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Line 5 Pipeline Politics


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A couple of points from the American perspective:

1)  Biden has nothing to gain by opposing Gov. Whitmer's directive, and he knows from decades of experience that the courts move very slowly, assuring that any Line 5 stoppage is only virtue signaling...not going to happen anytime soon.   This political posturing is also very common for Canada's current government.

2) Michigan and Ohio have the most skin in this game, while this story is much lower level noise in the rest of the USA.   The computer hacking of the Colonial Pipeline and resulting stoppage gets a lot more media attention than does Line 5 politics on this side of the border.

3) Enbridge is very vulnerable on this issue because of the Line 6B disaster in 2010 (Kalamazoo River).   The Enbridge Line 3 replacement  project in Minnesota and Wisconsin has been fraught with problems and clashes with many different groups over ground water, easements, permits, etc.    Accordingly, Enbridge has made a bundle plying pipeline projects more easily approved in the United States than through a much more resistant Canada (e.g. Energy East).   Some measure of karma satisfaction is to be had because of this.

4) Canada puts more stock in the notion of "ally" and requisite obligations than does the United States, regardless of the administration in Washington D.C.   The U.S. may be Canada's "closest" ally, but the USA's closest ally is the United Kingdom.   Canadian media does not often reflect this reality, for obvious reasons.

5) Secy Jennifer M. Granholm was born a Canadian but moved to the U.S. at a young age, was educated in the U.S., became a U.S. citizen in 1980, and rose through the Democratic ranks to become the 51st Governor of....Michigan.

In total, this is a delicious political dilemma for the Democratic Party with unrealized potential for economic damage to Canada and several states.   It is yet another example of U.S. domestic politics impacting a Canada that refused to assure energy independence for critical pipeline infrastructure.

I don't think Line 5 will be shut down, but a political price will be paid by those on both sides of the issue...and border.

 

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American politics can turn on a dime....Canada seems to learn and forget this lesson over and over again.   Would be far more practical to assure pipeline independence at home instead of rolling the dice with each foreign (U.S.) administration or state governments.

The proposed TransCanada Energy East pipeline could have completed built by now.

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3 hours ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

American politics can turn on a dime....Canada seems to learn and forget this lesson over and over again.   Would be far more practical to assure pipeline independence at home instead of rolling the dice with each foreign (U.S.) administration or state governments.

The proposed TransCanada Energy East pipeline could have completed built by now.

I couldn’t agree more.  Dependence breeds dependence.  

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