Canada has once again approved a contentious pipeline expansion that would allow the nation to diversify oil markets. The new pipeline has drawn criticism from environmental groups that fear spills.
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Canada has again approved a controversial expansion to the Trans Mountain oil crude pipeline, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday.
The pipeline expansion would nearly triple its capacity from 300,000 to 890,000 barrels per day. The pipeline will deliver crude from the landlocked Canadian province of Alberta to British Colombia on the west coast.
Trudeau told a news conference that construction on the pipeline expansion is scheduled to resume this year, but the new plan is expected to face a legal challenge from environmental groups.
In an effort to salvage the project, the Canadian government purchased the pipeline, which has been in use since 1953, for 4.4 billion Canadian dollars ($3.3 billion, €2.9 billion) from Kinder Morgan Canada Ltd. last August.
Finance Minister Bill Morneau said the pipeline would eventually be sold once it becomes commercially viable.
Pipelines in the crosshairs
An alliance of local activists and climate campaigners is resisting the flow of fossil fuels through pipelines around the world.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/G. Esiri
Dirty oil
A protester's hands covered in crude oil during a 2011 protest against Royal Dutch Shell after pipeline spills in Nigeria, in 2008 and 2009. Shell allegedly ignored advice to replace the outdated Trans Niger Pipeline, which ruptured and inundated villages in Ogoniland with thousands of barrels of oil. Anti-pipeline movements have been around for decades, and are joining up across the globe.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/G. Esiri
Local resistance
Militants from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) patrol the oil-rich creeks of the Niger Delta of Nigeria in September 2008. MEND militants were alleged to have sabotaged and destroyed crude oil pipelines run by the likes of Shell and Chevron, which they say bring little benefit to local communities and cause massive local environmental destruction.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/G. Esiri
Peru protests
Police stand guard at the entrance of Peru's national oil company in Lima, August 2016, where activists placed a coffin filled with items painted in black to represent a contaminated environment. The state oil company Petroperu has admitted to numerous spills in the old and extensive pipeline system that transports oil from the Amazon to the Pacific coast.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/R. Abd
Mexican rebellion
TransCanada's Tamazunchale Pipeline met with resistance in Mexico during its construction through the country's mountainous and fertile southern region. Several Mexican indigenous communities have joined forces to fight the pipeline. The wall painting here reads: "No to the gas pipeline, we're an indigenous community and demand respect."
Image: DW/D. Therre
Standing Rock
Opponents of the Dakota Access oil pipeline march out of their main camp in North Dakota in February 2017. The anti-pipeline resistance movement that gathered on Standing Rock Sioux tribal lands became a social media phenomenon under the #NoDAPL hashtag, galvanizing global resistance against attempts to expand the flow of climate change-inducing fossil fuels.
Image: Reuters/T. Sylvester
A movement lives on
A Native American woman recovers after being pepper-sprayed by police after she and other protesters sought to build a new camp to block construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in late 2016. While the #NoDAPL movement did not succeed in preventing the pipeline from being built, it focused attention on the topic and drew together social justice and environmental movements.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/J. L. Mone
Trans Mountain Pipeline
More than 10,000 people march in British Columbia in March 2018 to protest Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline, which is to transport tar sands oil to the west coast of Canada and on to Asian markets. After months of protests led by First Nations and environmental activists, the pipeline company halted construction in April.
Image: Rogue Collective
Keystone XL
Lakota spiritual leader Chief Arvol Looking Horse demonstrates outside the White House in 2015 against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would run from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. US Republicans authorized the pipeline — but in November 2018, a court again blocked its construction.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/N. Kamm
Trans Adriatic Pipeline
In March 2017, after Italy's State Council permitted construction of Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), demonstrators in Puglia southern Italy clashed with police to protest removal of 1,600 centuries-old olive trees. Several were injured. A 350.org petition claims TAP will "destroy Europe's climate targets" and has "destructive, unjust impacts on the communities in its path."
Image: picture-alliance/ROPI/Fotogramma/De Giglio
Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India
The TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) gas pipeline project was launched in Herat in western Afghanistan in February 2018, and will carry gas from Turkmenistan to the subcontinent. On hand at the launch were a group of Taliban militants (pictured) insisting they would not sabotage — as many feared — but instead assist the pipeline project.
Image: DW/S. Tanha
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Toeing the line
Tuesday's approval came a day after Trudeau declared a national "climate emergency" and a week and a half after he proposed a ban on single-use plastics.
The Canadian prime minister, who faces an election in October, has been under pressure from both western Canadian politicians who accuse him of not doing enough to help the country's struggling oil industry and from environmental groups and indigenous leaders who fear spills.
The pipeline would allow Canada, which has the world's third-largest oil reserves, to diversify oil markets and vastly increase exports to Asia. Currently, 99% of exports go to refiners in the United States, where limits on pipeline and refinery capacity cause Canada to sell oil at a discount.
"It's really simple. Right now, we basically have one customer for our energy resources, the United States. As we've seen over the past few years, anything can happen with our neighbors to the south," Trudeau said, seemingly alluding to US President Donald Trump's turbulent tenure.
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However, many indigenous people fear the 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) of new pipeline will threaten their lands. Environmental groups also fear that increased shipping from the marine terminal in Vancouver, a west coast seaport in British Colombia, could affect marine life.
Trudeau insisted that the pipeline expansion was in the "national interest," but he said every dollar Canada earns from the project will be invested in clean energy.
"This isn't an either/or proposition. It is in Canada's national interest to protect our environment and invest in tomorrow, while making sure people can feed their families today," he said.
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