With the deadline for the Alberta-Canada memorandum of understanding on pipelines fast approaching – on April Fool’s Day a week from today – a newly formed coalition of First Nations, farmers and other rural residents is demanding a comprehensive environmental assessment on a proposed pipeline that would carry liquified carbon waste from the oilsands south to the area around Cold Lake and Bonnyville.
In that corner of northeastern Alberta, as part of the $16.5-billion carbon capture utilization and storage project, CO2 from numerous oilsands extraction sites would be pumped into underground formations where – at least in theory – it would safely reside forever and ever, amen.
Of course, as everyone at the NO CO2 Pipelines Alberta Coalition’s news conference yesterday morning in the Alberta Government’s Queen Elizabeth II Building in Edmonton well understood, a comprehensive environmental assessment is the last thing Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith want to see happen.
The two first ministers are hell bent on seeing what the coalition calls “a multi-billion-dollar toxic waste site” and a 600-kilometre pipeline with a kilometre-wide “kill zone” around it built without delay to create social license for a vast expansion of oilsands mining in Alberta in the face of a rapidly heating planet.
Advancing the carbon capture project, as the coalition said in its news release, “is a key element of the proposed Alberta-Canada MoU, setting conditions for the construction of a new bitumen pipeline from Alberta to the West Coast.” In the MoU, the parties agreed to build what they called the world’s largest CCUS project with the objective of rebranding oilsands oil as “low carbon.”
So the stage is set for another David-and-Goliath battle that is likely to end up in the courts.
“We will make sure this project gets a thorough environmental review from the Canadian government,” vowed Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation during the news conference, “or else we will launch legal actions against the federal government and the Alberta government for allowing this to happen when it shouldn’t.”
Asked by a reporter what he made of Prime Minister Carney’s view that the pipeline to the coast would be a “grand bargain” for all, Chief Adam chuckled. “Prime Minister Carney is a Conservative Liberal, let’s get that out of the way. … He believes pushing these major projects at a rapid rate is going to be good for the economy, but it’s going to be bad for the environment.”
Another speaker, Amil Shapka of St. Paul, one of the founders of the coalition, said: “I’m not a rabid environmentalist, nor am I anti oil and gas,” but “I do know a bad idea when I see one, and this is a really bad idea!”
“Capturing carbon dioxide out of the emissions of 13 oilsands facilities, compressing it into liquid and then transporting it 600 kilometres under high pressure to be injected deep underground permanently is not just another pipeline,” Dr. Shapka asserted. “CO2 pipelines are uniquely dangerous, as carbon dioxide is both an asphyxiant and toxic. … Breathing in a concentration of 50 per cent for as little as one minute can be fatal. That’s the kill zone we’re worried about.”
“CCS in other jurisdictions has repeatedly failed to deliver its promises,” he added. What’s more, “if it works perfectly, it will only remove 5 per cent of current emissions. … Combine that with industry plans to double production, and you can see that the ideas of low carbon oil and reaching net zero by 2050 are not grounded in reality.”
Indeed, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a U.S. based organization that leans into clean energy, reported in 2022 that 10 out of 13 major carbon capture projects had failed to deliver on their targets.
As for the profitable giant corporations of the Oil Sands Alliance that stand to benefit from this project – Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., Cenovus Energy, Imperial Oil and Suncor Energy – they are 73-per-cent foreign owned and 60-per-cent U.S.-owned, several speakers noted.
So how, exactly, is this a nation-building project? Dr. Shapka wondered. “They’re asking for public subsidies worth up to 50 per cent of their operating costs,” he said. “Does it really make sense here to pour billions of valuable tax dollars into a costly, risky and questionable technology that primarily benefits American companies? How is that energy security?”
“I have one question for the prime minister,” said farmer Penny Fox, a resident of St. Paul County and another founder of the coalition. “If you wouldn’t live next to this pipeline, why should we?”
Members of the coalition released a letter to the federal government at the news conference outlining their formal request for comprehensive environmental assessment, which the coalition says has been dropped by both the Alberta and federal governments at the request of the Oil Sands Alliance after three years of lobbying to avoid an impact assessment.
The coalition has scheduled three town halls – in Mallaig on April 26, Lac La Biche on May 6, and Edmonton on May 13 – and expects to hold more later.
Dixie Dani is not only a day late and a dollar short…she’s about a decade, late.
Has she not noticed that the USA presently is trying to control the entire oil/gas supply in the world? Does she think she’s bigger than they are? Smarter, more important? They blew up the Russian pipeline and then proceeded to sell American oil for 4x the cost. When they needed the GCC oil, oooo they were the best of buds but now that they don’t–they don’t care what happens to them. They oil-blocked Venezuela by force.
