]]>“It belongs to Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, Ontario and the Atlantic provinces and it's essential that our ports and our infrastructure all across the west are functioning as well as they possibly can, because that's what allows trade to flow outside our country and that's what puts people to work," Clark said.
Organizations with high stakes in the fight against Northern Gateway, such as the Dogwood Initiative, questioned the notion that other provinces should have a say in risks taken on British Columbians’ territory.
“Our supporters responded strongly to the insinuation that BC's coast belongs just as much to Alberta or Ontario as it does to BC. It's clear that British Columbians don't want their premier to pass the buck — they want her to stand up for their province,” said Dogwood Initiative spokesperson Emma Gilchrist.
“The real question here is who stands to be most affected by an oil spill?” she said.
“If an oil spill happens, it will be British Columbians heading down to their local beaches with shovels and buckets. Yes, this is Canada's coast too, but B.C. stands to lose the most, so the final decision should be made here.”
]]>Prime Minister Stephen Harper told reporters on Sunday at the APEC summit that selling energy to Asia is an “important priority” for his government, while Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver added he wants a regulatory decision by early 2013, a year ahead of the current schedule, on Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline to B.C.’s coast.
What you wouldn’t know from listening to the Canadian government is that most financial analysts don’t bank on Northern Gateway ever being built due to overwhelming First Nations and public opposition in B.C.
If the delay of Keystone XL makes one thing clear it’s that projects don’t go ahead without social licence. A State Department spokesperson said the decision to delay arose from the growing anti-Keystone revolt in Nebraska that made it difficult to say the pipeline was in the “national interest.”
Meanwhile, the opposition to Northern Gateway in British Columbia is already stronger than the crippling opposition Keystone faced in Nebraska.
More than 70 B.C. First Nations have banned oil tankers and pipelines in their own laws and 75 to 80 per cent of British Columbians oppose opening inside coastal waters to oil tanker traffic, according to opinion polls. B.C. Premier Christy Clark may be sticking to the sidelines for now, but she won’t be able to forever.
Reuters market analyst Robert Campbell says Canada’s ululation about finding other pipeline routes is at best a huge exaggeration dredged up to fan American fears about energy security.
“If anything, a pipeline from Alberta across the mountainous province of British Columbia is likely to face more scrutiny from environmental groups than Keystone XL,” Mr. Campbell wrote on the day of the Keystone decision.
Robert Mark, an oil and gas analyst at MacDougall, MacDougall & MacTier, also says Northern Gateway is iffier than Keystone (and given the state of Keystone, that’s saying something).
“There’s lack of treaties . . . there’s all sorts of land claims issues. I think the groups that control those lands, as well as the provincial government to some degree, are not as friendly about this type of pipeline,” Mr. Mark told Business News Network on Nov. 3. “On top of that you have the fact that you’re going to be exporting from an offshore terminal, which raises the ire more of environmentalists, so there’s a lot more hoops to go through on Gateway.”
The feds are flapping their gums about shipping oil to China when there’s no plausible plan to do so. Even if the Conservatives managed to ram Northern Gateway through the review process, it would be hung up in the Supreme Court for years. The only other proposed pipeline to get oil to the West Coast is Kinder Morgan’s TransMountain expansion, but that’s already up against formidable opposition, including growing municipal concern and 61 First Nations who banned oilsands pipelines and oil tankers last year.
Both proposals face the same fundamental problem: they have to get through B.C. And since B.C. bears the burden of risk, one way or another this will ultimately be British Columbians’ decision — after all, it is our coast, our salmon rivers and our livelihoods at stake. All signs indicate that British Columbians’ minds are made up and their answer is no.
Corporations and politicians can ignore the need for social licence, but no amount of denial will change the undeniable: Northern Gateway is extremely unlikely to be built given the opposition in B.C. Mr. Harper knows this, Ms. Clark knows this and it doesn’t matter how often they attempt to deflect criticism toward regulators, sooner or later it will be in one of their best interests to cry uncle and look for an out.
