output is 6.6 times higher and closing in on 20 million barrels.

That production, however, is poised to skyrocket. In 2016, Encana drilled 17 wells in northeast B.C. One year later, the number of wells drilled hit 107.

“Natural gas production from the Montney play straddling Alberta and B.C. hit a record high in 2017, but the best economics in the fairway come from higher value condensate, and that’s what’s going to drive more ‘focused activity levels’ this year,” the industry watchdog JWN Energy Group reported in January of this year in an article that featured a photograph of a giant drilling rig at an Encana operation in the Montney.

The same JWN report noted that companies operating in the Montney were likely to benefit from high condensate prices in the coming year. The high prices, combined with the Montney Basin’s proximity to Alberta’s oilsands producers meant that the “operating netbacks,” or net profits, on each barrel of condensate sold would be in the range of $53.

At least part of the reason for those healthy profits are the low royalties that companies like Encana pay to the B.C. government as they draw gas and gas liquids from the ground in their fracking operations.

The big winners in that are the companies that produce and sell the condensate and pentane to the oilsands industry, particularly those companies that drill and frack in liquids-rich zones close to where the oilsands industry operates. Because the Montney Basin is relatively close to where the oilsands industry operates, the costs to ship liquids from B.C. to Alberta are far lower than the costs of moving the same product into Alberta from the United States. Lower shipping costs thus translate into increased profits for liquids producers in Alberta and B.C. alike.

Who actually is B.C.’s master?

As more gas wells are drilled in northeast B.C. to coax more valuable liquids from the ground, something else is happening. More and more natural gas is being produced as well. You can’t have one without the other.

A glut of available natural gas now and in the foreseeable future is music to the ears of oilsands producers, says Bill Gwozd, a veteran, Alberta-based natural gas analyst and consultant.

“If you’re a big, big oilsands producer and you’re buying gas for your operation, cheap gas is good,” Gwozd said in March when interviewed for an article in the Calgary Herald.

With drilling activity increasingly targeting liquids-rich formations, Gwozd said it is reasonable to expect that even more natural gas will be produced, again to the advantage of the oilsands industry.

But the expanding pool of natural gas also means that unease is growing among companies that produce mostly natural gas and that see depressed prices for their product for a long time to come. Like their counterparts in the oilsands industry who are anxious to see a pipeline built to carry diluted bitumen from Alberta to tidewater in Burnaby, a growing number of gas producers are anxious to get their “land-locked” product to the West Coast as well. Translation? Another east-to-west pipeline, but one carrying natural gas from the Montney to tidewater in Kitimat.

Once at tidewater, the gas would then be super-cooled to liquid form at a massive new LNG plant and export terminal, whose lead proponent is Shell.

Gwozd is at the forefront of efforts, now, to create a new industry association dedicated to increasing the financial returns to companies that produce natural gas and gas liquids in B.C. and Alberta.

The Calgary Herald article noted that Gwozd, along with Calgary-based consulting firm Gas Processing Management Inc., was starting a new industry association called the Centre for Gas and Liquids Monetization (CGLM).

Among the big names considering joining the centre is Chevron. Chevron could become a partner in the LNG Canada project that Shell would lead. Progress Energy, a subsidiary of Malaysian state-owned Petronas, is also the single-largest subsurface rights holder of natural gas assets in northeast B.C. It, too, would be a partner should the LNG Canada project proceed.

When it comes to pipelines on Canada’s West Coast, it is clear that Premier Horgan has no problem saying no to some and yes to others.

As far as LNG is concerned, the Premier not only supports a new pipeline, processing facility and port, but is prepared to offer generous tax breaks to make it happen. In announcing the incentive package in March, Horgan said the amount of gas industry revenues that the province was prepared to forego, should Shell and its partners proceed with the project, would be $6 billion over a 40-year period.

All of which means that one day B.C. might have a whole bunch of masters.

One master just to the east who continues to benefit from a glut of cheap natural gas on the market and who will take all the highly sought-after gas liquids that B.C. can give.

One or more masters on the other side of the Pacific Ocean that will be only too happy to take all the LNG the province can send them.

And, if Justin Trudeau and Rachel Notley have their way, another master or two at points yet to be determined, if and when diluted bitumen one day moves through a new pipeline to Burnaby — bitumen enabled in part by a whole bunch of natural gas liquids produced in B.C.

Ben Parfitt is a resource policy analyst at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives – B.C. Office.

This piece was published as part of the Corporate Mapping Project (CMP). The CMP is a six-year research and public engagement initiative jointly led by the University of Victoria, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ B.C. and Saskatchewan Offices, and the Alberta-based Parkland Institute. This research was supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

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Mark Jaccard has seen it all before.

Over the decades, the leading energy economist from Simon Fraser University has watched as government after goverment pledge lofty climate targets and proceed to totally overshoot them: Brian Mulroney, Jean Chretien, Stephen Harper. But he certainly hasn’t been silent. In that time, Jaccard has authored dozens of books and papers based on modelling that points out the political hypocrisies and maps how to get back on track.

Now, his sights have turned to the federal and Alberta governments, which are loudly proclaiming that the proposed Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline can be reconciled with Canada’s international climate commitments.

In a widely shared op-ed for the Globe and Mail titled “Trudeau’s Orwellian logic: We reduce emissions by increasing them,” Jaccard systematically pulled apart popular pro-pipeline arguments. Notably, he calmly reminded readers that despite what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says, the federal government doesn’t need any pipeline to implement its climate policies but simply needs to “quickly apply his federal authority” to impose them. You know, just like Alberta is calling on Ottawa to do in order to build the pipeline.

On Wednesday, DeSmog Canada interviewed Jaccard about the op-ed, pipeline politics and the challenge of building new oil pipelines and meeting climate targets.

Why did you write this op-ed?

I write about once a year in the Globe and Mail. The articles are almost always the same. What motivates me is if I hear enough inaccuracies that I put aside other stuff that I’m working on, which is all related — analysis and so on that I’m doing for governments, independents, academic paper, theses that my students are doing. In this case, I was really struck by the illogic of Trudeau saying that we had to say “yes” to this pipeline in order to get the Pan-Canadian Framework that reduces emissions. Just to be clear, I think it’s been great to have Prime Minister Trudeau for the last two years working on climate instead of Stephen Harper faking it. Trudeau has really done some things that I really support. It’s not like I lightly attack politicians. But I think that point he was making right now needed to be challenged.

Have you been surprised by the emergence of that particular argument: in order to complete the Pan-Canadian Framework, we need this pipeline?

When Trudeau made the announcement a year ago that he was not going to allow Northern Gateway to go ahead but said he was going to allow Trans Mountain, at the request of some politician I did a public forum in Vancouver in which I explained his decision. If you’re the prime minister of all Canadians, you sincerely have to try to please everyone. That’s his idea of cooperative federalism. I understand how a Canadian prime minister would have that view. At the same time, he said to Brad Wall of Saskatchewan that “you’re not willing to play ball at all, so we’re just going to have to roll over you.” With Alberta though, he had a government that said “we want to do things differently, we’re going to be a model in the world of a fossil fuel-rich region that actually tries to act on climate.” Trudeau had to make a strategic choice that related to being the prime minister of all Canadians to a federal system and trying to get action. I understand completely why he did that.

There’s been a lot of rhetoric lately suggesting the construction of new pipelines will only slightly increase Canada’s annual emissions, calculated at around eight megatonnes or so. Why do you think that particular argument doesn’t fit well into the bigger picture?

