Ok here's what I don't get about this whole Keystone XL Pipeline project...

[suffragette]

9. Conservatives in Canada have been pushing for pipelines on west coast.

Environmentalists, western First Nations and BC liberals have been fighting, with protests and now with lawsuits.

Here's a link with several articles about Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline plans and protests:
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/news/enbridge-northern-gateway-pipeline/

Here's some info from an article about the expansion of the Kinder Morgan pipeline:

http://www.vancouverobserver.com/news/former-bc-hydro-ceo-calls-neb-industry-captured-pulls-out-kinder-morgan-hearings

"In my view the NEB hearing process is a rigged game," Eliesen told The Vancouver Observer by the phone. "In the past, there was a more objective evaluation of projects that would come forward...but it's reached a stage where the NEB is not interested in the public interest, and more interested in facilitating the infrastructure for the oil and gas industry."

Eliesen criticized numerous aspects of the NEB's hearing for Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. The Texas-based pipeline giant is applying to expand its existing 60-year-old Trans Mountain pipeline to carry 890,000 barrels of diluted bitumen from Edmonton, Alberta to Burnaby, B.C.

The controversial application has been opposed by both city councils of Burnaby and Vancouver, as well as some citizen groups, due in part to a six-fold increase of oil tankers in the Burrard Inlet that the pipeline expansion will bring.

Eliesen said he was "dismayed" to see that that the NEB has dropped oral cross-examination of proponents, which he said was a "critical" part of oil pipeline hearings in previous years. He also questioned why Kinder Morgan was not required to respond to 2,000 questions submitted by Intervenors, with the NEB rejecting 95 per cent of the queries.

This is a cross border issue:

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/10/27/coast-salish-unite-against-tripling-capacity-kinder-morgan-tar-sands-pipeline-157543

Their nearly 60,000 people have lived along the coasts of Oregon and Washington State, and in British Columbia, Canada for more than 10,000 years. They are united by language, culture and the Salish Sea.

And now, in addition, they are united in their opposition to oil giant Kinder Morgan’s proposed $5.4 billion expansion of its existing Trans Mountain tar sands oil pipeline, which links the Alberta oil sands fields to a shipping terminal in Burnaby, near Vancouver, B.C. The new pipeline would nearly triple the capacity of the existing pipeline from 300,000 barrels per day to 890,000, increasing by sevenfold the number of tankers carrying diluted tar sands bitumen through the Salish Sea in Washington and Canada.
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At the proposed coal terminal at the Puget Sound’s Cherry Point site, where herring populations have plummeted, local herring experts associated ship traffic, and the threat of invasive species tagging along with the shipping vessels as risks to the fish, Sightline Daily reported last year.

Approving the pipeline would mean a massive increase in tanker loadings that would put tribal fishers at risk, “not to mention drastically increase the chance of a catastrophic oil spill,” said Glen Gobin, a member of the Tulalip board of directors, to the NEB panel.

I'm in Seattle and the pressure to increase coal trains here is an important issue. I've posted a bit about it before. Here's one from this summer:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3208567