To suggest Northern Gateway is a realistic option is not only delusional — it is insulting to the thousands of people who stand to be affected and it makes British Columbians look like nothing more than pawns in a global power game.
This column was published in the Edmonton Journal, Waterloo Region Record, Guelph Mercury, Trail Daily Times and Canada First Perspective.
]]>On the surface, there is a disproportionate power imbalance between Jackie Thomas, chief of the Saik'uz First Nation of British Columbia, and Enbridge Inc., the Calgary-based pipeline giant.
The 47-year-old grandmother is the leader of one of the poorest First Nations in the B.C. interior, where unemployment runs at 60%, the average income is less than $10,000 a year and survival has been connected for generations to the offerings of forests and such waterways as the Nechako River.
Meanwhile, Enbridge is Canada's largest pipeline company and the leader of the oil-sands industry's push to open a new front in Asia for Canadian energy exports.
Yet Chief Thomas may turn out to be the greater force in determining the fate of Enbridge's proposed $5.5-billion Northern Gateway pipeline between the oil sands and Kitimat on the B.C. coast. And her stance is not for sale.
"I value my fish and water more than I value money," she said in an interview. "The door is closed."
Chief Thomas is one of the most prominent faces of the 90 First Nations in British Columbia rallying the project, many of them matriarchal communities guided by female chiefs with long memories, long outlooks and big patience.
Her concerns are a measure of the challenges and complexities facing Northern Gateway: They range from the size and determination of the opposition to the potential for legal challenges to the risk of significant cost increases and delays to its ambitious schedule.
Indeed, the Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline, a comparable project in many respects that regulators approved in December after four decades of pushback, seems straightforward in comparison.
Unlike Northern Gateway, the proposed Mackenzie pipeline has strong aboriginal champions and equity partners, crosses largely unpopulated areas and was significantly opposed by only one First Nation, the Deh Cho.
Chief Thomas, a bookkeeper by trade with four children of her own, has led for eight years the Saik'uz -people of the sandy creek -a community of 1,000 living on and off a reserve located south of Vanderhoof, and spent much of that time fighting against the pipeline, first proposed in 2005.
Her top concern is for the hundreds of waterways the 1,200-kilometre bitumen and condensate pipeline would cross, putting them at risk of a direct or indirect contamination from an oil spill.
They include the Nechako River, a lifeline for her community, and the most important tributary to the salmonbearing Fraser River, whose water levels and stocks have thinned dramatically since the building of the Kenny Dam in 1952 by the company now known as Rio Tinto Alcan.
"We can count on our fish, our animals in the bush to feed us," she said. "If my grandchild has to buy water, and have water shipped in, it's not good."
Last year's Enbridge oil pipeline spill in Michigan, and the BP PLC Macondo well spill in the Gulf of Mexico, reinforced to First Nations the risk of water contamination is real. Some First Nations representatives went to the Gulf of Mexico to witness the devastation first hand. She said the Michigan incident undermined trust in Enbridge's ability to operate safely, despite the company's long safety record.
Chief Thomas is also concerned that the pipeline crosses First Nations communities, like her own, with outstanding land claims.
She questions the authority of regulators such as the National Energy Board to approve and regulate a pipeline over lands whose ownership is in dispute.
"We negotiated for 14 years in good faith and both governments have come to the table and we have no agreement," she said. "As soon as they show me the bill of sale for our land, I will talk to the government of Canada's" National Energy Board.
Unlike in the rest of Canada, there are no treaties in much of British Columbia. Unsettled land claims were one of the major contributors to the delay of the Mackenzie pipeline.
The uncertainty makes the project legally risky, said Josh Patterson, a Vancouver-based lawyer specializing in First Nations and Natural Resource law with West Coast Environmental Law.
"There are so many impacted nations who are resolutely opposed to this that the legal risk to this project cannot be overestimated," Mr. Patterson said. "Any one of those nations, or a combination of them, can bring legal challenges to this process at any stage."
Adding fuel to the opposition is what the pipeline would carry -oil from the oil sands.
