Western Standard - June 23, 2022


PBO says Trans Mountain pipeline in the hole for $600 million


Episode Stats


Length

3 minutes

Words per minute

194.24643

Word count

763

Sentence count

69


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I talk about the $14.4 billion Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion that is still sitting in the mud waiting to be built. The opposition to the project from environmental groups and First Nations groups is making it hard to get the project done.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Let's see, the best case scenario, the government's going to lose $600 million
00:00:03.080 with the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion whenever it's done.
00:00:08.700 If it's halted, though, there's already $14.4 billion sunk into it.
00:00:15.240 That's something that the budget office is also seeing.
00:00:18.400 Like, it's amazing how badly the government has screwed up this expansion.
00:00:23.260 It's outrageous. It's outrageous.
00:00:25.100 We had Kinder Morgan happily wanting to put private dollars in there, build that pipeline.
00:00:31.240 It wouldn't have cost you a nickel as a taxpayer.
00:00:33.540 If the government had gotten out of the damn way, that thing would already be flowing.
00:00:37.660 It would be going, and look at this. Look at the world oil prices.
00:00:40.240 The whole country would be benefiting by expanded sales of our resources
00:00:44.500 to a world that's desperate for energy.
00:00:47.340 And this thing's still, that picture that Nico just posted of it
00:00:50.860 with these pipes laying all over in the mud and the trucks is about right.
00:00:53.940 I mean, it's in progress, but agonizingly slowly, way over budget.
00:00:59.120 It just keeps costing more and more, and not a single drop has gone through that thing.
00:01:02.900 And this isn't even a new pipeline.
00:01:05.380 This is an expansion of an existing one.
00:01:07.900 The Trans Mountain pipeline's been pumping oil safely since the 50s through that whole area.
00:01:13.400 They're not even cutting new bushels.
00:01:14.880 You know, they're going to widen the right away a little and lay it right next to it.
00:01:17.900 And this lunacy, this anti-pipeline bullshit that's constantly going on from activists and others.
00:01:24.080 And I'm sick of it.
00:01:24.940 You know, I worked in the oil field for a long time.
00:01:26.860 Your average urban citizen doesn't even know what a pipeline looks like.
00:01:31.780 They don't realize how many out there.
00:01:33.540 They don't realize how safe they are.
00:01:36.080 Get out there.
00:01:36.760 They walk in the bush.
00:01:37.700 They cross a big cut line.
00:01:38.780 They don't even know they just walked across a major pipeline.
00:01:42.060 Wondering, you know, when they're walking their dog in the city and they got a big, long, winding parkway that's narrow.
00:01:48.660 Chances are, look around when you cross a fence or something.
00:01:51.420 There's probably a sign.
00:01:52.400 You're probably walking on a pipeline.
00:01:55.040 Pipelines aren't evil, guys.
00:01:56.920 But they're sure costing us a fortune as we do mountains and mountains of regulation and paperwork and applications and pandering and consultations.
00:02:06.880 How many consultations did we really need?
00:02:09.200 Look at the route of the Trans Mountain line.
00:02:13.260 Once you get out of Alberta, and most of Alberta is through farmland and private land, and the owners are, again, it's an expansion of an existing line.
00:02:19.540 They'll get paid for it.
00:02:20.240 They're fine with it.
00:02:21.480 Then you get into the mountains in B.C.
00:02:23.600 There's nobody living within miles of most of this thing.
00:02:26.780 A lot of the areas that go through, yes, absolutely, there were First Nations communities nearby.
00:02:31.580 Those First Nations communities were not adversely impacted by the main line for the last 60 years.
00:02:36.860 This wasn't going to hurt them either.
00:02:38.140 But here we are with this thing still mired, half-built, laying out there.
00:02:44.640 There's people working on it.
00:02:45.920 They get terribly upset.
00:02:49.360 I mean, yeah, Brian says he works in the batch, and yeah, the average Joe has no idea out there.
00:02:52.840 No.
00:02:55.400 They get upset.
00:02:56.160 They're saying, we're working on it.
00:02:57.000 We're doing it.
00:02:57.420 It's going to go.
00:02:57.840 Okay, I know it's not your fault on the ground, guys, but this thing, my God, we might actually get to the green transition by the time this pipeline is actually finished, if such a thing exists.
00:03:09.040 And the pressure keeps coming on.
00:03:11.880 Every time we get these releases from the budgetary office and stuff like that, the environmentalists are saying, shut it down.
00:03:16.060 Shut it down now.
00:03:17.460 I despise it when they try to play business people.
00:03:20.400 Look at it.
00:03:20.800 It's not economical.
00:03:21.580 Look, if it wasn't, there wouldn't have been private companies wanting to do it in the first place.
00:03:25.560 The only thing that made the pipeline unviable was the damn government and the permits.
00:03:32.140 And then you see the problem is, while the government pissed around and stared at their feet and messed around with this pipeline, a whole bunch of all those applications that were already done, all those studies, that cottage industry of HSE maggots who just create more and more burdens and more and more paperwork and more and more legislation, expires.
00:03:49.400 They always put expiry dates on those things.
00:03:52.040 Then you've got to start the whole process over again.
00:03:53.920 Meanwhile, nothing's getting done.