Trans Mountain Project Reconsideration

[Sentry]

Audits are racist

[schurchill39]

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This is a great post, and a reality that some folks just choose to ignore.

The Feds honestly need to step up their auditing game with bands across Canada and get this shit sorted out. A lot were afraid to open up their books, doesn't take a Mar to figure out why.

All of these big projects (oil and gas, mining, power upgrades etc) need to have indigenous monitors on site for any work done on their land. All of the agreements have some sort of end-of-day payment usually via e-transfer of $500-800 but when you go to certain reserves or bands no one has a bank account so the band just wants you to send the money to them and they will "distribute it" to the band member. Then when the person never gets their money they refuse to show up anymore (if they were ever showing up in the first place anyways).

Like I said, its not all bands or reserves that are bad like this but when your council is so crooked and corrupt where they are fighting for money under the guise of government/industry wrong doing then stealing from their own people you get pretty fed up, especially as a tax payer who is funding this horseshit. Thankfully there are some bands out there like Lower Nicola, Fort Chip and (maybe recently) Blueberry who are trying to reinvest industry funds and training their people to create their own businesses. But those are few and far between.

I know the feds are actively shoping the pipeline where they are trying to get a 51% indian owned partner (funded by the feds) and an industry partner to operate it at 49% ownership. No one wants to deal with that sort of shit show so I expect costs to keep going up.

[max_boost]

What a shit show wow

[Buster]

Fuck me. Canadians are the worst war-winners I've ever seen.

[benyl]

This pipe still hasn't been fully laid yet?

[BerserkerCatSplat]

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Cold Water Indian Band sees this as nothing more than a source of income for themselves in terms of legal battles and "compensation for the wrongs". It got to the point where Transmountain was considering going around their territory all together as it would have been cheaper but then the band lobbied the goverment to not allow that as it would mean huge losses in tax revenue and right of way compensation for them.

The band didn't totally get their way on that. TMEP implemented the Coldwater Reroute a few years back that avoided the vast majority of their territory (and the associated payments), that's a major reason why they're so butthurt now.

There have been a lot of truly hilarious protests from various parties. My personal favourite was when the City of Burnaby sent a hotshot lawyer to try to convince the NEB to force Kinder Morgan to install the pipe right through downtown Burnaby instead of following the CN RoW around it. They didn't actually want it there, of course, they just wanted to be able to make permitting in impossible nightmare. The lawyer, while very dramatic and gave great sound bites for the press, didn't do them any favours as he was clearly not familiar with how the hearings format worked. Notable quotes from the hearing were along the lines of "We all learned in first year law school you don't get to introduce new evidence during closing statements" and "This isn't an episode of Columbo."

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This pipe still hasn't been fully laid yet?

It basically is. There is one HDD pullback and a couple of minor road crossings left, maybe 3km total.

[msommers]

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TThe lawyer, while very dramatic and gave great sound bites for the press, didn't do them any favours as he was clearly not familiar with how the hearings format worked. Notable quotes from the hearing were along the lines of "We all learned in first year law school you don't get to introduce new evidence during closing statements" and "This isn't an episode of Columbo."

God I hope they video recorded this and it's publically available

[schurchill39]

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The band didn't totally get their way on that. TMEP implemented the Coldwater Reroute a few years back that avoided the vast majority of their territory (and the associated payments), that's a major reason why they're so butthurt now.

True, line 2 was rerouted and they wanted to re-route line 1 but that was shot down. They were such pains in the ass that the new line took an entirely different mountain range to avoid them so they doubled down on their "whoa as me" media tour.

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It basically is. There is one HDD pullback and a couple of minor road crossings left, maybe 3km total.

Then some hydro testing and 3 months of line fill! Lets goooooooo

[jutes]

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You know. There is a certain politically incorrect phrase about their people they seem keen to live up too on this one lol

[BerserkerCatSplat]

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God I hope they video recorded this and it's publically available

Audio and transcript on CER site but no video as far as I know. Would take some digging as it was years ago and it would have just been catalogued via hearing number.

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True, line 2 was rerouted and they wanted to re-route line 1 but that was shot down. They were such pains in the ass that the new line took an entirely different mountain range to avoid them so they doubled down on their "whoa as me" media tour.

Yeah pretty much, no chance Line 1 was getting relocated so they fired up the pity party.

[BerserkerCatSplat]

https://www.reuters.com/sustainabili...ck-2023-12-14/

Well since TMEP is in the news again...

The real story here is that TMEP senior management wants the line officially completed this calendar year, hell or high water. I would assume they have some kind of performance bonuses on the line here, as they are really making mountains out of molehills to try to convince the CER to let them cut corners. The HDD in question has been steadily progressing 24h/day for about a year now - the hard rock, fractures, and water ingress have been present and managed that entire time. Nothing about the drill conditions have materially changed.

Putting in the 30" won't restrict flow at present, but when they go to increase the line capacity by ~50% in the near future, they will have to spend another hundred million dollars to install 36" in this area and then abandon the 30". TMEP senior management knows they will be long gone by that point so it's not their problem. The change to 30" will only save about 4 weeks of construction schedule.

It's been interesting seeing what gets said in the media and press releases compared to what I hear from people on the project.

