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Pipeline hearing ignores greater good, N.S. mayor claims
Last Updated: Wednesday, November 8, 2006 | 11:16 AM AT
CBC News

The mayor of Port Hawksbury, N.S., says the National Energy Board is ignoring the stability of the entire region by ignoring the effect of a high-speed natural gas line to the American border on rival projects in Nova Scotia.

Pipeline company Emera is seeking permission from the NEB to build a high-pressure natural gas pipeline from an Irving-Repsol-owned liquid natural gas (LNG) terminal in Mispec, N.B., to the American border.

Billy Joe MacLean attended Tuesday's board hearing in Saint John, and says the board is not considering the good of the entire Maritime region. "It shouldn't be just money. It should be safety. It should have to do with the economy of Atlantic Canada, not just Irving and Repsol and Emera."

Emera's proposed high-speed pipeline would bypass the existing slower pipeline that runs through Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and carry gas directly to the U.S.

A rival company, Anadarko, is working on another LNG proposal in Nova Scotia, near Port Hawksbury.

The project would bring much-needed jobs to the community, and Anadarko wants the New Brunswick plant to hook into the existing natural gas pipeline from Sable Island instead of a so-called "bullet line" directly to the U.S. border.
The National Energy Board has ruled it will not consider what effect a natural gas pipeline in Saint John would have on other proposed projects in the Maritimes.

Several Nova Scotia companies, along with the Nova Scotia Department of Energy, are intervening in the hearings. The companies represent proposed rival LNG terminal projects in Nova Scotia, which fear competition from the New Brunswick project, and would rather Emera link its pipeline with the existing natural gas line already wending its way through the region.

But MacLean expects the government of Nova Scotia to provide little more than lip service at the hearing, because of its close relationship with Emera, which is the parent company of Nova Scotia's power utility. The mayor won't have a chance to make that point himself. He or his town did not apply for intervener status.

Hearing chair Sheila Leggett ruled Tuesday that the hearing is interested in evidence on the route of the pipeline, not whether it would affect tolls on the line already transporting natural gas from Sable Island to the United States border.