Chief Thomas said solidarity is building between the First Nations of British Columbia and those of Alberta that are negatively affected by the oil sands, making the Northern Gateway pipeline another lever against their growth.
"They can't drink their water and eat their fish," she said. "So if this pipeline goes through, this oil sands will just get bigger, there [are] going to be more problems. And who is going to look after them?"
Meanwhile, the lure of huge economic benefits is not making the impression intended.
The Saik'uz were one of the First Nations of the Yinka Dene Alliance that rejected an offer from Enbridge last week for benefits of more than $1.5billion in cash, jobs, business opportunities during the next 30 years as well as a 10% stake in the project.
Chief Thomas said the pipeline could never replace the income sources that the community relies on, such as forestry and tourism, which she says are threatened if the pipeline goes ahead. Most of the Enbridge work is temporary, she said, and the money has strings attached.
"I can see the viability from a business perspective," she said. "Canada and Alberta are expecting a lot of tax money. And it's economically viable because the Chinese market is so hot right now. But we have looked at what they are trying to do and we don't consent. That is what the people have said," stressing that there is nothing left to negotiate.
While First Nations have been the most vocal in opposing the project, they are not alone. Municipalities, fishermen, tourism interests and the environmental movement are among those who don't want it built.
Anne Crossman, the former editor of Inuvik-based Permafrost Media who chronicled the progress of the Mackenzie pipeline, said Northern Gateway feels like a much bigger, more complex, more urgent project. Under Enbridge's current schedule, construction of the pipeline is expected to start in early 2013, with startup slated for late 2016.
Whether that means it has a better chance of succeeding because proponents will do whatever it takes to push it through, including even greater incentives, or falls apart because the challenges are insurmountable, remains unclear.
Ms. Crossman knows one thing for sure: "The oil and gas industry can turn on a dime. If it isn't going anywhere, they pull it and it's gone."
ccattaneo@nationalpost.com
Traffic on Fisgard Street faced demonstrators as well as snow Wednesday as about 150 people gathered outside the Capital Regional District headquarters demanding a halt to urban sprawl.
The Don't Fuca Up Our Trail rally, organized by University of Victoria and Camosun College students and the Dogwood Initiative, was sparked by an application by developer Ender Ilkay to build a resort and 257 tourist cabins above Juan de Fuca Marine Trail.
"People really care about this issue," said Dogwood forest campaigner Gordon O'Connor.
The issue is larger than the Juan de Fuca development as sprawling development is being approved everywhere from Bear Mountain to the Saanich Peninsula, he said. "We want a moratorium on urban sprawl until the CRD completes its sustainability strategy," O'Connor said.
Organizer Jordan Dalley, a Camosun student, was impressed by the turnout despite the snow.
"They are individuals who are quite troubled by the situation," she said.
"I am passionate about preserving [the trail], but it is a much bigger situation we are dealing with."
© Copyright (c) The Victoria Times Colonist
Fifteen years ago, as a permanent memorial to the 1994 Victoria Commonwealth Games, four small parks between the Port Renfrew highway and the coastline of the Strait of Juan de Fuca were linked by a strip of parkland averaging 225 metres in width.
Christened the Juan de Fuca Provincial Park, it was designed to protect the previously existing Juan de Fuca Marine Trail, which stretched 47 kilometres along the coast between Port Renfrew and Jordan River.
In the 15 years since the park was established, the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail and the spectacular intertidal areas of Botanical Beach and China Beach within the park have enjoyed increasing popularity.
The wild coastal scenery is similar to the West Coast Trail of Pacific Rim National Park to the north, yet the park is accessible by a two-hour drive from Victoria. Sections can be hiked in a day.
It has become a great recreational asset for the residents of our region, and a breathtakingly beautiful attraction for visitors.
Today, Juan de Fuca Park is reportedly the third most visited provincial park, with most visitors coming from Greater Victoria.
When the park was established, the lands between the park and the Port Renfrew highway were almost entirely private forest lands under a provincial tree farm licence, and thus protected from development. The fact that the park was a narrow strip, so narrow that in some steep sections the trail is actually outside the park, was of small concern at that time -one way or another, the integrity of the marine trail and the wild character of the coastline were protected, either by the park strip or by the adjacent TFL lands.
