Governments of Canada and B.C. Guilty of “Project Creep” and “Project Splitting”and Ignoring Public Submissions

Tilbury LNG Comments Off

A press release from the Boundary Bay Conservation Committee

Do you want dangerous LNG Tankers daily on the Fraser River, in Burrard Inlet, and through the
Salish Sea?

Over a thousand public submissions voicing concerns have been ignored and buried.

Ignoring due, and legal, process, the Governments of Canada and B.C. refuse to appropriately
call for a federal Review Panel Environmental Assessment of plans for massive, full-scale LNG
operations, including an LNG Marine Terminal, at Tilbury Island, Delta.

Through a sneaky process called “Project Creep”, the Governments of Canada and B.C. have
allowed a small LNG operation at Tilbury Island to gradually expand without any environmental
assessments.

In 2015, the federal National Energy Board granted Tilbury LNG a licence to export 3.5 million
tonnes of LNG annually. Through Orders-in-Council in 20134 and 20145, the B.C. Government
permitted a 46-times increase in liquefaction and a new storage tank that almost tripled LNG
storage capacity.

Now the Governments are saying plans for a massive increase to full-scale LNG liquefaction and
storage is a separate project from the planned LNG marine terminal on the adjacent property,
with the same project owner, FortisBC. This Project-Splitting is to avoid the highest level of
assessment, a federal Review Panel Environmental Assessment. The projects are interdependent
with plans for LNG tankers daily transporting Tilbury LNG for local bunkering and for export.

The federal government has permitted project-splitting with two B.C Substitution Environmental
Assessments thereby avoiding credible accountability to federal energy, shipping, safety, and
environmental protection laws.

Plans for the LNG Marine Terminal contravene international safety standards published by the
Society of International Gas Tanker and Terminal Operators. These standards warn against
locating very hazardous LNG Terminals and related tanker traffic in narrow, winding rivers, and
highly populated areas such as Richmond and Delta.

Over 1,000 public submissions in May-June, 2015, stating these concerns, were not posted, or
incorporated, in the assessment of the Tilbury Marine Terminal. It was never disclosed that the
public clearly did not trust the B.C. Substitution process and called for a federal Review Panel
Assessment of all Tilbury LNG operations.

This highly hazardous project destroys critical habitat, and threatens human lives in communities
of the lower Fraser; around the bunkering facilities in Burrard Inlet; and along the shipping
routes through the Salish Sea. The public submitted concerns and governments buried them.

Click here for a PDF version of this document, which includes footnotes and a map of the hazard zone.

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