Irving Oil opposes new assessment criteria for Energy East pipeline

Irving Oil is asking the National Energy Board to not adopt two new criteriafor its environmental assessment of the Energy East pipeline.

In a letter to the NEB, Irving said the board should not consider the pipeline's effect on marine traffic in the Bay of Fundy and on "downstream emissions" caused by end users of gas and other petroleum products.

The company said its customers will use "relatively the same" amount of fuel, and produce the same level of greenhouse gas emissions, whether Irving-refined oil comes through the Energy East pipeline from Alberta or from other sources in the U.S. or overseas.

"The scale of downstream GHG emissions will not be influenced by the Project," said the May 31 letter from Andy Carson, the company's director of growth and strategy.

Traffic review 'unnecessary'

The letter said while freighter traffic in the Bay of Fundy will increase if Energy East is built, marine shipping in the bay is already monitored by Transport Canada's Technical Review Process of Marine Terminal Systems and Transhipment Sites.

That means a review of the traffic by the NEB "may be unnecessary," the letter said.

• Everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask about the NEB hearings

The NEB asked last month for comments on a series of new criteria that it may use when it re-starts its assessment of Energy East, a proposed 4,500-kilometre pipeline from Alberta to Saint John.

Some of the oil would be refined at the Irving Oil refinery in Saint John, but most would be shipped overseas through an export terminal on the Bay of Fundy co-owned by Irving and TransCanada Corp., the pipeline builder.

TransCanada predicts as many as 281 large tankers per year will load oil from the pipeline.

Panel was previously suspended

The NEB review was suspended last year after protesters interrupted hearings in Montreal.

A month later the three-member review panel recused itself after it was revealed two members of the NEB panel had discussed the project with a Jean Charest, a former Quebec premier and a consultant for TransCanada.

• Energy East pipeline's chances of being built doubted after panel quits
• New Brunswick groups want NEB to restart pipeline hearings

The new panel is now looking at adding new criteria to the assessment whenever it starts again. No date has been set for new hearings.

Besides downstream emissions and marine traffic, the panel has also asked for feedback on whether it should look at:

• The impact on upstream emissions whether the existence of the pipeline would mean more oil production in Alberta and thus more emissions.
• Worst-case scenarios for spills
• Whether new electricity generation will be needed to provide power to pipeline pumping stations.

New transmission lines needed

NB Power said in its response to the NEB's request for comments that there would need to be new transmission lines to power the pumping stations.

Those lines would require a provincial Environmental Impact Assessment, the utility said.

But it also said the NEB review's examination of electricity generation "may impact matters of provincial jurisdiction in a more than incidental fashion."

The Crown corporation said that's because the NEB may attach conditions to the pipeline approval that would change the routing of power lines already approved by provincial regulators.

The Conservation Council of New Brunswick saidin its submission that it supports the new NEB panel looking at upstream and downstream emissions, marine traffic, and other issues it's considering adding as new criteria.