South Korean pension plan takes part ownership of controversial Coastal GasLink pipeline
Credit to Author: David Carrigg| Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2020 02:22:09 +0000
A $6.6 billion natural gas pipeline being pushed through Wet’suwet’en Nation territorial lands in Northern B.C. has been partly sold to a consortium including a South Korean pension plan.
In a businesswire release, Global investment firm KKR stated that it had bought a 65 per cent stake in the Coastal GasLink Pipeline Project, “primarily through a separately managed infrastructure account in partnership with the National Pension Service of Korea.”
The partnership bought the stake from TC Energy Corporation, a Calgary-based company selected by LNG Canada in 2012 to design, build and operate a pipeline from Dawson Creek to Kitimat. The $40 billion LNG Canada plant in Kitimat is under construction.
Brandon Freiman, head of North American Infrastructure at KKR, said the Coastal GasLink purchase was the third investment in infrastructure in Canada’s natural gas industry.
A map showing the route of the Coastal GasLink project taken from a Dec. 16, 2019 project update issued by Coastal GasLink Pipeline Project and TC Energy.
It is also a project at the centre of a standoff between hereditary chiefs from the Wet’suwet’en Nation and Coastal GasLink, backed by the RCMP.
The RCMP on Monday blocked access to three Wet’suwet’en camps (one permanent) along the Morice West Forest Service Road (west of Houston) that are blocking Coastal GasLink from accessing its work site further up the one-way road.
The issue has been simmering since last January when the RCMP (acting on a court injunction guaranteeing workers access to the road) arrested 14 people after storming the Gidimt’en checkpoint military style. The hereditary chiefs then signed an agreement allowing the pipeline workers temporary access.
That was revoked on Jan 3, 2020, after which Coastal GasLink workers agreed to leave the site.
However, another court injunction was obtained by the pipeline builder and the RCMP and hereditary chiefs are now negotiating a way to avoid a violent conflict at the site.
Cody Merriman a supporter of the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs and who opposes the Coastal GasLink pipeline helps to build a support station at kilometre 39 near the Gidimt’en checkpoint near Houston B.C., on Wednesday January 8, 2020.
On Tuesday, Coastal GasLink president David Pfeiffer said he wanted to meet with the Wet’suwet’en Nation hereditary clan chiefs.
Na’moks, who leads one of five clans of the Wet’suwet’en Nation, said that the chiefs won’t meet with industry representatives, only “decision makers” in the provincial and federal governments and RCMP leadership.
Coastal GasLink has signed agreements with all 20 elected First Nations along the pipeline route, including elected Wet’suwet’en councils that have authority on reserves, but the hereditary clan chiefs say no one is allowed on their broader 22,000-square kilometre territory without their consent.
Premier John Horgan said Monday the pipeline was vital to the region’s economic future and will be built despite the Wet’suwet’en chiefs’ objections, adding that the courts have ruled in favour of the project.
“Things are quite tense,” Na’moks said Tuesday, promising that pipeline opponents will remain peaceful.
On Wednesday, the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, B.C. Government and Service Employees’ Union and UBC School of Law Professor Margot Young will hold a press conference to protest the RCMP’s exclusion zone.
— with files from Canadian Press
Na’moks (centre), a spokesman for the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs.