‘Native land claims scare the hell out of investors’: energy expert http://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/Environment/2011/05/19/native-land-claims-enbridge-expert/

Fierce First Nations opposition could very well topple Enbridge’s west coast pipeline proposal, a Washington-based energy expert argues.“Native land claims scare the hell out of investors,” Robert Johnson told an Alberta energy conference, according to an Edmonton Journal report. “My level of confidence [in the project] has gone down quite a bit, unfortunately.” Johnson belongs to senior management at Eurasia Group, which claims to be the “world’s leading global political risk research and consulting firm.”

He predicted TransCanada’s Keystone XL proposal, a hotly contested 3,200 km pipeline plunging south from Alberta’s oil sands to Gulf Coast refineries, would be approved by the U.S. State Department later this year.Enbridge’s Northern Gateway proposal, a $5.5 billion pipeline linking northern Alberta to Asian markets, is a much tougher sell, he said. “You saw the protests at [Enbridge’s] annual general meeting, the native groups saying it’s not about money,” Johnson said. “Gateway could be quite a while.”

[ONLY BECAUSE ITS INDIGENOUS OPPOSITION IN NORTH WICH WILL GET MORE MEDIA ATTENTION,AND SHINE LIGHT ON THE NEGATIVE IMPACT BY THE PROJECTS,HOWEVER,WHEN THESE SAME MINING AND ENERGY CORPORATIONS ARE IN THIRD WORLD,AND DONT FEAR MUCH SPOTLIGHT,THEN THEY GO AND TRAMPLE,AND RUN RIGHT OVER THE INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES...SEE MY ANTI MINING SECTION ARCHIVES..