I’m really glad you asked that. That is what I do. I model. A model is a representation, in my case, of how the energy economy system unfolds or would unfold under certain key assumptions about the economics and policy. If someone were paying me a lot of money — and I’ve been offered this in the past — to make an argument that “oh, building this fossil fuel infrastructure won’t increase greenhouse gas emissions,” I can make that argument. In the case of an oil pipeline, I would say: “Oh, all it’s going to do is reconfigure things. There will be a little more oil going to the West Coast, a little less going to the U.S., a little less going on rail car.” I could do that for you beautifully. I could do that one pipeline after another, until you’ve built ten more pipelines and tripled and quadrupled the size of the oilsands. When someone comes out with a number like that of eight megatonnes, I immediately want to say “ok, what assumptions?” Because I can also — if someone else was paying me, or actually they wouldn’t have money to pay me so I was doing it for free — I could do an analysis that showed that if you look at the total output of oilsands or oil in Canada, it correlates perfectly with pipeline capacity. In other words, you need the delivery pipeline infrastructure to match your production capacity. I would argue the real correct long-run way — the total system evolution way — of looking at a new pipeline is to correlate it one-to-one per barrel of oil of production. If the pipeline can carry 800,000 barrels of oil a day, then assume that you’re causing 800,000 barrels of oil per day of production in Canada.

Now, you can still make the argument that the production would have happened somewhere else. And that leads us to the general issue that climate change is a global collective action problem. We can always ensure that we will fail if we say “if I act to try to save us, others will just compensate.” By that logic, we all go to hell together. What you have to do is say “okay, how do we think strategically: what if we act as leaders, and as leaders we try to form what are called ‘climate clubs’ of first movers. And then we use approaches like being a demonstration, probably by trade pressures and so on to try to get the rest of the world to go along with us.” What I’m giving you right here is the standard rationale that they can use, and I just got a lot of that in the last 24 hours after the op-ed from Alberta, about why we should be allowed to continue on this destructive path.

“By that logic, we all go to hell together.” @MarkJaccard on Trudeau’s pipeline talking points https://t.co/7JSlYNtnQC #oilsands #cdnpoli #bcpoli #ableg pic.twitter.com/hlvK97uUYG

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) February 21, 2018

You’re obviously not arguing that the oilsands should be shut down tomorrow, just that they not be allowed to expand, right?

Exactly. When you asked me what motivated me to write this right now, some of it was to do with this whole collective action thing. Another one was that every time I turn on Twitter I get an ad from Alberta that tells me British Columbia is threatening Alberta jobs. It’s not true! It’s threatening jobs ten years from now of maybe British Columbians that moved to get jobs, or people from Newfoundland, or from China. Those people might not have jobs but the current Albertans are not threatened if you don’t expand the oilsands. That really started to bug me.

Anything you wanted to add?

A big motivator for the op-ed as well was that I’ve done a lot of the national modelling. If you froze the emissions from the oilsands, it is still really hard to hit a Paris target. If you look on the graphs, we’ve gone all the way up to 2.5 million barrels a day. Maybe it’s going to stabilize up there. That would be fine with me. But if you build more pipelines, it’s most likely going to keep going higher.

The talk has been “oh well, this is Trudeau helping Rachel Notley stay in power.” I don’t think Rachel Notley’s going to stay in power. As the federal government, you’ve just got to get ready for the fact that you’re going to have different people in different jurisdictions who are going to stop you from doing a climate policy. Trudeau says he’s serious about his Paris commitment. That’s one area where I have expertise and people like me should be speaking up. People have a short memory if it’s not their area. I understand that. But I need to explain why Brian Mulroney didn’t hit his target, and Jean Chretien, and Stephen Harper. To me, the burden of proof is on Trudeau. If he’s going to keep telling Canadians that he’s serious about his Paris targets, then the burden of proof is on him. Any expert will tell you that he should already have all the policies in place right now. We can map how they achieve Paris. I was trying to make that shout out as well with the op-ed.

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The prospect of a new provincial government in B.C. has sparked fresh political debate about Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline, which is opposed by B.C.’s NDP and Green Party, despite already receiving provincial and federal approval.

“There are no tools available for a province to overturn or otherwise block a federal government decision,” stated Alberta Premier Rachel Notley this week.

But is that really the case?

The short answer is no.

“There’s no question that B.C. has tools in its toolbox, which it has not yet used and that it should use,” says Jessica Clogg, executive director and senior counsel at West Coast Environmental Law.

That very prospect has drawn incendiary commentary, including claims by the Canada West Foundation that a reversal of the approval “strikes at our very democracy.”

On the contrary, B.C. Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver argued in the Globe and Mail that reconsidering Trans Mountain, which would increase the number of oil tankers plying B.C.’s waters seven-fold, would be a “triumph of democracy.”

“If we care about the integrity of democracy, we are honour-bound to reconsider the Trans Mountain decision,” he wrote. “Federalism doesn’t mean that one province gets to tread on the rights and threaten the environment of another.”

Indeed, many of the seats the B.C. Liberals lost were in Lower Mainland ridings, such as Burnaby, that would be most affected by the new pipeline.

Industry analysts are already sounding the alarm before Kinder Morgan’s proposed $1.3 billion IPO for its Canadian unit.

“The really close B.C. election vote puts pressure on the Kinder Morgan IPO,” Colin Cieszynski, chief market strategist at CMC Markets, told Reuters. “You run the danger of the whole thing getting stalled for years or going into limbo.”

With that in mind, here are three ways a new B.C. government could stop — or at least delay — the Trans Mountain pipeline.

1) B.C. Government Could Order Its Own Environmental Assessment

Revisiting a provincial environmental assessment is one of the most obvious means by which the B.C. government could “overturn or otherwise block” the construction of the Trans Mountain Pipeline, says Chris Tollefson, executive director for the Pacific Centre for Environmental Law and Litigation.

“I think that avenue is quite plausible given the fact that process wasn’t robust and raised serious questions — and continues to raise serious questions — about consultation with First Nations,” he says.

A January 2016 verdict by the B.C. Supreme Court in favour of Coastal First Nations (CFN) and Gitga’at First Nation stated that the province has to make a clear decision about its environmental assessment process (rather than simply continue to accept the federal assessment as its own through an “equivalency agreement” with the National Energy Board).

That presented a chance for B.C. to do its own environmental assessment to fill the holes of the National Energy Board review — holes the B.C. government itself had pointed out.

But instead of doing that, B.C. quietly confirmed in March 2016 that it had accepted the heavily criticized National Energy Board report as its own.

A new government could examine what the province’s Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) decided, conclude that it wasn’t adequate and order a proper environmental assessment.

Tollefson says it would be “perfectly within the rights of British Columbia to do that” given the well-documented flaws in the National Energy Board review of the Kinder Morgan project, which restricted public participation, ignored impacts on marine mammals and ecosystems, excluded cross-examination of evidence and failed to assess potential upstream emissions.

Some would make arguments that a government can’t change its mind after the fact, he says. But Tollefson suggests that governments change their mind all the time, and it’s a “function of democratic politics: that you elect government that make course corrections.”

“If the previous government — and in this case, the EAO — made a poor decision, British Columbia should be allowed to fix it,” he says. “That doesn’t mean that B.C. can kill the project, or delay it indefinitely. It just means that British Columbia finally will take a proper look at and make a proper assessment of this project.”

2) New Legislation

Another option for a new B.C. government would be to introduce a piece of legislation that directly pertains to the pipeline. For example, Clogg suggests an act that orders a health and safety assessment for the project, or requires the conducting of further studies.

This would lead to better information and a broader understanding of the risks of the project, as well as help to ensure that indigenous peoples are fully included in the process.

Clogg says such a process could technically result in the federal government choosing to challenge it under constitutional law, potentially going all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada and delaying the process for many more years.

But she suggests it would be “extremely politically risky” for the federal government.

“Just because you could legally challenge a B.C. ‘no’ and after years and years in court you might win, think about the political risks in them doing that,” she says.

“B.C. definitely has the ability to act to protect things that are within its constitutional jurisdiction, it has independent obligation to do right by indigenous peoples — and many of them are very opposed to the project — and it would be nothing but a good thing to do that work, to enable it legislatively, and see where the cards fall,” she said.

