From the Wabamun Lake Indian Reserve, west of Edmonton, Alberta, Chief Casey Bird of Paul First Nation has staked out a middle ground.

The pragmatic leader of about 2,000 has found a much-needed ally in his fight against a host of environmental, social and financial problems facing his people. That ally is a unit of Houston-based Kinder Morgan Inc., which for its part has found a partner among Canada’s aboriginal peoples to join in its pipeline endeavor to deliver much-needed oil to the West Coast.

This partnership is the exception, however.

The chief so far stands alone in his willingness to join with a corporation that has been demonized not only by his fellow leaders of Canadian First Nations, but by an environmental movement that is unalterably opposed not just to this particular project, but to the expanded use of fossil fuels in Canada and the U.S.

Numerous projects have been proposed around a simple premise:

  • Growing demand for hydrocarbons on the West Coast and in Asian markets;
  • Large supply from the middle of the continent, particularly the Bakken Shale and Canadian oil sands; and
  • The need for more, larger and more capable coastal terminals to handle the increased output, and pipeline and rail lines to get it there.

U.S. West Coast

The premise is supported by U.S. Energy Information Administration statistics, which affirm that crude oil production has declined, especially in Alaska and California, making supply to the West Coast via crude by rail (CBR) a viable alternative. Foreign imports of light and medium-to-heavy crude oil have declined everywhere in the U.S. except on the West Coast. For those reasons, it makes sense to move oil west by rail and pipeline to avoid the high expense of shipping through the Panama Canal.

This premise has been met by environmentalists, Canadian First Nations and U.S. Native American coalitions with a simple response: No.

“While there are different threats posed by pipelines vs. crude-by-rail, we do not prefer one method of fossil fuel transport over another,” Kristen Boyles, Seattle-based attorney for Earthjustice, told Midstream Business. “We are opposed to increased fossil fuel transportation and use, by whatever method.”

The organization opposes transportation because of the risk of spills and explosions from rail and pipe on land, and from tankers at sea. Beyond the localized risk of damage, the environmental movement opposes burning of fossil fuels to reduce the release of greenhouse gases and avert what Boyles called “cataclysmic climate changes that we are predicted to see in the future.”

Boyles was one of two Earthjustice attorneys of record representing the Sierra Club in its lawsuit to stop CBR shipments into a Sacramento, Calif.-area terminal last September. The local fuel distributor, InterState Oil Co., agreed to halt shipments in November after the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality District admitted that it had issued a permit to the company to transfer the crude to Bay Area refineries without a state-mandated environmental impact review.

Environmental activists hailed it as a major victory in the campaign against what they consider to be potentially unsafe oil shipments, though Boyles said she was not surprised by the outcome.

“There had been no public notice, comments or input to the challenged permit, in clear violation of California law,” she said. “We were pleased that the air district recognized this error and withdrew the permit without the need for lengthy litigation. I don’t know about the future plans of InterState or other distributors for crude-by-rail into Sacramento, but the community is now on alert and will be watching.”

San Francisco Bay

The group lost a fight in September, when a San Francisco Superior Court judge tossed a lawsuit in which Earthjustice sought to halt rail shipments of crude to Kinder Morgan’s terminal in Richmond, Calif. The judge ruled that environmental groups waited too long to file their complaint. Kinder’s Richmond terminal is the largest CBR facility in California, processing 72,000 barrels per day (bbl/d) for San Antonio-based Tesoro Corp.’s refinery in Martinez, Calif.

Earthjustice, on behalf of several environmental groups, also appealed a decision by Skagit County, Wash., to permit a CBR facility to supply Shell’s Puget Sound Refinery in Anacortes, Wash., with about 60,000 bbl/d of oil from the Bakken Shale.

