The Calgary Herald is reporting that the Liberal Government has rejected the Northern Gteway Pipeline proposal which was to send crude tar sands oil through the Bear Rain Forest. Instead they approved the Enbridge line 3 project which would send the tar sands crude oil through an expanded existing line from Hardistry, Alberta to Superior, Wisconsin.
They have also approved the twining of the existing pipeline from Alberta to Burnaby which would increase tanker traffic in the port of Vancouver. I'm not sure what the status of the proposal to pipe Natural Gas to Kitimat is. I got the impression the Liberal Government was OK with that one.
What are we doing with all the petroleum coke that is left over from all the tar sands oil we are currently refining in Vancouver? Are the tankers taking it without refining it? We know that navigating tankers all the way to Kitimat is very problematic.
Some people protest everything. People were even protesting the twining or expansion of the Port Mann bridge. That was ridiculous. People were rightfully concerned about cutting a new pipeline through the Bear Rainforest for toxic tar sands crude. They said no to the proposal. That was a huge victory. Twinning two existing lines is a fair compromise. Protesters who can't accept that are simply unable to compromise anything and don't represent the majority of Canadians.
good.
ReplyDeleteTrudeau is going to ban oil tankers in the north, so that would take care of a lot of problems. As I understand it, there maybe no oil tankers north of Vancouver Island. The problem will be all the oil tankers going through the Port of Vancouver. Instead of the current 5 per month it will be one per day. we can expect there will be a problem at some point.
ReplyDeletethe company plans to expand the storage tank farm up the inlet, not far from SFU. this is a residential area and as they say, one good fire or explosion can destroy a neighbourhood. We do live in an earth quake zone so storage tank farms in an urban area is much to dangerous.
However, expanding that tanker farm will draw a lot of protestors and court cases. It may not get built in our life time.
Alberta wants to sell its tar, on the other hand we in B.C. want to keep clean beaches and our killer whales. There will always be human error and these oil tanker companies want to make a profit. They will move in bad weather, they have to move between islands, just a disaster waiting to happen.
we haven't had an accident with 5 tankers per month. we might be able to handle 10 per month, but that is it. We have already seen small spills couldn't be effectively and quickly dealt with, so what happens when a big one covers our water?
Maybe the Kinder Morgan will be used to export British Columbia oil that is being produced in the northeast part of the province.
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