“I wouldn’t want to be the federal government who made that choice to try stand down British Columbians.”

3) Wait for Legal Challenges to Play Out

Tollefson adds that there are a series of legal challenges pending that are brought by indigenous nations, conservation organizations and municipalities. Those will take time to be dealt with by the courts, he says.

“I don’t anticipate this project will be able to move forward until those challenges are dealt with,” he says.

The Alberta government was granted intervener status in the upcoming judicial review about the Trans Mountain pipeline, which is anticipated to take place in the fall.

Only time will tell what happens on that front.

But both Clogg and Tollefson emphasize the same thing: so long as it’s under the rule of law, the next B.C. government will have a wide range of options available to it to ensure the Trans Mountain Pipeline benefits its citizenry.

“Their main regulatory obligation in relation to this project relate to the environmental assessment that they should have done and never did, and their duty to ensure that projects such as this do not proceed until they’ve fully discharged their duty to consult First Nations,” Tollefson concludes.

“I think on both of those fronts, a new government may well conclude that there’s more work to do.”

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Provincial politics. There, I said them — two of the most boring words in the English language.

There’s no denying it. Provincial elections fail to capture the imaginations of citizens the way national or even international elections do.

Case in point: in the last B.C. provincial election, just 55 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot — 13 per cent fewer than voted in the last federal election.

I get it: most of us are just trying to pay the bills, put dinner on the table and make sure the kids get to soccer practice. There’s not exactly a whole lot of time (or energy) left to monitor several different levels of politics.

Yet Canadians have been captivated by the train wreck that’s been unfolding south of the border for the last six months — even though there ain’t much we can do about another country’s state of affairs.

So if you give a shit about the state of the world, now’s as good a time as any to focus on what you can change. If you’re a British Columbian, you’ve got a golden opportunity to make your mark in just one week from today.

In Canada, the provinces are responsible for managing things like health care, education, housing and natural resources — so, snooze-worthy or not, provincial politics have a major influence over our day-to-day lives.

Here are our Top 5 reasons to give a shit about the B.C. election.

1) Because It’s a Referendum on Big Money in Politics

When the New York Times devotes an entire article to how corrupt your province’s politics have become, calling it the ‘wild west’ of political cash, it’s time to sit up and pay attention.

Here are the facts: unlike many other provinces, B.C. has no limits on political donations. Anyone, including foreigners and foreign companies, can give as much moola as they want to political parties in our province.

A Globe and Mail investigation this spring found lobbyists breaking one of the few rules B.C. has in place by donating to the B.C. Liberals under their own names, while being reimbursed by companies, thus concealing the true source of the money.

An RCMP investigation is now underway into the practice. Meanwhile, the B.C. Liberals (who are not affiliated with the federal Liberal party and are actually strongly aligned with the federal Conservative party) announced they would return $93,000 in prohibited donations.

Thanks to these lax laws, the Liberals raised $12.6 million in 2016 — more than any other provincial party in power. The B.C. NDP meanwhile raised $6.2 million in 2016.

Despite the fact 86 per cent of British Columbians want to see big money banned from politics, the Liberals have defeated six NDP bills to ban big money in politics.

When asked during the televised leaders’ debate about how she’d regain British Columbians’ trust after the donations scandal, Clark said: “I think the thing that matters most to British Columbians is jobs.”

If corruption matters to you, this is your chance to get big money out of politics.  Both the NDP and the Greens have promised to ban corporate and union donations if elected.

2) Two Words: ‘Legalized Bribery’

In a system that’s been called ‘legalized bribery,’ Premier Christy Clark has been receiving an annual stipend of up to $50,000 from her party, financed by political contributions. This is in addition to her $195,000 a year salary paid for by taxpayers.

“No elected official in the U.S. is allowed to get a stipend; that would be bribery,” said Dan Levin, a New York Times reporter covering Canada. “I lived in China for seven-and-a-half years; in China or Russia this would just be called ‘corruption’ or ‘nepotism.’ But here, it’s just ‘legal.’ ”

That salary top-up led two groups to file a court challenge to overturn the government’s decision on Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline due to alleged conflicts of interest between the premier and project proponents, who have given $560,000 in political contributions over six years to the Liberal party.

A week after the New York Times turned its glaring spotlight on B.C., Clark finally announced she’ll stop the controversial salary top-up. But the B.C. Liberals still haven’t made any commitment to get big money out of politics.

While Clark has been raking in close to $250,000 a year, during the 16-year tenure of the B.C. Liberals, the cost of living for ordinary British Columbians has skyrocketed — from housing and child care to health care premiums, Hydro bills and ICBC rates.

Entire campaigns have popped up to stop the squeeze on younger British Columbians and fight for $10 a day childcare. If the ability for working class people to get by matters to you, cast a ballot, mmmmkay?

3) Because The Largest Mining Disaster in Canadian History Went Unpunished

When a dam broke at the Mount Polley mine in August 2014, it unleashed a four-square-kilometre lake full of mining waste into Polley Lake, Hazeltine Creek and Quesnel Lake, a source of drinking water and major spawning grounds for sockeye salmon.

You might be thinking: that sounds really shitty, but surely it’s not the government’s fault?

Oh how we wish that were the case. But a two-year investigation by B.C.’s auditor general found that compliance and enforcement expectations were not met after a “decade of neglect.”

The report said that to reduce the risk of “unfortunate and preventable incidents like Mount Polley,”compliance and enforcement should be separated from the Ministry of Energy and Mines Ministry because the ministry’s role to promote mining development creates an “irreconcilable conflict.”

But guess what? The government ignored that recommendation and continues business as usual. In fact, the government approved another mine with a massive tailings pond just like the one at Mount Polley, even though an expert panel said to stop doing that. Alaskans downstream are so worried about their salmon rivers that they’re practically begging the B.C. government to get its shit together.

Meanwhile, Mount Polley and its parent company Imperial Metals got off without a single fine or criminal charge for the largest mining accident in Canadian history.

To add insult to injury, British Columbians have been left on the hook for millions of dollars of clean-up bills for the Mount Polley spill.

And now, just days before the writ dropped, the B.C. government approved a permit for Mount Polley to discharge mining waste directly into Quesnel Lake. Seriously.

You’d almost think there was some corruption at play or something.

P.S. Mount Polley and its parent company Imperial Metals have donated more than $200,000 to the B.C. Liberals since 2005.

4) Because We’re Still Killing Grizzly Bears for Trophies

Since we’re on the topic of totally screwed up things that B.C. allows because of unlimited political donations, let’s talk about grizzly bears. About 300 of them will be killed this year so that hunters can hang their heads on the wall at home.

Many grizzlies will be killed in B.C.’s provincial parks and protected areas. Many will be females. This will happen despite the fact 90 per cent of British Columbians want to see trophy hunting banned.

Photo: Dogwood

Why? Money talks yet again.

Guide outfitters — who can earn as much as $20,000 for helping a foreign hunter bag a grizzly bear — have donated nearly $62,000 to the B.C. Liberals since 2005.

Fun fact: a 2012 study by Stanford University in conjunction with the Center for Responsible Travel found that bear viewing groups in the Great Bear Rainforest generated more than 12 times more in visitor spending than bear hunting.

Most recently, wealthy hunting society Safari Club International donated $60,000 to the Guide Outfitters Association of B.C., bragging in a since-removed Facebook post about “working … to prevent the NDP from getting elected.”

The NDP have vowed to end the trophy hunt, as have the Green Party.

Safari Club International spent nearly a million dollars lobbying in the U.S. last year, including on legislation related to species such as elephants, wolves and polar bears. Handy fact: One of their members was responsible for killing Cecil the Lion.

Ahem, did we mention this is your chance to get big money out of politics?

5) Because We’re Losing Our Place in the World

There was a while there when B.C. was praised for being a leader in tackling climate change, while maintaining one of the strongest economies in Canada. That time is over.

