Teck withdraws focus for $20B Frontier oilsands mine

Vancouver-based Teck Resources Ltd., has cold a focus to build a large oilsands plan in northern Alberta, citing a ongoing plead over meridian process in Canada.

The sovereign supervision was slated to make a preference this week on possibly to approve a $20.6-billion, 260,000-barrel-per-day Frontier. 

Sources tighten to a plan reliable to CBC News a focus was withdrawn. 

The association pronounced it will take a $1.13-billion writedown on a project, that it said would have combined 7,000 construction jobs, 2,500 handling jobs, and brought in some-more than $70 billion in supervision revenue.

“We are unhappy to have arrived during this point,” CEO and boss Don Lindsay wrote in a minute addressed to sovereign Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson, posted to a company’s website Sunday evening.

“Teck put brazen a socially and environmentally obliged plan that was attention heading and had a intensity to emanate poignant mercantile advantages for Canadians.”

Lindsay wrote that business wish policies that determine apparatus expansion and meridian change — something he pronounced a segment has nonetheless to achieve, yet he did not explain if a segment he was referring to was Alberta or Canada.

“Unfortunately, a flourishing plead around this emanate has placed Frontier and a association precisely during a sequence of most broader issues that need to be resolved. In that context, it is now transparent that there is no constructive trail brazen for a project,” he wrote.

Cabinet was to decide this week

But Lindsay stressed a association isn’t shying divided from controversy.

“The inlet of a business dictates that a outspoken minority will roughly fundamentally conflict specific developments. We are prepared to face that arrange of opposition,” he wrote.

Following Teck’s announcement, Wilkinson and Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan reliable in a statement that cupboard will no longer be creation a preference on a project.

“As Teck has righteously forked out, and as many in a attention know, tellurian investors and consumers are increasingly looking for a cleanest products accessible and tolerable apparatus development,” a matter read.

Fourteen First Nations and Metis communities sealed appearance agreements with a association on a mine, and a plan was available capitulation from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government, that had been approaching by a finish of a month.

Cabinet was approaching to plead a plan during a assembly on Tuesday. It had until a finish of a week to make a decision, yet it could have motionless to lift that deadline back.

Wilkinson has been signalling for weeks that cabinet’s contention would embody a fact that Alberta has not set specific hothouse gas emissions reductions targets, and in new days privately asked a Alberta supervision to make a top on emissions from a oilsands.

Ottawa ‘let us down,’ says Kenney

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney described Teck’s proclamation as a grave beating for Albertans, yet pronounced it didn’t come as a surprise. 

“It is what happens when governments miss a bravery to urge a interests of Canadians in a face of a belligerent minority,” Kenney pronounced in an emailed statement, indicating to what he described as weeks of sovereign hesitancy on blockades in oneness with those against a healthy gas tube due by Coastal GasLink in northern B.C.

The premier wrote that a range concluded to sovereign requests and conditions for commendatory a project.

“The factors that led to a today’s preference serve break inhabitant unity.… We did a part, yet a sovereign government’s inability to communicate a transparent or one position let us, and Teck, down,” Kenney said.

Pressure still on Liberals, says domestic scientist

In a statement, a Prime Minister’s Office pronounced Trudeau spoke with Kenney Sunday dusk to plead Teck’s decision, and a ongoing railway blockades.

“The Prime Minister validated a Government of Canada’s joining to operative with Alberta and a apparatus zone to keep formulating good jobs and to safeguard clean, tolerable expansion for Canadians,” a matter said.

Duane Bratt, a domestic scientist during Mount Royal University in Calgary, pronounced Teck’s preference to lift a focus won’t soothe vigour on a Liberal supervision from critics.

He pronounced even yet Teck’s letter did not lay censure on a primary minister, he anticipates it will be interpreted that approach by his domestic opponents as partial of a “anti-Trudeau … anti-Liberal discussion.”

“This will only be rolled in as partial of that narrative,” Bratt said. 

Sunday’s proclamation came only hours after a Alberta supervision announced it had struck deals with dual First Nations over a due project, that would have been located 110 kilometres north of Fort McMurray. 

The range pronounced a agreements with the Mikisew Cree and Athabasca Chipewyan First Nations addressed bison and caribou habitats and stable Wood Buffalo National Park. 

Ron Quintal, president of a Fort McKay Métis, one of 14 First Nations and Métis communities in foster of a project, pronounced a withdrawal is a “black eye” for Canada.

But Bill Loutitt, CEO of McMurray Métis, said while his village upheld a application, a preference to repel was a scold one.

“We know Teck as a on-going association and believer of a Indigenous communities in Wood Buffalo, yet tonight’s matter clearly shows that Teck acted in a best interests of Canadians, as they always have,” he said.

Project’s mercantile viability questioned

In Jul 2019, a joint federal-provincial examination row endorsed a cave be approved, observant a mercantile advantages outweighed what it described as significant adverse environmental impacts. 

However, a Jan news from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis done a box that Teck’s focus showed a “reckless negligence for a contribution per oil prices in Canada.”

The joint-review row relied on a long-term oil cost projection of some-more than $95 US per tub supposing by Teck, a IEEFA wrote, about $40 US aloft than stream prices and around $20 US aloft than other forecasts.

On Friday, Teck expelled unsatisfactory fourth entertain results, observant tellurian mercantile uncertainty negatively impacted commodity prices.

The plan was also approaching to furnish about 4 million tonnes of hothouse gas emissions per year over a 40 year lifespan, and disturb 292 block kilometres of primitive wetlands and boreal timberland — nonetheless that whole area wouldn’t be mined during once.

Greenpeace applauds decision

“The guarantee of Canada’s intensity will not be satisfied until governments can strech agreement around how meridian process considerations will be addressed in a context of destiny obliged appetite zone development,” Lindsay wrote. “Without clarity on this vicious question, a conditions that has faced Frontier will be faced by destiny projects and it will be unequivocally formidable to attract destiny investment, possibly domestic or foreign.”

Energy consultant Greg Stringham, who has worked for the industry, supervision and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, pronounced parsimonious economics and augmenting risks put Teck during a centre of plead around appetite projects.

“And they’re going, good … do they wish to be a straw that breaks a process camel’s back?” he pronounced in an interview.

Keith Stewart, comparison appetite researcher with Greenpeace Canada, pronounced he was astounded by Teck’s preference to repel a project, yet believes it is the right one.

“This plan never done mercantile sense; it didn’t make meridian sense; it wasn’t unequivocally going to happen,” Stewart told CBC News.

“This was a plan that competence have done clarity 10 years ago. It positively doesn’t today,” he said.

Read Teck’s minute to a sourroundings apportion below: 

Article source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/teck-frontier-1.5473370?cmp=rss