Photo by iStockphoto.com/Reinhard Tiburzy
Over the last few weeks, everyone’s been talking about the unprecedented crash in the oil market. Prices have dipped into the negative, and producers are paying to have their oil taken off their hands.
This is an uncertain time, and we don’t know how long these cratering prices will last or what this means for energy markets in the future. But one thing is clear: For the tar sands oil that would run through pipelines like TC Energy’s Keystone XL and Enbridge’s Line 3, financial problems are nothing new.
The current crisis has exacerbated existing problems -- forcing Canadian companies to start shutting down production -- but it didn’t create them. In February, Teck Resources was forced to abandon its proposed Frontier mine, one of the largest tar sands mining projects ever proposed, facing massive public opposition and economics that just didn’t add up.
With the tar sands industry falling apart and production coming to a halt, it’s more obvious than ever that we shouldn’t allow companies like TC Energy and Enbridge to build their toxic pipelines through our communities.
Teck isn’t alone. Analysts have been predicting for months that, as investors back away from expensive, risky tar sands projects, “the era of big [tar] sands mines may be over.”
With the tar sands industry falling apart and production coming to a halt, it’s more obvious than ever that we shouldn’t allow companies like TC Energy and Enbridge to build their toxic pipelines through our communities.
Pipeline companies are still trying to build the Keystone XL and Line 3 pipelines through communities and waterways to get tar sands to export, despite the fact that there’s no demand for this dirty, expensive tar sands oil.
To make matters worse, all of this is happening during a global pandemic. In Minnesota, where regulators are making critical decisions about Line 3, the public is unable to participate in the process. And in Montana, where TC Energy has already started construction on the US-Canada border-crossing section of Keystone XL, vulnerable rural and tribal communities are being put at risk of a devastating outbreak, all for the sake of moving oil for which there is no market.
It didn’t make sense to build these massive tar sands pipelines through our communities before this crisis, and it certainly doesn’t make sense now.
TAKE ACTION: Tell Montana Governor Steve Bullock to stop construction on Keystone XL now.