A recent L.A. Times piece focused on B.C.’s new “embrace of fossil fuels.”

“Now, however, Canada’s West Coast is striving toward a very different kind of cutting edge: British Columbia is positioning itself to become a global leader in exporting fossil fuels, with plans to nearly triple crude oil exports through a controversial new pipeline and vastly expand production of liquefied natural gas to be sold in Asia,” read a recent piece in the Los Angeles Times.

Premier Christy Clark has been a big pusher of any and all fossil fuel development, including a stunning about-face on Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain oil pipeline. Meanwhile, she decided to ignore the recommendations of her expert panel on climate change.

It’s gotten so bad that even former B.C. Liberal premier Gordon Campbell —who’s given precious few interviews — had some choice words for B.C. in the Los Angeles Times article.

“They still say that they take pride in having a revenue-neutral carbon tax,” Campbell said. “If you do, then what are the next steps you take? The journey’s not done. We started it with some good, strong policies that I would have liked to see carry on. But it’s up to the current elected leaders. There are leaders and there are followers.”

Even if climate change isn’t No. 1 on your priority list, chances are you don’t want B.C. to become a laggard on the global climate file just as the world accelerates toward a clean energy economy.

This no-holds-barred approach to natural resources has antagonized B.C.’s First Nations, who are calling on their friends and allies to vote for anyone but Clark.

“The Clark government has virtually neglected the people of British Columbia in her obsessive pursuit of large-scale resource development projects,” said Grand Chief Stewart Phillip at a press conference this week.

Grievances include the B.C. Liberals’ continued musings about LNG, even though the market appears to be dead, and their bull-headed approach to the Site C dam, which Phillip described as a “sleazy, political make-work project to shore up the failings B.C. Jobs program.”

Why is Clark so enthusiastic about fossil fuel exports? It could have something to do with the 22,000 meetings her government has had with fossil fuel lobbyists since 2010. Or with the roughly $4 million in donations her party has received from oil and gas companies since 2008. Just sayin’.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

The B.C. government is subsidizing the LNG industry to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars — and British Columbians are going to pay the price, according to a new report by Sierra Club B.C.

The report, Hydro Bill Madness: The BC Government Goes For Broke With Your Money, lays out the impact of tax breaks, subsidies and reduced electricity rates negotiated by industry.

“Power subsidies to even just two or three of the proposed LNG plants could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars per year,” reads a press release accompanying the report.

Two LNG export terminals have been approved in B.C. — Petronas’ Pacific Northwest LNG on Lelu Island near Prince Rupert and the Woodfibre LNG plant in Howe Sound near Squamish. Another 18 are proposed.

Both companies have been major donors to the B.C. Liberal party, which has ruled the province for 16 years and faces an election on May 9.

Malaysian-owned Pacific Northwest LNG donated more than $18,000 to the B.C. Liberals since 2014, while Indonesian-based Woodfibre has found itself in the midst of a growing scandal over illegal donations.

The Globe and Mail recently revealed that two Woodfibre lobbyists were reimbursed by their company for more than $75,000 in donations to the B.C. Liberals. This practice, which conceals the true source of political donations, is illegal. The investigation has now been handed over to the RCMP. Woodfibre also donated close to $60,000 under its companies’ names.

These donations took place while Woodfibre negotiated a subsidy on electricity rates and other tax breaks from the province.

WoodfibreLNG donated $60K to @BCLiberals & @ the same time negotiated electricity subsidy & other tax breaks https://t.co/xZkEX6PxU8 #bcpoli pic.twitter.com/4PuR692rC0

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) March 27, 2017

In November 2013, the B.C. government announced it would charge the LNG sector $83.02 per MWh for grid electricity. But three years later, in November 2016, the government announced it would lower that rate to $54.34 — a 35 per cent cut.

“That reduced rate will not cover the cost of production, so ratepayers will have to absorb the loss,” reads the Sierra Club report.

Looking just at the two approved LNG plants in British Columbia, Sierra Club found BC Hydro ratepayers could be on the hook for more than $150 million per year in subsidies if the plants use grid electricity.

“Construction of any of the 18 other plants currently being proposed would dramatically increase that amount,” reads the report.

Last year, the B.C. Liberals promised to have at least three LNG export terminals in operation by 2020, but not a single plant is yet under construction due to market uncertainty created by falling natural gas prices and the rise of renewables.

“Why is our government expecting British Columbians to pay a handout to international corporations each time we pay our hydro bill?” said Sierra Club BC campaigns director Caitlyn Vernon. “In their desperation to secure a deal, they are making terrible deals with serious consequences for all B.C. residents.”

Not only are LNG companies receiving a deeply subsidized electricity rate, but the power needs of northeastern B.C.’s fracked gas fields and LNG plants have been used to justify the construction of the $8.8 billion Site C dam — which is also being built with public money.

“The B.C. government is building an expensive dam we don’t need in order to offer subsidies to fracking and LNG companies, with BC Hydro ratepayers footing the bill for generations to come,” Vernon said.

The corporate handouts don’t end there. In return for access to British Columbia’s resources, oil and gas companies are expected to pay royalties. However, the B.C. government has been waiving much of these royalty payments — a practice called giving “royalty credits.”

In 2016, the B.C. government handed out $348 million in royalty credits and approved the carry-over of more than $520 million in future royalty credits by oil and gas producers, according to the Sierra Club report.

When those liabilities are applied to the earnings from 2016, oil and gas revenues were in the negative by $365 million.

“In other words, if you factor in future lost royalty revenue because of subsidies allocated in 2016, the natural gas sector actually cost the B.C. government, and therefore B.C. taxpayers, a million dollars per day in fiscal year 2016,” reads the report.

Additionally, in 2013, the B.C. government announced a seven per cent LNG tax — but as the import price in Asia collapsed, this rate was cut in half to 3.5 per cent.

Sierra Club argues the subsidies go beyond the LNG industry, and apply to Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline as well. That pipeline will be powered by subsidized electricity at a cost of ratepayers of at least $27 million per year, according to the Sierra Club report. Across the 20-year life of that pipeline, the subsidy will amount to $540 million.

Kinder Morgan and its Alberta-based backers, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association and oilsands producers contracted to ship oil on the new pipeline, have donated nearly $800,000 to the B.C. Liberal party.

Photo: While on the Spring 2014 trade mission, Premier Christy Clark visited the Petronas Twin Towers and met with CEO & chairman, Tan Sri Dato’ Sahmsul Azhar Abbas. Photo: Province of British Columbia via Flickr.

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The Alberta Energy Regulator — responsible for regulating more than 430,000 kilometres of pipelines in the province — has finally started to try to clean up its image.

In the last two weeks of February, the agency launched a “pipeline performance report” that graphs recent pipeline incidents, it levelled a $172,500 fine against Murphy Oil for a 2015 spill that went undetected for 45 days and it shut down all operations by the notoriously uncooperative Lexin Resources, including 201 pipelines.*

But critics suggest there are major systemic flaws in the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) that still need to be addressed if pipeline safety is to be taken seriously.

“It’s absolutely ridiculous,” says Mike Hudema, climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace Canada. “You’re talking about a spill that went undetected for 45 days. And the company was fined an amount that they could likely make in less than an hour. That doesn’t send any message to the company. It definitely doesn’t send any message to the industry. And it doesn’t reform company behaviour.”

Ecojustice lawyer Fraser Thomson agrees there are major gaps in oversight.

“There are still significant, significant issues with transparency and accountability on what the AER calls ‘incidents’ within the oil and gas sector,” Thomson said.

AER Accused of Mixed Mandate, Industry-Friendly Structure

The AER was formed in late 2012 with the merging of the Energy Resources Conservation Board and some duties of the ministry of environment and sustainable development.

It’s been under fire from critics ever since.

