More Than 50 Seek Standing in NEB’s CGL Review

More than 50 individuals and organisations are seeking standing in the jurisdictional review by the National Energy Board (NEB) of TransCanada’s Coastal GasLink (CGL) pipeline, according to a count of submissions filed with the regulator at the October 29 deadline.

Included among those seeking standing are BC environmentalist Michael Sawyer, whose application to the NEB prompted the review, Green Party of Canada leader Elizabeth May, all five joint venture partners in the LNG Canada liquefaction project at Kitimat which will be the western terminus of CGL, LNG Canada itself and numerous First Nations and communities along the route of the 670-km pipeline.

Environmental groups Ecojustice, Sierra Club of BC, Wilderness Committee and Stand.earth are also seeking standing, as are the attorneys general of Canada, BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan. CGL has already been deemed by the NEB to have standing, and is required to file its comments regarding the requests for standing by November 5.

The requests for standing are the first step in the board’s review into whether CGL – which has already been approved at the provincial level – should instead be federally-regulated by the NEB, under the National Energy Board Act.

Once the board has finalised the list of approved intervenors, it will release a schedule for the review, a board spokesman told NGW.