Numerous Changes to Drilling and
Production Regulation, 282/2010
B.C. Reg. 241/2012 made numerous changes to the Drilling and Production Regulation, 282/2010. These changes came into force on August 14, 2012. For more details on these changes please refer to BC Reg. 241/2012.

BC Wants Feds to Beef Up
Environmental Laws, Funding
Ottawa must strengthen regulations and inspection requirements to protect the land and the ocean before BC will support Enbridge's $6-billion Northern Gateway project, BC Environment Minister Terry Lake said Thursday.

He said the federal funds available to clean up marine spills must also increase.

Lake's comments came as the National Energy Board announced stepped-up audits at Enbridge's control centre in Edmonton, and U.S. regulators told the company it could not restart a Wisconsin pipeline following a recent leak until it hired an independent party to supervise a new safety plan. Read the Vancouver Sun article.

BC Pipeline Review Needed to Restore Legal Powers
Province has signed away rights to carry out its own assessment
Last week, NDP leader, Adrian Dix, announced his commitment to a "made in BC" environmental review of the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline. As an adviser to Dix on this issue, Murray Rankin explains the legal considerations behind this decision:

In 2010, the BC Liberals signed an "equivalency agreement" with Ottawa, which said, in effect, that an environmental assessment of the Enbridge pipeline and tanker proposal carried out by the Harper government's joint review panel would constitute a BC environmental assessment as well. View the Times Colonist article and read more here.

Critics Launch Court Action, Release E-mail Scathing
BC's Environmental Assessment Process
BC's environmental assessment process is so flawed it cannot hope to fill the void created by the federal government walking away from assessments of almost 500 projects, critics charged Wednesday, while launching court action and releasing a scathing internal government email.

Ecojustice went to BC Supreme Court seeking a judicial review of the province's failure to conduct a formal environmental assessment on the Holmes hydro power project near McBride. Read more.

Cut More Timber to Fight Pine Beetle,
Help Burns Lake: Government Report
The BC timber industry is at stake and the provincial government and forestry companies are going to have to make changes to stave off a dramatic drop that will come sooner or later, says a new government report released Wednesday. The report [by the BC Timber Supply Committee] says the pine beetle will decimate up to 70 percent of the central Interior's marketable timber by 2021 if the report's 22 recommendations aren't implemented. Read the full Vancouver Sun article.