For one, it’s often accused of having a mixed mandate. Only a month-and-a-half after forming government in 2015, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley suggested the AER can’t do the job of environmental protection and monitoring when its “overarching mandate is to promote energy development.”

Notley reported the government would review the AER’s mandate and potentially split it into two agencies: one for monitoring, another for approvals. But only six months later, the AER received a letter confirming the current organizational structure would be maintained.

“We haven’t really seen much sea change,” Hudema said. “Until that happens, unfortunately Alberta will be plagued with the pipeline problems that has plagued it for decades.”

It hasn’t helped matters that the AER’s chair Gerry Protti was a former Encana executive and founding member of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, or that the AER is entirely funded by industry.

In 2013, Notley — then serving as the NDP’s environment critic — called on AER CEO Jim Ellis to resign due to his involvement in a scandal about the suppression of anti-oilsands dissent by government, describing the situation as “banana republic stuff.”

It’s a sentiment reflected by renowned ecologist Kevin Timoney, who recently reported that the AER has vastly underestimated spill volumes and recovery efforts between 1975 and 2013.

“There was some movement towards improving monitoring [in recent years] but those efforts have been undermined by senior management,” he writes in an e-mail. “Enforcement is still little more than a facade.”

Online Database An Improvement, But "Pretty Frail"

Duncan Kenyon, director of the Pembina Institute's responsible fossil fuels program, says the AER first made it a serious priority to deal with pipeline spills following the 2012 release of 461,000 litres of sour crude oil into the Red Deer River by Plains Midstream.

That same year, the provincial government ordered a pipeline safety review, which ended up being itself criticized by Notley and others for failure to consult or actually consider incidents (instead opting to simply compare regulations to other jurisdictions).

Recent spills haven’t exactly bolstered the regulator’s reputation.

The aforementioned Murphy Oil spill in 2015 resulted in 9,000 barrels of condensate spilling onto public land near Peace River. A spill at Nexen Energy’s Long Lake facility that same year released 31,000 barrels of emulsion between June 11 and July 15, despite being a brand new pipeline.

Around 1,500 barrels of oil emulsion was also spilled by Trilogy Energy near Fox Creek in October 2016.

Thomson notes that an incident first reported in 2013 involves a Canadian Natural Resources Limited in-situ project near Cold Lake in which bitumen started bubbling to the top over the period of months and years. The AER’s compliance dashboard lists the incident as “ongoing” with the “emergency phase over July 17, 2013.”

He says that he still can’t get an answer to whether the spill is happening or not.

“When it comes to the information that people want to know — what’s the risk here, is it safe, is there a safety risk to humans, wildlife environment and treaty rights — the compliance dashboard is a pretty frail tool to access it,” Thomson said.

In addition, he notes that language used by the AER often confuses things for the public: for instance, the regulator will use “produced water” in reference to “toxic water” with a high concentration of salts that are dangerous to local environments and often have oil residue in them.

Similarly, he says the AER will report “no recorded impacts” as opposed to “impacts unknown.”

“I think it would be reasonable for the public to read that and assume there weren’t impacts, when it’s really a turn of phrase,” Thomson says.

#Alberta’s Pipeline Oversight a ‘Facade’: Experts https://t.co/4942NmkdkM @james_m_wilt @HuffPostAlberta @ProgressAlberta #ableg #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/nq8N7xd0CJ

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) March 23, 2017

Self-Reporting Only Works If Regulator Ensures Compliance

The AER claims that the length of pipelines in Alberta has grown by 11 per cent over the last decade, with “incidents” dropping by 44 per cent.

But Timoney’s recent report complicates the matter even further, suggesting that many spills weren’t recorded, and that many former oil spill sites that have reportedly been reclaimed are still contaminated from pipeline leaks.

“According to the data that I have received from the regulator, the number of spills has declined in recent years,” he explains in an e-mail. “However, it is important to remember that those data are based on industry self-reporting; they are not independently verified. Incidents occur that are not reported, but the frequency of unreported incidents is not known.”

Kenyon agrees: “If you don’t have a regulator who’s going out and actually seeing if people are complying — going out there and doing audits and seeing if what they said in their self-report is accurate — then none of that data is worth anything.”

Alberta’s Fines Well Below National Average

That’s why many point to the lack of enforcement as a key problem.

That starts with fine limits, which is established by the province. Alberta has fairly low caps on penalties compared to other provinces, Thomson says.

Data compiled by Ecojustice and shared with DeSmog Canada indicates a clear trend: the provisions that are most often used — Section 108(2) and 109(2) of the Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act, concerning the “release of substance causing adverse effect to environment” — has a cap of $500,000 in Alberta, compared to a cap of $1 million in B.C., Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.

In Ontario and Quebec, the maximum limit for first conviction is $6 million. The only provinces that have an equal or lower cap are Manitoba ($500,000) and Prince Edward Island ($50,000).

Cheaper to Pay Fines Than Maintain Pipelines

But the “administrative penalties” issued by the AER often fall well below that $500,000 mark.

The largest fine issued yet by the regulator was $250,000 against Pengrowth Energy for the 48-day spill of 537,000 litres of oil emulsion in late 2013. The recent fine against Murphy Oil was also one of the highest penalties in the AER’s history; Thomson says it was calculated based on every day the company failed to report it, which is a “positive development.”

The strange reality is that many pipeline companies do have leak detection systems in place. It’s just that companies often don’t direct resources into maintaining them, following what Kenyon calls a standard compliance versus non-compliance cost comparison model; in other words, it’s cheaper to ignore and risk the fine than pay for annual maintenance.

In the case of the Murphy Oil spill, the company failed to check for internal corrosion and perform maintenance on the leak detection system for three straight years even though it was required to check annually.

“You can put a management system in and then have it down in paper, but not everything is operating the way it’s supposed to,” he says. “And then you can claim when there’s a foul up that it just wasn’t operating as it was supposed to. But you never turned it on the way it was supposed to.”

More Boots on the Ground Needed

An AER spokesperson emphasized in an e-mail that the agency is working on addressing data collection issues and improving reporting spill clean-up.

In addition, the spokesperson said the regulator requires operators to implement “comprehensive integrity management programs and safety and loss management systems,” conducts “pipeline inspections on a regular basis” and provides “education on pipeline integrity.”

However, changing the trajectory of the AER ultimately requires new “marching orders” from the provincial government via an expansion of mandate, pressures to prioritize compliance and an increased limit on fines. It’s something the NDP has appeared reluctant to do; Kenyon says there “might have been more pressure coming on pipelines under the previous government.”

The press secretary for energy minister Margaret McCuaig-Boyd says via e-mail there are no plans to revisit the government’s decision to keep the AER as is.

Thomson says he’s not convinced that splitting up the regulator would address some of the systemic problems, which ultimately require more boots on the ground: “Industry needs to know that if they submit data and monitoring to the AER, that there’s a good chance it will be checked.”

Meantime, the Alberta government continues to push for any and all new pipelines, from Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain to Trans Canada’s Keystone XL and Energy East.

“I really feel like the government should get its own pipeline problems in order before it’s pushing for new pipelines to new jurisdictions,” Hudema concludes.

“When you’re averaging over one spill a day, it’s not something that you should be bragging about or pushing into new communities.”

*Correction: The article originally stated that the AER had recently launched its compliance dashboard. The dashboard has in fact been available for a few years. The regulator recently launched a “pipeline performance report” that graphs recent pipeline incidents

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Access to world markets for Canadian oil has been available since 1956 when the Westridge dock was constructed in Burnaby, B.C., and linked to the Trans Mountain pipeline.

The dock’s export capacity has rarely been used to its full potential in more than 60 years — yet the oil industry and politicians continue to make the argument that Canada needs new pipelines to get oil to world markets.

Here are four reasons that argument doesn’t fly.

1) Existing Export Capacity Isn’t Being Used

In 2011, the National Energy Board (NEB) provided Kinder Morgan with a favourable and unprecedented ruling when it allocated guaranteed access to the dock under 10-year take-or-pay contracts with five crude oil shippers.