Four years ago, in a decision strongly criticized by the auditor general for its lack of concern for the public interest, the provincial government removed the Juan de Fuca private lands from the TFL. The non-park private lands between the park strip and the Port Renfrew Road thus became subject to purchase and development.
The original 1996 error of establishing a park strip far too narrow to protect the wild coastal character of the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail became a real concern.
It did not take long for some of the lots critical to the integrity of the marine trail to be sold for development. Two hundred and eighty residences and a lodge are proposed, spread along 12 kilometres -onethird, the most spectacular third, of the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail.
This is about 40 times the number of residences permitted under the existing rural resource zoning classification. Were the application to be approved, it will undoubtedly be followed by other development proposals, which can be expected to degrade the park and its wild coastal values even further.
To protect the park, the Capital Regional District would need to reject outright the proposal, but this would likely be a temporary reprieve.
The provincial government needs to shoulder its responsibilities, first as steward of the Victoria Commonwealth Games legacy, and second, as the custodian of this irreplaceable provincial asset. A permanent solution would be for the province to buy the private properties between the Port Renfrew highway and the park boundary and expand the width of the buffer strip to what was recommended 15 years ago, namely to the properties from Highway 14 to the low tide line of the Strait.
If the province fails to live up to its responsibilities, Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca MP Keith Martin has suggested that the existing park and the adjacent public lands be turned over to the federal government.
This would allow Pacific Rim National Park to be extended to the south to take in the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail and Juan de Fuca Park.
Provided the federal government agreed, this would protect the marine trail and the wild coastal values of the park, and have the added economic advantage of making Port Renfrew and Jordan River the same type of magnet for tourism that Tofino became in the 1970s, after Pacific Rim Park was established.
What is clearly unacceptable for residents of the capital region is for the legacy of our Victoria Commonwealth Games, and this extensive stretch of our irreplaceable wild coast, to be degraded by strip development and sprawl.
Oak Bay resident David Anderson has served as MLA for Victoria, and as MP for both EsquimaltSaanich and Victoria. He served a decade in the federal cabinet, as minister of both Fisheries and Oceans and Environment.
The chairman of the local group Douglas Channel Watch said, “They make nothing but promises which most often they are totally incapable of keeping.”
Saying the company’s sole focus was pushing the project through, he added, “In the end (the promises) will fall by the wayside.”
Wagner recalled Enbridge having pointed to the availability of an international clean-up fund of $1.3 billion that could be called upon in the event of a spill.
However, he noted the cost of cleaning up after the Exxon Valdez disaster was $3.5 billion, meaning Canadian taxpayers would be on the hook for most of the clean-up costs when the inevitable spill occured.
On the touted safety of double-hulled tankers, he said it is slowly coming out that they are not “the be all and end all”.
Wagner pointed to corrosion problems between the hulls and, worse, the ships are designed to “flex incredibly” which in turn means “they have an extremely high (metal) fatigue factor.”
He also pointed out that Caamano Sound has many granite reefs and if a tanker runs aground on one of those, it won’t matter how many hulls it has, “it’ll open up like a can opener.”
Chuckling at Chris Anderson’s contention that simulations have shown the Douglas Channel to be navigable by big tankers (Sentinel, February 9), Wagner said, “We have three 90 degree turns and anything is possible.”
While he agreed there is no gain without some form of risk, Wagner was adamant that with this project the risk was too great.
If after 22 years they are still finding crude oil one foot below the surface of gravel beaches in the Prince William Sound - site of the Exxon Valdez spill - he asked what would happen to the halibut, crab and the like when the tar-like bitumen from a tanker sank to the bottom of the Douglas Channel.
And provided his own answer - “It will be there for 100 years.”
