Trailbreaker: Yet Another Tar Sands Pipeline in the Works
Check out my latest article in the Common Sense Canadian on the planned Trailbreaker pipeline. Although the project has yet to be officially confirmed, speculation is rife that Enbridge wants to see tar sands oil transported from northern Alberta through Montreal to Portland, Maine where it would then be shipped to foreign markets. With all the media attention surrounding the proposed Northern Gateway and Keystone XL pipelines, Trailbreaker has been slipping under the radar…so far.
Here’s an excerpt from the article:
It seems the Canadian government is quite serious about plans to triple production of tar sands bitumen and would not be satisfied even if they were somehow able to bulldoze public opposition to Keystone and Gateway.
This so-called Trailbreaker project would appear to present fewer regulatory obstacles, as it would not require construction of a new pipeline. Instead, the flow of the existing Portland-Montreal pipeline, which currently brings oil from Africa and the Middle East into eastern Canada, would simply be reversed.
Enbridge, the company behind both Trailbreaker and Northern Gateway, has already requested fast-track approval from the National Energy Board of their $16.9 million plan to reverse the flow of tar sands crude from western Canada to Montreal. Yet according to Dylan Voorhees, Clean Energy Director of the Natural Resources Council of Maine, this is merely phase one of a plan that would then be followed by a reversal of the Portland Montreal Pipeline. The NRC believes that by splitting the project into pieces, Enbridge is attempting to bypass full regulatory and public scrutiny.
Read the full article here.
