Where Power Comes to Matter: the Energy East Pipeline and the Politics of Determinacy
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Where Power Comes to Matter: The Energy East Pipeline and the Politics of Determinacy Élie Jalbert A Thesis in The Department of Sociology and Anthropology Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (Anthropology) at Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada August 2018 © Élie Jalbert 2018 CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY School of Graduate Studies This is to certify that the thesis prepared By: Élie Jalbert Entitled: Where Power Comes to Matter: The Energy East Pipeline and the Politics of Determinacy and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts (Anthropology) complies with the regulations of the University and meets the accepted standards with respect to originality and quality. Signed by the final examining committee: ______________________________________ Chair ______________________________________Christine Jourdan Examiner Bart Simon ______________________________________ Examiner Jean-Philippe Warren ______________________________________ Thesis Supervisor(s) Kregg Hetherington _______________________________________ Approved by ____________________________________________________ Chair of Department or Graduate Program Director Dean, Date ________________________________________________ Abstract Where Power Comes to Matter: The Energy East Pipeline and the Politics of Determinacy Élie Jalbert Concordia University, 2018 This thesis is about the controversies that engulfed TransCanada's Energy East pipeline project from the moment it emerged into the public sphere in 2013, and which led to its ultimate demise in 2017. As such, it is an investigation into how power, sovereignty, and agency were mobilized in the negotiation of a pipeline project in Canada. In the contemporary political and environmental climate, pipeline projects have had a rough go of it. Sweeping changes made to the legislative and regulatory framework by the Conservative federal government in 2012 were intended to expedite their approval but appear to have had a contrary effect. Rather than provide certainty to proponents, the changes further undermined the decisional infrastructure and distribution of constitutional authority. In this context, the contest has been less about substantive deliberation than infrastructural determination, as normative decisional frameworks became further unsettled. The controversy opened up a wide range of questions, such as: Who had power to decide? Which jurisdictions applied? How should democratic participation be delineated? Who was the public that the regulator purportedly spoke for? How were decisions justified? What counted as evidence? In other words, it was as much about which projects might be considered as being in the "national" interest as it was about the procedural and epistemological channels through which this determination should be made. My observation has been that stuck between growth imperatives, vested interests, democratic expectations, and a growing recognition of impending environmental crisis, governments and companies like TransCanada prefer determinate power relations: a clear and exclusive allocation of decision-making authority. They also prefer indeterminate substantive guidelines, writing as much discretionary power into the law as possible and leaving open the possibility of strict environmental protections in general while allowing for exceptions in the specific. Environmental assessment reformists, on the other hand, prefer indeterminate power — a shared and inclusive distribution of decision-making power — and determinate substantive iii legal guidelines. What substantive indeterminacy combined with centralized, exclusive power makes possible is framing contingent transgressions of overall political goals as exceptional. In the controversy over TransCanada’s pipeline project, the public was not just pushing back against oil and its potentially devastating effects. They were also pushing back against a regulatory infrastructure which evacuated too much of its political agency and normalized the particular interests of some as the inevitable future for all. iv Acknowledgements I want to thank the participants who agreed to donate hours of their time and passion to the benefit of my education and understanding. Their generosity baffles me to this day. I am deeply grateful to my supervisor, Kregg Hetherington, who's profound insights, intellectual rigor, pedagogical proficiency, and theoretical affinities initiated an intellectual revolution for me that I continue to grapple with. His particular blend of collegial amicability and critical ruthlessness has provided just the right amount of whiplash to force me out of analytic complacency. Lastly, I want