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STRATEGISING IN THE FACE OF STRATEGISTS
W
hat’s the biggest challenge for
the pipeline industry in 2015? I
welcome your thoughts at
but meanwhile, my initial feeling is: pipeline
operators will need to continue to develop the
tenacity and flexibility to cope with opposition
and protest. Amid increasingly vocal
opposition to pipeline projects around the
world, and particularly in North America,
pipeline projects must be built around the
central tenets that things can and will change,
and that the road to a permit, and construction
work, is often long.
In the last few years
we’ve seen numerous
pipeline projects face
delays and setbacks, as
opposition groups use
different strategies to
push back construction
dates. The
Wall Street
Journal
reports that six
oil and gas pipelines in
North America alone
have been delayed, with
another four in the
region set to face delays
due to ongoing
opposition.
Kinder Morgan has
moved back its TransMountain pipeline
extension (Albertan oilsands to the BC Pacific
coast) by another six months to allow for route
changes, in the hope that a new route will
garner less attention from opponents.
Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline (also
set to move Albertan oilsands to the west
coast) has obtained a permit for construction
from federal lawmakers but construction and
operation are subject to a total of
209 conditions and further negotiations with
aboriginal communities.
Keystone XL has been met with the loudest
clamours for environmental policy change and
opponents have enjoyed a level of success by
prolonging government review periods and
drawing the project into increasingly heated
political debates.
ExxonMobil has been holding off calls that
it should release further information about a
proposed but later abandoned pipeline that
was to have run alongside the Pegasus pipeline
(the Pegasus pipeline delivered crude from
Texas to Illinois before its partial closure in
2013, when it ruptured in Arkansas). Landowners
have filed a class action lawsuit against Exxon
and want to see information about the
proposed Texas Access Pipeline project that
never came to light.
In addition, I could write a whole series of
columns about route changes, project
downgrades and cancellations.
Local opposition to pipelines tends to
focus on matters of land ownership, safety,
potential for spills and protection of flora and
fauna. National opposition tends to be based
on bigger environmental issues: pipeline
companies find themselves on the frontline of
various bigger conflicts, including the questions
of oilsands extraction, climate change,
aboriginal tensions, landowner law disputes, etc.
While the upstream companies sourcing
the resource can sometimes avoid dealing with
the community, pipeline
companies rarely can. At a
conference in Calgary late
last year, Al Monaco, Chief
Executive Officer of
Enbridge, spoke about
pipeliners in the spotlight
and joked: “We never used
to get invited anywhere’.
Pipeliners must
continue to focus on the
local. Monaco argues that
environmental groups
looking to slow the
progress of oilsands
development, for example,
strategically target
pipelines: “Would you rather go after
100 upstream companies or 100 refineries? No
– it makes a lot of sense to go after the
midstream part of the value chain”.
In my research I came across some
admirable and high-minded discourse on
community-based, non-professionalised
pipeline opposition, where the aim is not “just
about building a group of people who oppose
the pipeline in principle: [but] for figuring out
collectively how to organise, oppose, and stop
the pipeline – and how to dismantle the
institutions and structures that support and
reinforce it.”
1
And that’s my point: it’s the
institutions and structures that need to be
taking their share of the heat. Pipeline
companies are aware of their responsibilities
and will work within the strictures placed upon
them, but then that must be enough. I’ll end
with a quote from Ian Anderson, Kinder
Morgan Canada’s President, who sums up the
challenges ahead for pipeliners: “You’re always
in a campaign mode, it doesn’t matter if it’s
municipal, provincial or federal. That’s just
going to be part of life.”
2
1.
-
pipeline-organizing-isnt-just-another-protest
2.
pipeline-projects-face-litany-of-challenges-heading-
into-2015/
OPPOSITION
GROUPS USE
DIFFERENT
STRATEGIES
TO PUSH BACK
CONSTRUCTION
DATES