The USA hates China because China is the backbone of all the electric tech that makes oil/gas as fuel, near obsolete. Sure, we may always need *some* but it won’t be black gold forever.
Better Alberta go for wind farms, solar, possibly nuclear in a crunch and learn to make things. Considering the American playbook and the shortage of fertilizer components they’re unleashing in the world with their idiot wars, Alberta might want to quadruple their farm land and buy a lot of goats and poop rakes. Build small rotational farms for sustainability and suchlike.
But nope. Dani wants to plunge face first into legal quagmires then spend her days whinging how the Feds and Native folk are mean to her.
The USA hates China because the USA has Creflo Dollar, three quarters of a million homeless at any given time, an opioid crisis and Herbalife. China has The Two Assurances and Three Guarantees, “assurances of adequate food and clothing, and guarantees of access to compulsory education, basic medical services and safe housing for impoverished rural residents”, BYD cars with Blade batteries, and an economy.
It’s sad and very frustrating, that once again the Sh*t government shows a complete disregard for the environment. It’s always show me the money, or the cat with this flippin’ UPC party. And the hypocrisy of Smith, a proven separatist, except when it comes to federal funding to help her with her useless pet projects. If Alberta votes to separate, are the feds going to pull their funding, or are the big oil companies whose oil doesn’t stink going to step up to the plate? Which they should be doing anyway, as they’re the ones that have created this mess. And yes, I do accept some responsibility, because I do own a vehicle. It’s the past PC /UPC govt’s that have allowed Big Oil to get away with so much for so long. Maybe if these companies stopped the T.V. ads, that blow roses and sunshine up my arse, telling me how good they are and took that money and applied it to cleaning up their own mess, we wouldn’t be in quite the state that we’re in.
I neglected to mention, that this isn’t just a fight that the Coalition of First Nations, Farmers and Rural residents should be fighting. All Albertans should be fighting against this. As well as the coal mining on the Eastern Slopes and logging the headwaters of the Highwood. There are so many damaging projects, that this Smith government is doing, it’s appalling!
This, may say it all:
“CO2 leaks worry Sask, farmers. A Saskatchewan farm couple, Cameron and Jane Kerr, who own land above the Weyburn oilfield in eastern Saskatchewan, says greenhouse gases that were supposed to be permanently stored underground are leaking out, killing animals and sending groundwater foaming to the surface like shaken-up soda pop.”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/co2-leaks-worry-sask-farmers-1.977078
Anyone know how to contact this coalition to offer support?
https://www.noco2pipelines.ca/ DJC
“Smith-Carney pipeline deal to miss early deadlines, premier says”: headline on CBC website.
Smith-Carney is the new Notley-Trudeau.
On the one side you have a lady land owner, well read, well informed, with no hidden agenda, and you have an elected First Nation Chief, responsible stewards of this land long before the pale faces appeared, and a Dr. who has devoted his entire life to the service of his community professionally, but more so as the examplar of volunteerism, community building, a megaphone for the disabled and the disadvantaged, and the list is longer. On the other side, Dixie Danni and her greasy puppeteers. So, David, I ask you, who the hell am I supposed to trust and believe?
To understand how things political and economic have always worked and continue to work, it is only necessary to understand that the economic elites as both owners of capital and controllers of resource rents are largely in control of public affairs.
Multiple examples, current and historical, exist that demonstrate that this is a factual reality, the following is one such example:
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2025/07/22/news/alberta-danielle-smith-orphan-well-complaint
https://www.theenergymix.com/alberta-landowner-alleges-mafia-style-meeting-demands-as-energy-regulators-ethics-investigation-stalls/
“The AER board consists of nine members, all of whom previously or currently work in the energy industries regulated by the agency. Yager previously served on Smith’s Wildrose party leadership campaign as a top fundraiser, and was active in Energy and Minerals Minister Brian Jean’s leadership bid for the United Conservative Party.”
Further, the current Prime Minister of Canada and current Premier of Alberta as part of the political managerial class and having both internalized the surrounding power structure and having regularly demonstrated their conformity and obedience to it, dogmatically and slavishly cater to those same economic class interests, because individuals are routinely rewarded for “right” thinking and “right” action.
Danielle Smith goes whichever way the wind blows. Years ago, when she was in another political party, the Wildrose, she staunchly opposed carbon sequestration, and was against premier Ed Stelmach for pursuing it, on the grounds of its massive cost ($2 billion at that time), and on technological issues, because there was no solid proof of its effectiveness. She was right (gasp!) about the latter, but she forgot about the first issue. How much money is Danielle Smith prepared to waste on this junk science?
