A quiet announcement in the Canadian Gazette has removed a large, water-breaching marine obstacle from the path of a pipeline and oil super port that Canada’s government wants to build on the north coast of British Columbia.

The government has stripped the North Pacific humpback whale of its “threatened” status under Canada’s Species At Risk Act (SARA).

In dry bureaucratic language, the humpback whales would no longer be “subjected to the general prohibitions set out in SARA nor would critical habitat be required to be legally protected under SARA.” Under Species At Risk, no part of critical habitat may be destroyed.

A federal review panel is expected to OK the 1,100-kilometer (650 mile) pipeline in June. It would carry oil from Alberta’s tar sands project to the West Coast, presumably for export to Asia.

The Vancouver Sun reported:

“The decision removed a major legal hurdle that the environmental group Ecojustice said stood in the way of the $7.9 billion Northern Gateway Pipeline project that would bring 550,000 barrels of diluted bitumen crude from Alberta to Kitimat.”

“Ecojustice said in December that a federal review panel’s conditional approval of the project flies in the face of the humpback’s protections under federal legislation.”

Northern Gateway is one of two huge pipeline projects that are planned to carry Alberta tar sands oil to West Coast ports.

The other is a planned tripling of capacity of the TransMountain Pipeline, which carries oil from Alberta to a refinery in Burnaby, just east of Vancouver.

If that project goes through, 34 tankers a month would traverse international waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Haro Strait. Currently, the Burnaby refinery is visited by five tankers each month.

The tankers would steam close by major beauty spots in America’s newly designated San Juan Islands National Monument, notably Turn Point on Stuart Island and Patos Island, northernmost in the San Juans.

Environmental protection means less in Canada than in the United States.

The British Columbia government has allowed pipeline owner Kinder Morgan Canada Ltd., part of the big Houston-based pipeline conglomerate, to conducts pipeline research in several B.C. provincial parks. The research is being done under a permit that supposedly allows research for the study of how to better protect the parks.

B.C. Premier Christie Clark is a champion of the energy industry, who has promoted exports of liquefied natural gas as key to the province’s economic future.