to thank the interlocutors I have had the benefit of exchanging with over these past few years, especially within the Infrastructure and Environment Workgroup at Concordia, who's own research has provided a lasting source of inspiration. I am grateful for their patience and forbearance through my continued attempts at shedding more layers of discursive obfuscation than I am comfortable to acknowledge. v Table of Contents Introduction: Pipeline Woes 1 Energy East and the oil market 1 Bitumen 3 Pipeline politics and a legislative fix 5 Energy East — framing a pipeline 6 Energy East — formulating a research 8 A note on theory 13 Quebec and hydrocarbon development 21 Quebec and the Energy East pipeline 24 Power, sovereignty, and political agency 28 Conclusion 30 Chapter 1: A Brief History of Pipeline Development 35 Introduction 35 In the beginning… 38 Still in the beginning… the NEB 47 From nation to market, and through environmental intrusion 56 environment, the Environment, and political agency 65 Conclusion 70 Chapter 2: Energy East as a Matter of Federal Concern 77 Introduction 77 From gas to oil 80 The indeterminacy of aspirational projects 84 The pipeline as a political object 88 “Speak vert!” 94 Public engagement and the appearance of bias 97 Development, the environment, and the public interest 101 A change in government 113 Conclusion 118 vi Chapter 3: Energy East as a Matter of Municipal Concern 119 Introduction 119 Indeterminacy and the politics of determination 119 Contested publics 124 Truth and the legibility of objects 127 Evidence, deliberation, and personification 131 Pipelines and municipal planning 135 Municipal opposition and environmental concerns 139 Conclusion 145 Chapter 4: Energy East as a Matter of Provincial Concern 147 The environment and provincial sovereignty 147 Agency, substance, and the indeterminacies of political infrastructure 151 Procedural temporality and the visibility of specificity 154 Facts, values, and generating social licence 156 Indeterminacy and municipal empowerment 159 Discounted agency 166 A tale of two BAPEs and the indeterminacy of legal infrastructure 170 Conclusion: Indeterminacy and the Locus of Constitution 175 Bibliography 183 vii viii Introduction: Pipeline Woes This research is about the Energy East Pipeline Project and the controversy that arose around its formulation and regulatory assessment, especially in the province of Quebec. In this introduction, I will provide an overview of this controversy, contextualize the project within its broader economic and political trajectory, provide some sense of the analytic framework and methodology that have informed my research, and give a brief summary of how this thesis is structured. In the following chapters, I will return in greater detail to all of the elements discussed below. So while the scope may seem dizzying at first, I encourage the reader to let familiarity build through the successive iterations built into my narrative, rather than attempt to construe and maintain a cogent picture from the start. Energy East and the oil market Energy East was a project proposed in 2013 by TransCanada — a North American energy infrastructure company — to carry oil from delivery points in Alberta and Saskatchewan to refineries in Montreal and Lévis, in the province of Quebec, and to a refinery and export terminal in Saint John, New Brunswick. Overall, the pipeline would span some 4600 km, and its 42-inch diameter pipe would have a carrying capacity of 1.1 million barrels of crude oil per day. To put this in perspective, the Alberta Energy Regulator estimated oil sands production in 2014 to have reached 2.3 million bbl/d,1 with total proven reserves of 166 billion barrels. According to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, total oil production in Canada for that year — i.e. of tar sands and conventional, lighter crude combined — was 3.7 million bbl/d. An oft- cited forecast vehicle, the National Energy Board’s (NEB) Canada’s Energy Future, predicted in 2016 that oil production would grow to 4.9 million bbl/d in 2020, and to 6 million in 2040. It is interesting to put those numbers in context as well.2 2014 was the end of a 12-year climb in oil prices that had a profound impact on the hydrocarbon economy. The West Texas 1 bbl/d is the common abbreviation used for "barrels per day." One barrel is equivalent to 159 litres, or 42 gallons (BusinessDictionary.com 2018). A common explanation for the double b abbreviation is that it stands for “blue barrels,” the color Standard Oil used to paint its barrels. Some have challenged this, pointing to the presence of the abbreviation on documents prior to the oil industry. See the post “History of the 42-Gallon Oil Barrel” on the site of the American Oil & Gas Historical Society: https://aoghs.org/transportation/history-of-the-42-gallon-oil-