The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

As expected, the Joint Review Panel of the National Energy Board and the Minister of the Environment gave provisional approval to Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline on Thursday.

In political terms, that’s a necessary step, even if the government has the power to overrule the JRP. However JRP — or even Cabinet — approval is far from a guarantee that the line will be built.

Wednesday, Financial Post’s Claudia Cattaneo quoted a young man named Ben West, who declared “The Enbridge line will never be completed.” Who is Mr. West? And why should we care what he says? He is the Tar Sands Campaign Director of ForestEthics Advocacy, which is a subsidiary of San Francisco-based environmental NGO ForestEthics. According to his Web profile, he is “passionate” about “environmental justice, and ecological literacy,” and in his spare time is a “juggler, Twitter addict … and wannabe comedian.”

Mr. West is important because — despite his juggling and comedic aspirations — he is representative of a powerful radical minority that is intent on holding up development of the oil sands.

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The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Let’s start at the beginning. Canada is producing more oil and gas than ever before, far more than can be used here at home. The long-running development of the Western Canadian oil patch is predicated on much of that resource being exported.

In the case of oil, growing quantities of it are moving by railway, but those virtual pipelines of tanker cars are generally not as safe or as efficient as actual pipelines. That’s why a series of pipe proposals are on the table, heading south, east and west. For Canada’s oil to get to markets at home and overseas, many of these pipelines must be built. The question is not “if.” It is where and how and under what environmental rules.

Which brings us to Enbridge Inc.’s Northern Gateway pipeline proposal. On Thursday afternoon, the federal joint review panel recommended that it be given the green light, subject to 209 conditions. The 1,178-kilometre project aims to move 525,000 barrels of crude from Alberta, across northern British Columbia to the port of Kitimat. It will then be put on tankers – about 220 a year – which will travel down the Douglas Channel and across the Pacific to Asia.

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The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

OTTAWA AND VANCOUVER — The National Energy Board has given a conditional green light to the Northern Gateway pipeline project, handing off to Prime Minister Stephen Harper a crucial decision that threatens to intensify aboriginal opposition and become a political flashpoint in the next federal election.

In a report Thursday, an NEB review panel recommended that Ottawa approve the $6.5-billion pipeline and crude supertanker terminal in Kitimat,. B.C., once the government and Enbridge Inc. have addressed the 209 environmental, safety and financial conditions set down by the panel. The pipeline would deliver 520,000 barrels a day of oil sands bitumen to the British Columbia coast, opening new markets for the Alberta-based oil industry.

“Opening Pacific Basin markets is important to the Canadian economy and society,” the panel said in a news release. “After weighing all the oral and written evidence, the panel found that Canada and Canadians would be better off with the Enbridge Northern Gateway project than without it.”

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