]]>Developer Ender Ilkay plans to build a tourist resort, including recreational buildings, lodges and 263 cabins 100 metres from the Juan De Fuca Trail. The development would affect 17 kilometres of the trail, with cabins situated metres from the Juan De Fuca Provincial Park Boundary. In September 2010, a report was filed to the Juan de Fuca land use committee containing a Rezoning and Development Permit application for seven parcels of land along the Juan de Fuca trail, filed by the Marine Trail Holdings group. The land is currently zoned as Resource Land.
The Forest Action Network has compiled 228 signatures on a petition opposing the development, with aims of reaching 10,000. The Dogwood Initiative has started several land use campaigns under the banner campaign Vancouver Island is Not For Sale. They also began a project called Protecting Our Wild Coast in response to proposed developments such as this.
“We live in one of the richest, most naturally abundant places in the world, but every time you turn around another real estate speculator is bulldozing one of our farms or forests for a luxury subdivision,” said Gordon O’Connor, Dogwood Initiative’s forest campaigner.
Dogwood hopes to bring community together to “Paint our Future” through the eyes of ecological, agricultural and economic sustainability.
The Paint our Future campaign is a community-building project that centres on a 10-by-15-foot mural on a canvas that will travel around the Saanich Peninsula from paint-in to paint-in where people can contribute a square on the mural, building momentum before a community-in-action rally on April 30. It is a strategic community-envisioning activity that empowers people’s own visions of sustainability, instead of simply trying to back-pedal against an avalanche of urban sprawl.
“We need a moratorium on urban sprawl until the [Capital Region District (CRD)] creates a sustainability plan and commits to accommodate local Indigenous nations,” said O’Connor.
Many feel decisions regarding developments and land use made by Central Saanich councillors in recent years have undermined the CRD’s Regional Growth Strategy (RGS).
“The CRD is at a crossroads in managing its growth. One path could make us the most livable place in the world and the other will turn this area into a new incarnation of Surrey or Mississauga,” said O’Connor.
The Dogwood Initiative hopes that by engaging in a local community-building movement and by fostering a unified voice through the medium of brilliant coastal colours, politicians and developers can hear with their eyes that many people in the CRD want to see their communities flourish through sustainable development, not urban sprawl.
There is no charge to participate in the painting workshops, but Dogwood will be soliciting donations from the community. They will be facilitating the paint-ins to make sure that a diverse range of people can participate in the project.
For more information on the project, visit the “Paint our Future: Juan de Fuca Mural Project” on Facebook. ]]>Lines are again being drawn in the sand over potential development in the wilderness along Vancouver Island's south-west coast.
Opponents of a revamped plan by developer Ender Ilkay — who wants to build a tourist resort with 257 vacation cabins next to the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail — are angry the Capital Regional District's land use committee for Juan de Fuca electoral area did not kill the proposal Tuesday.
Instead, the committee decided to send the proposal out for comment to agencies such as First Nations, government and community agencies.
Almost 100 people crowded into the committee meeting in Sooke with the majority speaking against the development.
"To send out this flawed proposal, which had about 97 per cent of the people in that room opposed to it, shows a lack of responsibility to the communities and all the people who spoke so eloquently and forcefully against it," said Vicky Husband, spokeswoman for the Jordan River Steering Committee.
"This is the wrong development in the wrong location. It will destroy the integrity of the park," she said.
"This is outrageous," said Gordon O'Connor, Dogwood Initiative Vancouver Island campaigner.
"Dozens of extremely important issues were raised, but the committee ignored all of them."
But Mike Hicks, Juan de Fuca electoral area director, said the decision is a small step in a lengthy process.
"No one wants to detract from the Juan de Fuca Trail. That's the key issue," he said.
A public meeting will be held in Sooke on March 3. The plan will then go back to the land use committee, before going to a CRD board committee. It can then be denied or go to first and second reading followed by a public hearing. The CRD committee will then make the final decision.
However, many opponents do not want the ultimate decision resting with a CRD committee and say it should be a regional or provincial issue.
The committee is made up of Hicks and directors from Sooke, Langford, Colwood and Metchosin.
The issue goes beyond an assault on the wilderness trail to the future of the entire coastline, O'Connor said.
