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The Alberta government says it plans to unveil details Thursday about a proposed “one-million-barrel-per-day oil pipeline” to the West Coast.
The province was given a July 1 deadline to submit a proposal to the Major Projects Office, but the announcement will be pushed back a day due to the Canada Day holiday, said Sam Blackett, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s press secretary.
The Alberta government had previously indicated through a publicly-viewable website that its announcement would be coming Tuesday.
Any such project is likely to face major opposition in British Columbia where Premier David Eby is among those who has been critical of the agreement reached between Smith and Prime Minister Mark Carney without buy-in from B.C.
Although the route for the proposed pipeline isn’t known, documents obtained by CBC News show at least three proposals would go to B.C.’s North Coast where an oil tanker moratorium is in place as a result of the fight over the Northern Gateway pipeline proposal.
B.C. Premier David Eby is navigating a high stakes political challenge as Alberta and the federal government lay the groundwork for a new bitumen pipeline through his province, and as CBC’s Katie DeRosa explains, he may have few options to stop it.
Des Nobels, a longtime North Coast fisherman based in Dodge Cove near Prince Rupert, was among the hundreds who fought that proposal and says he is ready to fight again.
“We had hoped … we would not see these sorts of incursions again,” he said. “But here we are, not all that long afterwards redoing what we have previously done.”
Other groups, including the Haisla and Nisga’a First Nations, have also said there is no path forward for an oil pipeline to the North Coast.
There have been some signs of growing support in B.C. for such a project, including the election of a Conservative MP in Skeena-Bulkley Valley, which spans the North Coast, northwest inland and Haida Gwaii, in the most recent federal election.
Nobels says that doesn’t indicate support for a pipeline.
“The people that live in this part of the world are people of place, and they value this place beyond money,” Nobels said.
“This has provided for generations of people and it will provide for generations to come if we just leave it alone.”