Another marine terminal, operated by Waltham, Mass.-based Global Partners LP in Clatskanie, Ore., was ordered to apply for a new air permit after Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality discovered the complex was unloading more than the 3,000 bbl/d of crude allowed by its old permit. The state later approved a permit for the terminal to handle up to 120,000 bbl/d of crude brought in via rail, then shipped to refineries via the Columbia River.

Trans Mountain expansion

The Trans Mountain Pipeline System was built in the 1950s to connect Strathcona County, near Edmonton, to the Westridge Marine Terminal in Burnaby, British Columbia. It is operated by Calgary-based Trans Mountain Pipeline LP, a unit of Kinder Morgan Canada Inc. and fully owned by Houston-based Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP.

The proposed expansion of the system would “twin” the line in Alberta and British Columbia, adding 613 miles and almost doubling the length of pipe in the system to 1,328 miles. Capacity would almost triple from 300,000 bbl/d to 890,000 bbl/d. The project would include construction of new facilities and upgrade or replace existing pump stations and tanks. It would also add three new berths to the Westridge terminal that are capable of handling Aframaxclass tankers (those between 80,000 and 120,000 deadweight tons).

In its 15,000-page application to Canada’s National Energy Board (NEB), Trans Mountain describes the CA$5.4 billion (US$4.73 billion) expansion as a “response to requests for service from western Canadian oil producers and West Coast refiners for increased pipeline capacity in support of growing oil production and access to growing West Coast and offshore markets.”

The application notes that the NEB previously acknowledged the supporting economic conditions in a decision that allowed Trans Mountain to proceed with the full-scale application. It also notes the company’s efforts t o engage and consult with Aboriginal communities, landowners, government agencies, stakeholders and the general public.

Economic benefits

The CA$5.4 billion that Trans Mountain plans to spend to expand its pipeline system only covers the project itself. Long-term benefits over the 20 years of expected use include:

  • CA$18.5 billion in federal taxes;
  • CA$26.6 million in annual property taxes, mostly for British Columbia;
  • CA$480 million in construction workforce spending, about onethird of which is targeted for the metropolitan Vancouver area;
  • Peak employment of 4,500, with 3,000 direct, indirect and induced jobs per year over the course of the 20-year period;
  • Employment that is the equivalent of 108,301 person years, split between Alberta and British Columbia, over the course of the project; and
  • The benefits that can accrue by opening world markets to Canadian oil and gas via the Burnaby terminal.

Opposition to rail

The economic arguments are not new, of course, but they have not diminished resistance to the project.


The Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project would “twin” the existing line, allowing almost three times as much crude oil to flow to Burnaby. Source: Kinder Morgan Inc.

Multiple environmental concerns have triggered the lawsuits aiming to delay or cancel West Coast projects, most significantly the transportation of crude oil by rail. The derailment and explosion of rail cars carrying Bakken Shale crude that devastated the Québec town of Lac-Mégantic in July 2013, killing 47, is cited often in arguments against CBR and, by extension, the terminals that receive the oil.

While Bakken crude is considered to be more volatile than other types, environmentalists are concerned about other grades of oil as well.

“The other crude oil that is being transported around our rails is Alberta tar sands crude,” Boyles said in an Earthjustice website podcast. “Not as explosive, but very corrosive and very difficult, if not impossible, to clean up once it has spilled.”

Then there is the unpredictable nature of rail transportation itself—trains can go just about anywhere.

“They also move through vast urban areas,” she said. “Trains go underneath the city of Seattle through a tunnel. They go right along the Columbia Gorge down along the Columbia River, one of the places most important for salmon protection and salmon health in the Pacific Northwest.

“They go through national park areas in Montana and Glacier,” she continued. “There’s not a lot of information about what cargo is traveling where and when. That is usually not given to communities or to parks, so if you have a train accident, the first responders are often not sure what they’re dealing with, which is really important when you’re talking about the possibility of a horrendous explosion or a leak and thousands of gallons of oil, either in the urban environment or the very rural or wilderness environment, it’s going to be a really difficult issue to deal with.”