"To build this commuter subdivision in the middle of nowhere, puts us on a crash course to disaster," he said.
"There's no such thing as a one-time exception in land-use planning. There will be a vacation home corridor from Sooke to Port Renfrew."
Ilkay, who bought the 263-hectare property after the provincial government allowed Western Forest Products to remove private land from the tree farm licence, wants to build the development in phases over 15 or 20 years.
Key changes, including a reduction in the number of cabins to 257 from 279, have already been made following the first round of public and government input, he said.
"We have increased the distance between the trail and any building to 150 metres from 100 metres," he said.
Previously, Ilkay planned to move the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail from an area where it encroached, but, instead, a donation of 97 hectares will be made to the provincial park, he said.
"We've added a helipad at the request of the parks department to assist in rescues and we've added a second recreation building so people don't have to drive," he said.
The seven parcels stretch more than eight kilometres between West Coast Road and the trail.
About 32 hectares will be developed and the remainder will be park donation or protected green space, Ilkay said.
"The appeal is the surrounding environment, so we have a vested interest in ensuring the area is as pristine and natural as possible," he said.
Cabins will be individually owned, but owners are allowed to stay for no more than 60 days consecutively or six months out of the year.
"When they are not using them, they will be in a rental pool," Ikay said.
CALGARY - Canadian oil producers have never felt the need for a pipeline across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean more keenly, as a glut of landlocked crude is sold at unprecedented discounts versus seaborne rivals.
Trouble is, opposition has never been greater.
With U.S. Gulf crudes fetching $25 US (all figures in U.S. dollars) more per barrel than oil trapped in the interior, producers in Canada's oilsands and the Bakken Shale are not reaping the full rewards of this year's rally, even though outright heavy crude prices above $60 a barrel are more than enough to keep them well in the black.
Enbridge Inc.'s long-discussed $5.5-billion Northern Gateway pipeline to the West Coast from Alberta would help solve the problem, giving producers direct access to the booming Asian market and relieving pressure on filled-up pipelines and topped-off storage tanks in the U.S. Midwest.
There's a big hurdle, however. Opposition is growing louder among natives, green groups and even Canadian celebrities to a project they say risks dire environmental consequences due to increased tanker traffic and rapid oilsands development.
Those objections were highlighted on Wednesday after the Yinka Dene Alliance, comprising five First Nations whose lands make up about a quarter of the proposed right-of-way, rejected a package of financial incentives from Enbridge.
"We won't trade the safety of our rivers, lands and fish that are our lifeblood," said Chief Jackie Thomas of Saik'uz First Nation.
Enbridge (TSX:ENB) filed its application for Northern Gateway with the National Energy Board last May and expects the regulatory process to last through 2012. The line, which would run 1,172 km (728 miles) to Kitimat, British Columbia, from near Edmonton, Alberta, would start up in 2016.
Some call that target date optimistic at best.
"Honestly, from my perspective, it's nothing that I would even consider at this point putting into my financial model," said Lanny Pendill, energy analyst at Edward Jones.
"There are still substantial hurdles from an environmental standpoint and just the huge opposition that we're seeing from the aboriginal community."
Opposition crescendoed last summer after the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill and a rupture of one of Enbridge's own pipelines, which spilled 20,000 barrels of oil in Michigan.
From a market perspective, the concept of Gateway - or other plans including an expansion of Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain system, or even rail shipments to the coast - is simple. Producers are less captive to the machinations of refineries and storage hubs in one country, the United States.
Their oil would get loaded onto tankers and compete with Middle Eastern and other crudes in Asian markets.
"What would happen is new markets for the product would open up, further demand would open up and you would see a tightening of price differentials, so you're going to get better pricing for your product," says MEG vice-president John Rogers, vice-president of producer MEG Energy Corp. and an oilsands industry veteran.
MEG supports all three West Coast proposals. Expanding markets is good not only for MEG but for Canadians and Albertans overall, as higher crude prices mean increased government revenues through taxes and royalties, he said.