Kinder Morgan promised that 79,000 barrels a day of tidewater access would lead to the development of international markets for Alberta’s crude.

It didn’t.

Guaranteed access means the dock can service 60 crude oil tankers a year. But according to statistics compiled by Port Metro Vancouver, not even a third of that number were loaded during 2016 — and most of those tankers went to U.S. ports. The equivalent of one tanker was loaded with Alberta’s heavy oil and destined for a non-U.S. port during the entire year. Seventeen went to U.S. destinations.

If Canadian oil needs to get to world markets as desperately as some claim, why isn’t existing access being used? It’s because there is no demand for it.

2) Energy East Won’t Reduce Reliance on Foreign Oil

“The lamentable state of crude oil pipeline infrastructure makes parts of this country reliant on foreign oil and our petroleum exporters dependent on the United States, which buys Canadian product at a deep discount,” wrote Conservative Senator Michael MacDonald in the Hill Times.

Eastern Canada has a dependency on imported oil because the refineries located there are configured to process primarily light oil. Energy East is intended to facilitate the transport of diluted bitumen from Alberta’s oilsands so will not reduce eastern Canada’s reliance on imported crude to any significant degree.

But there is another source of dependency on imported oil that is rarely acknowledged. Oilsands producers are dependent on imported condensate as a diluent for bitumen blending purposes. This is because oilsands heavy does not flow down a pipeline unassisted — it’s too dense.

Canada does not produce enough condensate to meet oilsands producers’ demand. Since 2005, condensate imports from the U.S. have increased significantly. For every three barrels of increased oilsands production, a barrel of condensate is imported. Thus, as oilsands production expands, Canada’s import dependency expands with it.

So if we want to see a reduction in Canada’s reliance on foreign oil imports we must advocate for a reduction in oilsands production or an increase in upgrading and refinery capacity in Alberta. Otherwise, the minute bitumen is shipped along a pipeline, it generates a growing dependency on crude imports.

3) Canadian Oil Producers Are Not Truly Dependent on U.S. Markets

Some suggest that Canadian producers are somehow dependent on U.S. markets. The majority of Canadian producers are not “dependent” on the US. They have integrated refinery operations there. To a significant extent Canadian producers supply their own crude to themselves or their joint-venture partners as U.S. refiners.

When Suncor sells into its Commerce City, Colorado, refinery, or Cenovus supplies its facilities in Wood River, Illinois, and Borger, Texas, owned in a joint venture with Phillips 66, or Husky supplies its refinery in Toledo, Ohio, it owns in partnership with BP, or Imperial and its parent, ExxonMobile, deliver crude from their joint venture to ExxonMobile’s U.S. facilities, it is hardly accurate to suggest that they are “dependent” on the U.S. market.

4) Canadian Oil Is Not Selling at a ‘Discount’

Many argue that the U.S. “buys Canadian product at a deep discount,” but that’s incorrect. There is a natural price discount between U.S. oil and Canadian heavy oil that will always exist because of quality and transportation cost differences.

Oil is traded in U.S. currency. Canadian crude is priced against a benchmark to U.S. produced light oil; West Texas Intermediate (WTI). To examine the differential and whether there is a discount that is outside the expected natural range requires that we compare WTI to Canadian crude prices. To do this for oilsands crude is to look at the price for WTI as compared to the price for Western Canadian Select (WCS)—the highest grade of Canadian heavy.

The natural discount for WCS compared to WTI, according to the National Energy Board is about 30 per cent — or roughly $20 US per barrel. A price differential of WCS to WTI of less than $20 U.S. would therefore be considered a “premium” price for WCS. WCS has been trading at “premium” since 2014. Currently, the differential is only $14 U.S. a barrel.

Robyn Allan is an independent economist and was an expert intervenor at the National Energy Board Trans Mountain Expansion hearing.

Photo: Jon Olav Eikenes via Flickr

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With federal decisions on major oil pipeline and tanker projects in the headlines, many suggest our elected officials should lean more on science to make these kinds of decisions.

Those exhortations sound very reasonable. But they reveal an enormously important misunderstanding about the role of science in making decisions on major resource projects.

Take the case of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline and tanker project on the West Coast.

On one side, you have staunch opposition from the Tsleil-Waututh Nation and other coastal and Fraser River First Nations, West Coast municipalities like Vancouver, Burnaby and Victoria, and a sizable percentage of B.C.’s voting public.

On the other side, you have staunch support from Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, the mayors of Calgary and Edmonton, and a sizable percentage of Alberta’s voting public.

Is one side simply too dumb to understand the science — or simply willing to flatly ignore it?

Of course not.

But suggestions like Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi’s that “science should have the trump” unhelpfully imply just that.

This wrenching debate has never been about who understands the science better.

Rather, it’s about what happens when you take two people or communities and present them with the exact same scientific information, and they come to equally legitimate but opposite conclusions.

What’s going on here?

A difference in values.

It’s not a question of science versus values, or facts versus emotion, it’s about what happens when the best available science has told you all it can.

This is where our traditional environmental review processes begin to unravel; an unraveling that was on full display during the Kinder Morgan review process and that has now tainted the federal cabinet’s approval of the project.

As long as our current review processes and some of our political leaders assume that decisions must solely be “evidence-based” (meaning scientific evidence only), we’ll continue to waste years in angry hearings, expensive court battles, and polarized, disrespectful debate.

When one person’s “significant risk” is another person’s “infinitesimal risk,” you know you’ve arrived in the realm of a wicked problem.

We Need to Admit the Limitations of Science When it Comes to Pipeline Decisions https://t.co/dtYn68kFIG #bcpoli #cdnpoli #KinderMorgan pic.twitter.com/Iyc4u0lKXi

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) February 23, 2017

At this crucial moment in the pipeline debate, our leaders must understand and acknowledge the nature of the wicked problem, which involves what some refer to as “systemic risk.”

Oil pipeline proposals are textbook examples of wicked problems and systemic risk.

• First, oil pipeline and taker operations are serious — if something goes badly wrong, there will be certain harm to the environment or people. Every new major oil spill reminds us of that.
• Second, they’re extremely complex, involving a staggering number of interactions between ecological, social and economic factors. In the case of West Coast pipelines, this complexity runs from prairies to coastal rainforests, and from remote First Nations communities to major cities.
• Third, they’re subject to a high degree of uncertainty arising from our limited understanding of, and the variability in, natural and human systems. No one can reliably predict when or where the next oil spill will happen, or how damaging it will be.
• Fourth, they’re subject to a great deal of ambiguity, which arises from different legitimate viewpoints regarding whether risks are acceptable or not.

The seriousness, complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity wrapped up in oil pipeline and tanker proposals put the lie to claims of purely science-based decision-making.

Guaranteeing that projects will only go ahead if science deems them safe is disingenuous. There’s no way to guarantee safety and the public get that.

Promises to only proceed if safety measures are “world-class” are similarly disingenuous, because they hide the very real and painful limits to what is actually possible.

If a tanker were to run aground on the West Coast during a storm, a world-class response could mean watching helplessly as the oil spill spreads (strong winds and waves often prevent response equipment from being deployed).

With further federal pipeline decisions pending for major pipelines like TransCanada’s Energy East, we need our political leaders to abandon rhetoric that invokes science and world-class measures, and instead speak honestly about the limitations of science and the role of values.

Doing so may not do much to lessen the sense of betrayal — either way — this time around but it would signal a more honest process going forward.

Image: Coastal First Salish paddle in the snow. Photo: Zack Embree

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The B.C. government has refused to exercise its authority to order a provincial environmental assessment of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline and tanker project, instead opting to rely on a report produced by the federal National Energy Board (NEB) that recommended approval of the project.

