Canadian union appeals NEB approval of Keystone XL pipeline

TORONTO - The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada is charging that approval by Canada’s National Energy Board of the Keystone XL pipeline will result in tens of thousands of Canadian jobs being exported to Texas. The energy union filed leave to appeal the decision on April 9.
"The oil and gas industry has decided that the enormous economic development associated with upgrading and refining oil sands resources will take place in Texas, not Canada," said Dave Coles, president of the union.
The Keystone XL pipeline construction project will export 900,000 barrels of oil per day to the U.S. Gulf Coast - most of it unprocessed bitumen from the Alberta oil sands.
"This means the loss of tens of thousands of jobs in the Canadian oil upgrading and refining sector that either exist now, or that would have been created by projects that are likely to be canceled as a result of the dramatic expansion of oil export pipeline capacity to upgraders and refineries in the U.S.," Coles charged.
Keystone XL was opposed by CEP, the Alberta Federation of Labor, the Sierra Club as well as by Enbridge, Imperial Oil, BP and Nexen.
The companies argued that Keystone XL will create enormous excess export capacity, raise service costs on other pipelines and increase input costs to Canadian refineries by US$600 million in 2013.
"Not only will this project abandon the enormous opportunity of creating a diversified Canadian oil and gas industry," said Coles, "but it will seriously undermine the viability of existing refineries. Astonishingly, the NEB has signed off on the industry's plan as being the Canadian public interest. The Board has abandoned its mandate to the entirely ill-founded notion that a deregulated export market is in the Canadian public interest."
The legal argument filed by CEP alleges that the NEB made several fundamental errors of law, and failed to properly exercise its mandate to protect the Canadian public interest.
The National Energy Board approved the Keystone XL pipeline project on March 11, subject to the federal government giving it the final green light. CEP filed its appeal on April 9.