Abstract
The northwest region of British Columbia, Canada has been at the center of multiple fossil fuel projects over the past decade as corporations have sought access to the coastline in order to export their products. Analyzing the dynamics of how and why groups and communities responded to two specific fossil fuel projects, we address the question: why did the "unlikely alliance" formed at the local level in northwest B.C. to resist the Enbridge oil pipeline project fracture just a few years later in the case of the LNG Canada/Coastal GasLink Liquefied Natural Gas project and pipeline project? We argue that the fracturing arose in part because of historic vulnerabilities of the resource periphery, and the legacy of settler colonial governance but also because state and corporate actors used their powers to increase the financial incentives for communities to support LNG projects, to change the discourse on fossil fuels by promoting the concept of LNG as "clean"energy, deflecting attention from the fracking of natural gas, and to isolate environmental organizations by casting them as "outsiders." The findings contribute to the literature by analyzing the reasons not only for the formation but also for the fragility and fracturing of alliances in contemporary energy politics.
Highlights
The northwest region of British Columbia (B.C.), Canada has been at the center of multiple fossil fuel projects over the past decade and a half, as oil and gas exporters have sought access to the coastline for export
We focus on two large projects, the Enbridge Northern Gateway Oil pipeline and the Shell/TC Energy liquified natural gas (LNG) Canada terminal/Coastal GasLink project
The northwest British Columbia region: a resource periphery with complex settler and Indigenous governance Resource peripheries are generally defined in terms of remoteness from core regions, with their economies dominated by primary industries including mining, oil and gas, fishing and logging (Hayter, Barnes and Bradshaw 2003)
Summary
The northwest region of British Columbia (B.C.), Canada has been at the center of multiple fossil fuel projects over the past decade and a half, as oil and gas exporters have sought access to the coastline for export. In this comparative empirical analysis, we pay particular attention to, and extend, Grossman's (2005, 2017) concept of "unlikely alliances" and we place our study within the context of other research on resistance to fossil fuel development (see, for example, Estes 2019; Powell 2018).. The final section concludes with the implications for local resistance to fossil fuel projects both in the region and beyond
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