This means the province’s decision on the project — which would triple the amount of oil shipped through Vancouver — will be made using a Harper-era assessment heavily criticized for having no cross-examination of evidence and failing to assess cumulative effects, marine oil spills and greenhouse gas emissions.

“This is a government that say they’re standing up for British Columbians and when they had a chance legally to protect British Columbians with a made-in-B.C. environmental assessment they passed the buck, accepted Stephen Harper’s process and let down British Columbians,” said George Heyman, the NDP’s environment critic.

The federal government has to decide whether to approve the project by Dec. 19 — but the province also has to make its own decision on whether to grant an environmental assessment certificate.

In May, B.C. Environment Minister Mary Polak said that even if the company met the conditions the National Energy Board placed on the project, the project would still fall short of the five requirements B.C. put in place for its approval of any pipeline project.

“We still have a long way to go with respect to marine spill preparedness and response,” Polak said. “There is obviously significant work that needs to be done with First Nations.”

Which is why it’s so puzzling that, when given the opportunity to conduct its own environmental assessment of the project, the province opted to go with a federal process that’s widely viewed as deficient.

Supreme Court Ruled B.C. Has to Make Its Own Decisions

The province first tried to hand over responsibility for the environmental assessment in June 2010, when it signed an “equivalency agreement” with the National Energy Board.

That meant the province would accept federal environmental assessment reports as its own for five major projects, including the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline and the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline.

It was that abdication of responsibility that resulted in a decision by the B.C. Supreme Court in January, which found the B.C. government “breached the honour of the Crown by failing to consult” with Coastal First Nations for Enbridge Northern Gateway.

Essentially the ruling found that the province could not hand off its responsibility for environmental assessment.

“The decision of the Supreme Court is very clear that the province should stand on guard for the interests of the province in the federal review process and that it failed to do that in Northern Gateway,” said Chris Tollefson, executive director of the Pacific Centre for Environmental Law & Litigation.

In order to comply with the court ruling, B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Office had to make an explicit decision of whether to do its own assessment or to accept the National Energy Board assessment as sufficient for Kinder Morgan’s oil export proposal to Vancouver.

In a letter sent to Kinder Morgan on March 17, Kevin Jardine, the executive director of the Environmental Assessment Office, noted it would “accept the NEB report as the assessment report,” only conducting further discussions with First Nations to fulfill duties to consult and accommodate.

That letter was sent only two months after the province reiterated its opposition to the Trans Mountain pipeline project in its final argument to the National Energy Board, mostly due to the proponent’s failure to submit a detailed oil spill prevention and response strategy.

The province’s final argument reiterated the province’s “five requirements” for heavy oil pipelines, the first of which is “successful completion of the environmental review process.”

Several thousand citizens marched in Vancouver on Nov. 19th to protest the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline. Credit: Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs.

Provincial Environmental Assessment Could Address Gaps

Tollefson said he was “expecting and hoping” the province would embark on a proper consultation and assessment of its own.

“The province could certainly identify areas where the proposal is deficient and where steps need to be taken to fix problems,” he said. “It could certainly quite legitimately under its constitutional powers insist on those issues being addressed.”

To be sure, the province wouldn’t be able to simply veto the project even if its Environmental Assessment Office produced a report that advised not issuing a project certificate.

But the province has a variety of constitutionally recognized interests at stake, Tollefson says.

The judge in the Coastal First Nations case noted it's important for the province to balance economic and environmental interests, and that it “would be best served by a process that provided it with the tools to complete a thorough evaluation and review it before making the decision that will impact the province.”

How BC Quietly Accepted the Harper-Era Federal Review of #KinderMorgan https://t.co/YCAPWO3swW #bcpoli #cdnpoli @christyclarkbc @maryforbc

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) November 21, 2016

Kai Nagata, communications director at democracy group Dogwood, suspects that the province’s consultation process is providing Premier Christy Clark a “political buffer” between the federal approval — required on or before Dec. 19 — and the provincial election on May 9, 2017.

“Dropping a pipeline approval … into the provincial election campaign would destabilize the picture politically,” he says.

“This review would give the provincial government political cover so they don’t have to take a position on the project and can simply say ‘let’s wait for the review to do its work and take its course and we will evaluate our five conditions based on all the evidence on the table so far after the election.’ ”

B.C. has two clear options going forward.

The first is to maintain the current strategy, which relies on the federal assessment of the project.

Even that won’t likely help the Trans Mountain pipeline get built, according to Tollefson, who predicts that if approved under the current rules, the pipeline will be held up in litigation for a “long period of time” and the proposal will never earn the social licence it would require.

The other option is for the provincial government to order a robust review that considers the science and is co-led by First Nations.

Nagata says such an assessment must also offer the avenue to say ‘no,’ something that hasn’t seriously been an option for pipeline proposals up until this point.

Image: B.C. Environment Minister Mary Polak and B.C. Premier Christy Clark, Province of B.C.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

On June 23, the Federal Court of Appeal struck down the Harper government’s approval of the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline on account of failing to properly consult with adversely affected First Nations.

Many environmental and Indigenous groups cited the ruling as a win, but buried in the decision is a legal interpretation that upholds former Primer Minister Stephen Harper’s changes to environmental assessment law in the country.

Some argue this interpretation of the new Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA) will undermine the ability for the public to challenge the legality of environmental assessment reports for future projects, such as Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline and TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline.

The precedent established through that June 23 ruling means it’s now exclusively up to the federal cabinet — rather than the courts — to determine whether an environmental assessment report was properly conducted, meaning that the public can no longer challenge reports on the grounds of perceived incompleteness or negligence.

As a result, federal cabinet may be missing key perspectives while making decisions on major resource projects.

“That cabinet is empowered to make these decisions with the public being denied any kind of role or option is, at the very least, anti-democratic and at its worst you could even look at it as creating a kind of despotic situation around these issues,” says Chris Genovali, executive director of the Raincoast Conservation Foundation.

Raincoast Conservation Foundation Applying to Supreme Court For Review of Interpretation

On September 21, Ecojustice applied on behalf of Raincoast to the Supreme Court of Canada for leave to appeal.

If leave to appeal is granted — which fewer than 10 per cent of applicants receive — the country’s highest court will proceed to determine whether the Federal Court of Appeals erred in its interpretation of Sections 29 to 31 of the new CEAA.

Barry Robinson, lawyer and national program director for Ecojustice, says that since the former CEAA was introduced in 1992, the public could challenge reports on the grounds that there were perceived errors or omissions.

In the case of the Northern Gateway, such alleged errors included the review panel not considering the impacts of the project on humpback whales and other at-risk species, as well as evidence that diluted bitumen would sink in water and seriously complicate clean-up efforts.

“Most of the cases said that what you need is a legally prepared report before you make any decision based on that report,” Robinson says. “Just in this Gateway case was the first time the court said ‘well, actually, only the governor in council [or federal cabinet] can decide whether the report was legally prepared.’ We just kind of went ‘that doesn’t sound consistent with past case law.’ ”

How Harper’s Changes to Environmental Laws Are Being Leveraged by #Pipeline Companies https://t.co/sJcCDAu7rf @james_m_wilt #cdnpoli #bcpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) October 14, 2016

Kinder Morgan Already Referenced Precedent in Attempts to Dismiss Challenges

Robinson notes that in a bit of an odd twist, the courts spent a significant chunk of time interpreting Sections 29 to 31 of the new CEAA but ended up not actually applying it to Northern Gateway as there were other transitional provisions that applied.

“In fact, throughout the whole thing, the court was analyzing the wrong section,” he says.

But Genovali says that we’ve already started to see the fallout from the setting of the precedent.

Days after the Enbridge decision was announced, Kinder Morgan introduced a motion referencing the interpretation in order to dismiss a lawsuit also filed by Ecojustice on behalf of Raincoast over the National Energy Board’s allegedly flawed final report on its Trans Mountain pipeline (specifically on whether the Species at Risk Act was violated by the NEB’s actions with regards to southern resident killer whales, a critically endangered species).

