Quote:
Originally Posted by GGG
The problem with the greenhouse gas argument is that the oil doesn't just disappear. It gets transported by rail instead which is far more dangerous. Or it gets substituted by heavy oil out of Kuwait. Steam injection using desalinated water or puts more money into Russian oil and gas. Or contiued use of Coal fired plants
The pipeline should be assessed on its merits as a pipeline and not on if it will increase local greenhouse gas production in Canada. Wether Canada slowly extracts or quickly extracts its oil that oil or other countries oil is still going to get burnt based on energy demand.
Now the issue with shipping heavy oil through the narrows at kitamat is a real concern and certainly hasn't been properly addressed.
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Your first assumption is a major assumption. The counter-factual to not building NGP isn't simply waving your hand and saying the oil is still produced anyway. Unless oil finds markets it stays in the ground. GHGs are central to this question. Canada has made targetsto reduce its GHGs by 17 percent by 2020. To achieve these targets the government would need to demonstrate how building the pipeline and the new upstream oil production that will come would be consistent with those targets. It's basic math.
You can't count all the upstream benefits of the pipeline without equally counting all the upstream costs. The benefits are widely touted, X amount of investment in oil sands infrastructure and jobs Jobs JOBS! The costs are GHG emissions and other environmental impacts from that production. The Harper government expressly forebade any consideration of the costs which is a fundamentally inconsistent and pre-emptive methodology.