This is the best news I have heard in months! ..”So how, exactly, is this a nation-building project? Dr. Shapka wondered.” Indeed!
Hello DJC and fellow commenters,
What a waste of money. This technology is of little use, and is a poor use of public money.
The carbon capture scam isn’t going anywhere unless Marlaina can get Carney to pay for it. Hopefully, he’s not that foolish.
This Mi O U thing is so captivatingly bullish it makes me see, oh, two, maybe more on conjecturing: I’ll-see-your-TM and raise-you-a-Rupert like you gotta “no” when to hold ’em and “no” when to fold ’em –and maybe “no” to counting yer money when you ain’t got none.
Disney to Kenny; Roger, Bigfoot; It’s way bigger than you thought, over; How big?– over; Big as the lungs and bowels of the earth, and all the juice of life in a sea or two. Do you copy?–over; Well, I tried, over and over, over; Roger that, Kenny, over and out.
This CO2 pipeline from Fort MacGuffin ain’t no 39 steps, and so unique the high-pressure liquid dry ice doesn’t burn, it only asphyxiates and poisons. Well, phew!–that’s a relief! As I understand it, injected into the veins of the earth the super-cold greenhouse solid will freeze water trapped in surrounding rock which, I’m only guessing, will do what freezing water does and fracture the sarcophagus’ reputed integrity. I’m no expert–but is anybody?
Is that puny 5% capture of CO2 produced by cooking bitumen out of the tiny bones of ground stone an exercise in precautionary principle–you know, in case it don’t work? Very reassuring. Heck, we know way more about nuclear fission, maybe even as much as the Chipewyan Nation knows about reel fishin’–probably nobody knows better the cost of pretending there’s no cost to burning petroleum to capture more petroleum.
My darling thinks Carney’s stringing Smith along; I was about to correct her with, “you mean ‘piping’,” but then, as from the mouth of a babe, I thought, she might have something there. Stringing wire gotta be cheaper ‘n’ laying pipe, and the best way to mitigate CO2 pollution is to not make it in the first place. Now, maybe we haven’t heard as much about SMRs (Small Nucle–uh–I mean, MODULAR, Reactors) due to condemnable inconveniences like Three Mile Island, Chalk River, Chernobyl, and Fukushima around which those cute, cuddly little electricity generators leak the power of suggestion; but are we gonna phish or cut the baiting?
Instead of hundreds of little SMRs popping up all over the place like scam robocalls to seniors who still think intelligence is real, why not one great big one that supplies nuclear-generated electricity to Fort MacGuffin and cut its big footprint of CO2 in half by replacing hydrocarbon combustion currently used to cook bitumen out of its sandy deposit? It’d hafta be not too, too far from the Bitumen Mines of Albetar, maybe some northern Fort Smith can’t screw up, maybe someplace not too far from the Uranium Mines of Saskashewan, someplace the PM is familiar with.
AND: NO burn-a-barrel-to-get-a-barrel GHG emissions. AND: NO 600km CO2 pipeline that could take seven years to build at seven-fold the initial cost estimate (based on the most-recent TMX pipeline to Burrard Inlet). I’m sure Smith’s Maple MAGA evangelicals would understand the potential for the project to cost yet another seven-fold on top of that, the UCP’s Leah and Rebecca shell-and-pea game ‘n’ all…
Would Carney string along Smith like that? I should think he’d have to, first for the sake of Canadian sovereignty, second for the sake of Canadian unity. If Danielle doesn’t get that (what do I mean, “if”!), how on earth’s she gonna grasp the dearth of investors willing to risk the daunting cost of a Rupert Tube so long’s the critical number of BC First Nations along the route still have unextinguished sovereign claims to the disposition of resources in and through their respective, acknowledged traditional territories? They said “no” on the news; I guess she didn’t hear it–or thought it was fake. I dunno.
It’s hard to tell who’s the diminutive of whom between her and PP because of the taint of Trump on either of them, a publicly perceived culpability that’s already proved–and continues to prove political poison. Thus it’s hard to believe anything you hear about capture or SMRs or Rupert or Coastal FNs or costs.
It’s actually easier to believe in Sasquatch.
Be well, my Alberta compatriots. Over and out.
What an absurd. How stupid do you need to be in investing on something so ridiculous. Of course they are businesses and they get the subsidies and could not careless. Danielle Smith being involved in this crap is not a surprise, she is the queen of shit but Marc Carney is going to pay for this. His honeymoon will be over soon.