[schurchill39]

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https://www.reuters.com/sustainabili...ck-2023-12-14/

Well since TMEP is in the news again...

The real story here is that TMEP senior management wants the line officially completed this calendar year, hell or high water. I would assume they have some kind of performance bonuses on the line here, as they are really making mountains out of molehills to try to convince the CER to let them cut corners. The HDD in question has been steadily progressing 24h/day for about a year now - the hard rock, fractures, and water ingress have been present and managed that entire time. Nothing about the drill conditions have materially changed.

Putting in the 30" won't restrict flow at present, but when they go to increase the line capacity by ~50% in the near future, they will have to spend another hundred million dollars to install 36" in this area and then abandon the 30". TMEP senior management knows they will be long gone by that point so it's not their problem. The change to 30" will only save about 4 weeks of construction schedule.

It's been interesting seeing what gets said in the media and press releases compared to what I hear from people on the project.

I think the new CEO really hung her hat on 2023 completion date from her first day there so the internal pressure seems to be pretty intense. Hell they just handed out the comemorative coins! You don't want to make a liar our of the comemorative coins do you?!

[OTown]

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math is racist

fyp

[rage2]

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You know. There is a certain politically incorrect phrase about their people they seem keen to live up too on this one lol

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[SkiBum5.0]

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https://www.reuters.com/sustainabili...ck-2023-12-14/

Well since TMEP is in the news again...

The real story here is that TMEP senior management wants the line officially completed this calendar year, hell or high water. I would assume they have some kind of performance bonuses on the line here, as they are really making mountains out of molehills to try to convince the CER to let them cut corners. The HDD in question has been steadily progressing 24h/day for about a year now - the hard rock, fractures, and water ingress have been present and managed that entire time. Nothing about the drill conditions have materially changed.

Putting in the 30" won't restrict flow at present, but when they go to increase the line capacity by ~50% in the near future, they will have to spend another hundred million dollars to install 36" in this area and then abandon the 30". TMEP senior management knows they will be long gone by that point so it's not their problem. The change to 30" will only save about 4 weeks of construction schedule.

It's been interesting seeing what gets said in the media and press releases compared to what I hear from people on the project.

I’m hesitant to say you are wrong, but the issues they are facing on the remaining 2.9km stretch are a near show stopper and are heavily related to water ingress during drilling, limiting their ability to clear product. Also, CER’s ruling is centered around a piece of technology needed to step the pipe from 36-30-36. Technology needed after the pipe is installed and related to maintenance.

[schurchill39]

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I’m hesitant to say you are wrong, but the issues they are facing on the remaining 2.9km stretch are a near show stopper and are heavily related to water ingress during drilling, limiting their ability to clear product. Also, CER’s ruling is centered around a piece of technology needed to step the pipe from 36-30-36. Technology needed after the pipe is installed and related to maintenance.

They proposed a slightly different route but the natives shot that down. In a push by senior management to get it done they suggested going down to 30" pipe in their current approved route but then that brings in maintenance and future capacity issue as it would be a bandaid to get it running but not something sustainable long term as @BerserkerCatSplat said. THey've been dealing with fractures and water ingress the whole expansion project and have been able to manage it but to do that it takes time. Its a real cluster fuck as it sits right now but they've already given everyone their comemorative coins so in their minds its as good as done.

[BerserkerCatSplat]

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I’m hesitant to say you are wrong, but the issues they are facing on the remaining 2.9km stretch are a near show stopper and are heavily related to water ingress during drilling, limiting their ability to clear product. Also, CER’s ruling is centered around a piece of technology needed to step the pipe from 36-30-36. Technology needed after the pipe is installed and related to maintenance.

They have had water ingress on that drill since the original pilot hole, Direct went down with packers and cemented in the fractures to reduce the flow way back at the beginning and that was very effective - cut ingress by about 75% from what I was told and it's been pretty consistent ever since. Water was always in the cards at that crossing, the crossing was originally moved from HDD to an open cut on the far side of the highway due to the geotech firm raising concerns about artesian pressure. As @schurchill39 mentioned, they ran into problems with native consultations (and railway RoWs there) and had to go back to HDD or D&B tunnel on the east side.

It was a challenging HDD from the get-go (if you ever get a chance to drive by it, check out the massive entry pad) but materially there is no real difference between the 42" ream they've already done and the 48" final for the 36" pipe. They've already done 2/3 of the 48" ream anyway, it's just the bottom tangent left to be completed. Of course there's never zero risk that finishing the ream could cause a failure, but TMEP was entirely happy to finish the 48" ream until the CER made a decision on a different part of the project that put the HDD on the critical path - and now suddenly it's super high risk! Doesn't pass the sniff test for me.

There was a lot going on behind the scenes of the CER ruling, from what I hear. My sense is that TMEP did themselves no favours with how they handled it.

[msommers]

You guys have lost me. Am I supposed to be outraged or not?!

[ExtraSlow]

Always

[JfuckinC]

https://docs2.cer-rec.gc.ca/ll-eng/l...2863&vernum=-2

For those interested in what they’re talking about lol

I like my large bore above ground pipelines, much less fracturing and water ingress..