This morning, opponents of the Kinder Morgan pipeline project have set up a blockade outside its Burnaby shipping facility.

Demonstrators who call themselves the "Justin Trudeau Brigade" are preventing vehicles from entering the Westridge Marine Terminal.

They say they plan to be there for a few hours. The group's name was inspired by Trudeau's statement that "governments grant permits, only communities grant permission".

Last month, Kinder Morgan Canada CEO Ian Anderson said that delays with its Trans Mountain expansion project are costing the company $90 million per month.

Environmental activists hope that protests like the one taking place this morning will persuade the company to cancel it.

Kinder Morgan has already obtained regulatory approval to upgrade the Westridge Marine Terminal at the foot of Bayview Drive to accommodate 34 Aframax-class vessels per month.

The company is expanding the terminal because it plans to triple shipments of diluted bitumen through its Trans Mountain pipeline project.

That will increase the number of tanker shipments by nearly seven times through Burrard Inlet.

But the Justin Trudeau Brigade is claiming that "the proposed pipeline expansion threatens ecologically and economically important marine habitats and imposes serious, life-threatening health and safety risks on human, plant and animal communities". 

"It also violates Canada's responsibility to reduce the consumption of dirty and outdated fuels and instead to invest in clean, sustainable and economically beneficial sources of energy," the group said in a statement distributed to the media.