CHINESE TIES
Canada is the United States' top foreign oil supplier. Nearly all its exports, nearly two million barrels a day, flow there.
An equally controversial plan would increase that by about half a million barrels a day through TransCanada Corp's Keystone XL pipeline to the Gulf Coast, but that project hit a hurdle on Tuesday when the company said necessary approval from the U.S. State Department would be delayed.
Oilsands production is expected to double to 2.9 million barrels a day in the next nine years, the industry projects.
Canada, stung by spillover from the U.S. housing crisis and recession, wants to diversify trade throughout the economy. China offers some of the richest opportunities.
Meanwhile, Chinese companies have scooped up billions of dollars of oilsands holdings to secure resources to fuel a growing economy. MEG was an early beneficiary, getting an sizable investment from state-owned CNOOC Ltd.
Another state enterprise, Sinopec Corp., is chipping in some funding for Gateway's regulatory and early development costs. Last year, it bought a nine per cent stake in the Syncrude Canada oilsands project for $4.65 billion.
"The bottom line is we have to seriously consider expanding our markets," Canadian Natural Resources Minister Christian Paradis said. "We have huge market opportunities. When we see what's going on in China, we can be a major player there."
Producers are making good coin today, Rogers said, even with heavy oil discounts widening since summer due to outages and restrictions on Enbridge's pipelines to the United States.
With U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate at above $85 a barrel, western Canadian heavy crude is selling for $60-$65 a barrel, covering costs and leaving a healthy profit.
Upgraded synthetic oil now sells for more than WTI due to the outage of Canadian Natural Resources Ltd's Horizon oilsands plant following a fire in January.
However, Brent fetches around $15 more than WTI, due to a glut of supply at the Cushing, Oklahoma, storage hub, the world's largest, much of it from Canada.
"You'd get more aligned with the rest of the world prices and trade closer to Brent than WTI. It could be 20 cents, it could be five bucks - who knows?" FirstEnergy Capital Corp analyst Martin King said. "But there would be at least be a little more influence from international price markers."
The line is designed to carry a range of supply, from conventional light to synthetic to bitumen mixed with diluent. The project includes an adjacent condensate line running east.
Meanwhile, a recent assessment of Keystone XL done by energy consultants EnSys for the U.S. Department of Energy showed the costs of shipping crude to Asia from Alberta by 2020 would be $2.81 a barrel cheaper than piping it to Texas.
'IT'S ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT, STUPID'
But native groups, such as the Yinka Dene Alliance, Coastal First Nations and Union of BC Indian Chiefs, and green organizations want the proposal scrapped. They oppose the idea of more coastal tanker traffic, intrusion on aboriginal lands and an expansion of oilsands development in Alberta.
The UBCIC made its opposition official 10 months ago, fearing governments and courts would protect corporate interests over aboriginal title and rights to lands.
It also criticizes what it believes to be insufficient consultation by industry.
"Quite simply: it's about the environment, stupid," UBCIC Grand Chief Stewart Phillips said.
Canadian native groups have gained increasing power when it comes to regulatory approvals for energy and mining projects. Their efforts have gotten a boost as Canadian celebrities such as actress Neve Campbell and rocker Randy Bachman have signed on to their cause.
Indeed, as a joint review panel and the National Energy Board took five years to vet the Mackenzie gas pipeline in the Far North, much of the deliberation centered on the socioeconomic impact on native people and their surrounding lands.
As a sweetener, Enbridge is offering aboriginal communities a 10 per cent ownership stake in the line at no cost as well as one per cent of its pre-tax earnings for a community trust.
Pat Daniel, Enbridge's chief executive, said the offer has been "well-received", but he is under no illusions - as the Yinke Dene's rejection on Wednesday highlighted.
"When I speak to the fact that the offering has been well-received I'm speaking to what I consider to be the response from the majority of those First Nations groups along the way," Daniel said last week.
"That does not mean that everyone is wildly embracing the concept of the Gateway pipeline project even in light of the equity offering and the economic benefits and jobs and opportunities associated with it."