“You know why I support it?” he told Midstream Business. “Because the Paul First Nation has a railroad spur line that goes right through the community here and the trains—they carry tankers—they go by here every hour.

“Over the last 15 to 20 years, we’ve had some derailments,” he said. “After that, we had a train fall off the tracks, and then we find out that one of those containers was filled with toxic stuff. And we’re very upset because it leaked into our creek and our lake.”

Not knowing the contents of the tankers adds to the frustration.

“You don’t know what the trains are carrying,” Bird said. “You have no idea what they’re carrying. You don’t see manifests at all. They go by here really fast and they’re really long. We don’t even know how many cars they can pull. So I said, ‘That’s enough.’”

In September, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed bills requiring companies to disclose information about the movement and characteristics of crude oil and other hazardous materials to state and local agencies, so they can prepare emergency responses in case of accidents.

Spills into the sea

Opposition to the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion derives from more than fear of a spill from the line itself. Much of the concern involves risks of a spill in the Salish Sea from transport vessels that are expected to triple in number and the damage a leak can do to traditional First Nation fishing grounds.

“The opposition is widespread and it is vehement, so we’re going to continue this fight until the bitter end,” Grand Chief Stewart Phillip of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs told Reuters. “We’re looking at a very litigious future.”

To the south, but sharing the waterway, are Boyle’s Native American clients in Washington State. In October, they rowed north to Chilliwack, British Columbia, to testify at an NEB hearing.

“The U.S. Tribes we represent in the National Energy Board process [Swinomish, Tulalip, Squamish and Lummi] are unequivocally opposed to the Trans Mountain Pipeline,” she told Midstream Business. “The pipeline and the resulting tanker traffic through the Salish Sea—and the accompanying risks of oil spills big or small—would be devastating to the tribes’ culture, economics and federally protected treaty rights. The Trans Mountain Pipeline cannot be built or operated without devastating U.S. and Canadian tribes.”

Testimony at the two-day NEB hearing illustrated the distance between Kinder Morgan and opponents of the project, as well as the roots of Aboriginal bitterness.

“This is a map of the Squamish territory,” Chief Ian Campbell of the Squamish Nation explained during his testimony. “I’ll ask my Kinder Morgan family, friends here to take that into your heart and mind as the real place names of these areas because we’ve been invisible in our own land for a very long time. And in this day and age, it’s important for you to know where you’re at in our territory.”

Economic threat

Glen Gobin of the Tulalip Tribe of Washington expressed his worries about the impact of the tankers on the narrow Salish Sea between Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia.

“I know these waters where these ships are going to travel,” he testified to the NEB. “I know they are a narrow passage. I know there are shallow points. I know it won’t take much for one to tear open on the bottom, to be grounded. And I know the currents in these waters. The pollution will spread quickly and disperse far and wide.”


Chief Casey Bird of Paul First Nation and Ian Anderson, president of Kinder Morgan Canada, sign a mutual benefits agreement. Source: Kinder Morgan Inc.

But it is the increased ship traffic—from four or five a day to almost 70—that he believes imperils his people’s harvest of sockeye salmon.

“To set your net out and risk it being run over by a ship, you can’t do, so you have to wait,” Gobin said. “I have a four- or five-, six-hour opening and now I wait an hour for a ship to come and go. I can’t set where the fish are running.

“We feel it as a taking; a taking of our opportunity, a taking of a treaty right for us to harvest in these areas which we’ve always harvested in.”

Need for partnerships

Paul First Nation, made up primarily of descendents of the Cree and Nakoda peoples, is one of 16 members in central Alberta and Saskatchewan of the Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations, based in Edmonton.

Just as his ancestors sought an agreement with the British Crown in 1876 as they battled smallpox and buffalo depletion, Chief Bird looked to industry for help with contemporary issues of toxic spills and unemployment. He found it in Kinder Morgan’s pipeline project.

