NEB May Face Changes But It Might Require A Overhaul

The federal government needs to change Canada’s national energy regulator. However, a previous pipeline review panel member believes the NEB needs more than cosmetic changes.

Hans Matthews, one of three NEB board individuals to assess Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline proposal, is persuaded that the regulator needs a complete overhaul to be effective. The NEB will choose not long from now, at the soonest, how and when it will proceed with hearings into TransCanada’s proposed Energy East pipeline after protests in Montreal deferred the procedures.

Minister of Natural Resources Jim Carr needs the timing with hearings determined instantly.

Canadians generally lack trust in the NEB and the document suggests the federal government needs to roll out improvements before it completely supports the regulator

The federal government changes to the NEB should be fully implemented by June 2018, according to a letter from deputy minister Bob Hamilton to minister Carr.

“The NEB process has been subject to significant criticism and public debate,” writes Hamilton. “The objective is to position it as a modern, world-leading energy regulator.”

Matthews needs the regulator to pay a greater attention to the general population who actually live along the route of a pipeline, rather than its present focus on whether a pipeline is in the nation’s national interest. The government as of late said an absence of pipeline infastructure to get to worldwide markets cost Canadian producers $7 billion a year, somewhere around 2011 and 2013, a sum of $21 billion in more than three years. That added up to one percent of Canada’s GDP. That discovery plays to the contention that pipelines are in the national interest, yet glosses over local concerns.

While there were always protests outside of the Northern Gateway hearings and every so often inside, few were as serious as those in Montreal a week ago in which police needed to evacuate protesters. Matthews proposes the interruptions are because people are frustrated. That has led some people to question the usefulness of participating if the project is going ahead anyway. If they do participate, it could be in a different form, such as protesting.

While the NEB may be a green light machine, it doesn’t always give a rubber stamp. Matthews and his two other panel members recommended Northern Gateway be approved, but imposed a significant number of conditions, requiring Enbridge shore up its design and improve First Nations consultations, among other issues.

“One thing that kept coming up was that the National Energy Board very rarely turns down a project,” he said. “Many people feel that their voices aren’t going to be heard.”

“That was the compromise we had as a panel,” he said. “We felt that [Enbridge’s plans] didn’t go far enough, so we imposed the 209 conditions to hopefully address those shortcomings.”

Those conditions, as well as court challenges and other opposition, effectively shelved the pipeline proposal. Caught in the middle of the process to restore trust in the NEB are the companies trying to construct new export pipelines.

The initial changes to the NEB announced in January impacted both Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain and TransCanada’s Energy East proposals. While Trans Mountain didn’t need to start the review process from scratch, the changes delayed the deadline for the federal government to make a decision to December of this year, instead of August.

Energy East was also delayed. In total, the project will undergo 27 months of review.