Enbridge took its first tentative steps this week towards acknowledging that its years of effort and millions invested might never bring the Northern Gateway pipeline to fruition.
That's not how John Carruhers, president of the pipeline, put it to a Calgary business audience this week when he admitted how increasingly unlikely it is that the oil will be moving through the pipeline from the Alberta oil sands through Northern B.C. to Kitimat by 2018.
Instead, he stressed that the project is still full steam ahead and he's less worried about the date than about getting broad based support, particularly from First Nations. All it will take is "time to meet with people," as he put it, to get the social licence needed for Northern Gateway to go through but there aren't enough calendars in the world to measure how long that will take.
As one energy policy expert told the Canadian Press, opposition to Northern Gateway will only increase and the "no under any circumstances" position will further solidify.
This isn't the first time Enbridge has pushed back the clock on Northern Gateway, nor will it be the last. In 2005, they were telling reporters about having a working pipeline in place by late 2009 or early 2010. In 2009, they were looking at 2012 or 2013. With each rousing rendition of Auld Lang Syne, Enbridge also rolls the start-up date back one more year back so that it is always four years away from the present.
The same numbers game has been going on with the price.
In 2004, Enbridge thought the pipeline would cost $2.5 billion. Earlier this year, it was $7 billion. Now it's $7.9 billion and the company is working on a new cost estimate, taking into consideration the 209 conditions imposed by the joint review panel and the federal government, not to mention Premier Christy Clark's five conditions. It's safe to say that new cost estimate will be well past $8 billion.
Meanwhile, energy sector analysts are seeing more pipe dream and less pipeline in Northern Gateway. Some of these experts told the Canadian Press that they see TransCanada's $12-billion Energy East proposal linking Alberta to under-utilized refinery capacity in Saint John, New Brunswick, being built first.
It appears Enbridge leadership is only now starting to accept that they can do everything right but still won't be able to build Northern Gateway. Completing all of the technical reports, convincing a fair number of First Nations with incentives (jobs, cash), satisfying the regulatory roadblocks, and appeasing the Liberal government might still not be enough. Patience and deep pockets won't get it done, either. Neither will support from business and community leaders, politicians and industry.
That's because opposition to Northern Gateway now extends far beyond tree-hugging environmentalists and First Nations asserting their authority over their traditional territories. The polls show a large swath of the adult population now mistrusts Enbridge and fears a catastrophic oil spill, either from the pipeline into a major river system or from a tanker in the Douglas Channel. It doesn't matter that Enbridge has historically been, for the most part, a safe and reliable transporter of energy products through pipelines across North America and a generous corporate citizen. It also doesn't matter that the public fear is completely out of proportion to the relatively minute likelihood of a major spill causing significant environmental damage.
Facts, no matter how well or how frequently articulated by Janet Holder or anyone else, will not shake the nagging feeling now embedded in the public consciousness that Northern Gateway has more negatives than positives and isn't worth the risk. Increasingly, modern society is risk averse and even the remotest hazard must be avoided.
In its efforts to obtain social licence for Northern Gateway, Enbridge isn't up against fact or even opinions. Instead, the company is trying to shake gut feelings from a majority of the population who don't know what bitumen and condensate are and don't know how pipelines work but don't care.
It just feels wrong and, for many citizens, they'd rather put their trust in their feelings than in a pipeline company.