“They came to meet us and told us they’re going to provide jobs and training,” he said. “I thought that it was a good idea for our people.”

The pipeline also strikes him as safer than the railway splitting his reserve. “We know there’s oil going through it—we know that they can contain it faster if there’s a break.”

The challenges of high population growth and unemployment are his to manage. Statistics Canada puts the country’s non-Aboriginal unemployment rate at 6%; among First Nations, it is 18%. In Alberta, the non-Aboriginal rate is 4% and the First Nations rate is 15.8%.

“Every First Nation should be pursuing some kind of partnership or some kind of JV [joint venture] with industry to do this kind of stuff so they can eliminate some of the social issues that are affecting their communities,” Bird said. “That’s the reason I signed that [mutual benefits agreement with Kinder Morgan Canada] and I support it. They are willing to help us. It’s not all about money, but at least we’re getting something good out of it.”

“Our young people are getting trained and they’re going to learn how to go out and work, and that’s what life’s all about, it’s survival,” he said. “I support that thing fully because I’m a guy who is looking out for his nation.”

No simple answers

Like environmentalists who oppose him, Bird respects and defends Mother Earth by attempting to fend off the Canadian National Railway line through the Paul First Nation reserve. Because he favors an alternative system that he deems safer for his people, he is at odds with those activists because the system conveys hydrocarbons.

By creating infrastructure and jobs—both short-term and long-term—and clearing the way for increased trade and engagement with other parts of the world, the Trans Mountain Pipeline System and other West Coast projects can potentially provide benefits for many in North America, including and especially Aboriginal peoples on the West Coast. But these projects involve the transport of hydrocarbons, and to many who live on the West Coast, that is an unacceptable risk.

“This is not a simple fight over where to build oil terminals or pipelines,” Boyles said. “This conflict presents a clash of world views: The oil industry wants to continue business-as-usual and reliance on burning fossil fuels no matter the consequences. Then there are communities and citizens who want to protect the planet from catastrophic climate change and preserve our world for future generations and who are ready and willing to try new paths to conserve and create energy.”

To the mind of Chief Richard Williams of the Squamish Nation, the gulf in understanding is as fundamental as culture and language.

“Our language is largely a verb-based language, as opposed to English, which is largely noun-based in relation,” he testified to the NEB. “Where in English, you’ll say, ‘That’s a rock,’ there’s no real relation to it. In our language, there is. That rock is a connection; it’s at play.”

That goes to the heart of how he believes those of non-Aboriginal descent perceive the land.

“Value isn’t given in English to things like the Salish Sea unless it’s economically viable, and that is only one compartment of our connection,” Williams said. “We’ve always had a strong economy from this territory.

“So we have to dispel that this is a free and vacant land and that the government has legitimacy to issue these types of rights to this Kinder and this Morgan,” he said. “We don’t know who these people are or why they should have rights in our territory because we did not consent to that—free prior-informed consent.”

A narrow middle ground

“This Kinder”—Chairman and CEO Richard Kinder—addressed the Trans Mountain project when he spoke to analysts during an earnings call in October.

“We have NEB approval of the commercial and economic terms of those contracts,” he said. “Our development costs are almost entirely covered on this project, and we do have good cost protection on the most difficult parts of the build.”

The line is fully contracted, Kinder reminded analysts. The in-service date is set for early 2018. This project will be built.

Bird does not believe he stands alone in his willingness to work with Trans Mountain. He suspects other chiefs feel as he does, that working with the company will result in jobs for their people and safer transportation of crude oil.

For now, though, this narrow middle ground belongs to him. Bird is the only First Nation leader to publicly announce support for the project, but he does so unapologetically.

“I’m making my decision in the best interest of my band, and I still maintain the treaty stand,” he said. “That’s the way I am.”

Joseph Markman can be reached at jmarkman@hartenergy.com or 713-260-5208.

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