Then, last month, the Federal Court of Appeal relied on the decision to deny an application by the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation over a similar issue in regards to Kinder Morgan.

“It immediately struck us as soon as this came down that this was something that had to be challenged and if we can’t get this reversed through this appeal I think the Canadian public needs to press upon the Trudeau government that they have to rectify this,” Genovali says.

“This is a vestige of the Harper era. I think if we take the prime minister and his government’s statements at face value then they need to do something about this because this would appear to contravene all of the values that he articulated during the campaign and continues to speak to.”

Robinson says that it usually takes between four to six months for the Supreme Court to decide whether to grant leave to appeal.

Given recent history, it seems likely that pipeline companies will continue to refer to the precedent until then. If the court decides not to grant leave to appeal, the precedent will be maintained and cabinet will continue to be the sole arbiters of whether an EA report was legally prepared or not.

Image: Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline construction. Photo: Transmountain.com

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Economist Robyn Allan has a penchant for details. The former president and CEO of the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia also sees the benefits of informed decision-making, which is why Allan recently wrote a myth-busting letter to federal minister of natural resources, Jim Carr, on the issue of oil pipelines.

The minister, Allan said, had been “dangerously misled” by senior ministerial staff about the economic benefits of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline project. An internal document provided to Minister Carr, and subsequently released through Freedom of Information legislation, was “riddled with factual and analytical mistakes and displays a lack of attention to detail” Allan wrote in her letter.

Among her findings, Allan stated the minister had been misinformed about the need for increased oil pipeline capacity in Canada especially when considering Canada’s pipelines — despite claims to the contrary — are not operating at full capacity and market conditions have substantially altered the oil production landscape in recent years (see Allan's evidence in the full letter below).

With the federal decision on Kinder Morgan expected to come down by December and the recent (rather spectacular) collapse of public trust in the National Energy Board, pipeline politics are heating up in Canada.

DeSmog Canada asked Allan five questions about her take on Canada’s pipeline debate and the quandary of the Kinder Morgan pipeline.

.@RobynAllan: Natural Resources Minister @jimcarr_wpg ‘dangerously misled’ on $ benefits of #KinderMorgan https://t.co/KVhiWWFrXZ #bcpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) October 7, 2016

Q:  What are the greatest misconceptions Canadians have about the need for new pipelines in the country?

A: The first major misconception is that there is an urgent need for new pipeline capacity to deliver Western Canadian crude oil supply to market. There is sufficient transportation infrastructure to meet market demand not only now, but up until at least 2025. 

The second major misconception is that markets in Asia exist and we need West Coast tidewater access to serve these markets.

There is no market for Alberta’s heavy oil in Asia. Oil industry groups, such as the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, make statements that suggest there is a market in Asia but these representations are not consistent with the facts.

Oil producers have been actively trying to create a market in Asia for more than half a decade. The National Energy Board granted them guaranteed access to Trans Mountain’s Westridge dock to help them do so, but their attempts have been unsuccessful. If markets in Asia ever develop it will take many years and Asian purchasers are not going to pay a higher price for Alberta’s crude than it commands in North America. 

The third major misconception is that new pipelines are needed to generate economic prosperity.

Pipeline proponents like Kinder Morgan claim that when new pipelines are built, access to markets will allow oil producers to capture higher prices on every barrel produced and these increased revenues will trickle down as increased gross domestic product, fiscal revenues and jobs.

This was the argument used to promote Northern Gateway, Keystone XL and now Trans Mountain but there is no basis in fact to support this idea. New transportation capacity will not enhance the price received for Western Canadian oil. What enhances the price of a raw resource is value added —upgrading and refining. Producers in Canada want to ship that value down the pipeline along with meaningful jobs so the benefits are realized in foreign economies. 

Q: Canadians are constantly being told we desperately need new pipelines. Is that true? Or, how do we best understand that claim?

A: When crude oil prices were rising the industry believed these prices would be sustained, and in fact, continue to rise. For a time prices were over $100US a barrel. The industry based its production projections on these high prices.

These prices made numerous projects appear economic and it was easier for oil producers to strategize to export the crude than invest in value added in Canada. Up until about 2008 a number of upgraders and new refineries were planned in Alberta. Then the plan changed to a raw resource export strategy. When bitumen is exported rather than turned into synthetic crude oil (SCO) twice as much pipeline capacity is needed per barrel of bitumen. (There is a need for pipelines to import condensate to dilute bitumen so it will flow through a pipeline and then because its still heavier than SCO it takes longer to move it back out as diluted bitumen.)

These two factors — an aggressive production outlook based on higher prices and a new strategy to export bitumen raw rather than process it in Canada — meant a huge increase in the expected need for future pipeline capacity space. These factors brought forward new pipeline projects — the first was Keystone XL. As questions began to be asked about the desirability of diluted bitumen exports the industry became concerned and turned up the heat on the need and benefits from new pipelines. 

There is no desperate need for new pipelines, but the industry — concerned that its social licence window is closing — is trying to get one approved.

Q: You complied some really interesting data on stalled or cancelled oilsands projects. Do you think we underestimate how quickly market forces can change production projections?

A: The market forces now are more normal than the high prices that stimulated the aggressive production projections. There has been a rapid expansion of crude oil production as industry tries to get it out of the ground and to market — any market — before their assets become stranded.

That behaviour has contributed to the price decline, but as we see, countries like Saudi Arabia, don’t want to lose market share. They don’t want to restrict production because the fossil fuel industry is an industry in decline. There is a structural shift occurring.

Governments all over the world acknowledge a need to limit greenhouse gasses. Canada will not meet its targets by building infrastructure to ship more heavy oil. We need to move away from fossil fuels, not subsidize their extraction by approving transportation systems to deliver more to market — to markets that don’t yet exist. We need meaningful decisions to support achievement of Canada's climate change obligations under the Paris Agreement.

Q: Did the National Energy Board err in its recommendation the federal government approve the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline?

A: The National Energy Board did not do its job. It did not hold a quasi-judicial hearing based on the rules of fairness and natural justice. It limited the scope of issues, refused to allow cross-examination, did not test the evidence, and failed to protect the public interest.

The National Energy Board report is not credible — the Board does not know if its recommendation is correct because it did not undertake any reasonable amount of due diligence to be able to arrive at a considered recommendation.

Prime Minister Trudeau knows this. He promised that the Trans Mountain review would be redone and he has betrayed Canadians by breaking that promise.

Certainly I believe that the Trans Mountain expansion is not needed and its economic impact will be negative not to mention the environmental harm it will do even without the inevitable fresh and marine water spills. However, because due process has not been followed, the NEB recommendation cannot be trusted. Until due process is followed, permission for Trans Mountain’s expansion should never be given.

Q:  Some Canadians feel like pipelines are being rammed down their throats for the benefit of the energy industry. Other Canadians feel like ignorant environmentalists just don't understand how critical new pipelines are for Canadian prosperity. The Prime Minister seems caught between the desire to please both camps. How do you make sense of this very messy national conversation?

A: Environmentalists are not ignorant and the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion — first and foremost — is for the benefit of Kinder Morgan — a U.S.-based multinational that does not contribute its fair share of tax revenues.

Kinder Morgan plans to siphon $1 billion a year from the Canadian economy if this project is approved. Is this in the public interest? We don’t know: the Board refused to consider it.

The Board pretended to listen, but it refused to hear. Mr. Trudeau pretended to hear and now he’s not listening. 

The situation would not be getting messy if the elected officials who promised due process delivered on their promise. That is all that is being asked by concerned Canadians — that the due process that is our right be given. 

Robyn Allan Letter to Minister Carr re: 'Economic Benefits of Oil Pipelines' memo | September 14, 2016 by DeSmog Canada on Scribd

Image: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr. Photo: Government of Canada

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.