I’ve lived in Victoria for more than 20 years, and one of things I love best about our city is the Dallas Road beach. There are few places in the world where city meets seashore, and you can spot seals, porpoises, plovers and sandpipers — and occasionally glimpse endangered orcas spouting just offshore.
Stretch your gaze a little further, toward the snowy Olympic Mountains, and you’ll see the international shipping lane that could soon host more than 400 oil tankers a year carrying diluted bitumen from Alberta’s oilsands past Victoria.
The U.S. company Kinder Morgan, one of the world’s largest pipeline operators, plans to build a new 1,150-kilometre pipeline from the oilsands to Burnaby’s Westridge Marine Terminal. Diluted bitumen — known as dilbit — would be shipped to California and Asia in supertankers, each with the potential to carry four times as much dilbit as the oil that spilled in the Exxon Valdez disaster.
Bitumen is a tar-like form of petroleum that has the consistency of cold molasses. Oil companies dilute it with proprietary chemicals to move it through pipelines. The dilbit that spilled in 2010 in Michigan’s Kalamazoo River sank, unlike most conventional oil, making it much harder to clean up. Even at the best of times, only 10 to 15 per cent of any oil spill is ever recovered.
We’re told that the chances of an oil spill off Victoria are remote. But tell that to the residents of Mayflower, Arkansas, some of whom still can’t return to their homes after a March 29 pipeline rupture spilled 19,000 barrels of heavy, diluted Alberta crude into their town. As ABC News said at the time, the spill is “turning backyards into tar pits and suburban streets into oil slicks.”
Tell that to Gulf of Mexico residents who lost jobs and businesses in staggering numbers following the $41.6-billion (and counting) Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Say that to the 200 Michigan residents who were hospitalized after the Enbridge dilbit spill into the Kalamazoo.
We need to ask ourselves if the risks of a new Kinder Morgan pipeline, and corresponding surge in oil-tanker traffic off our coast, are something we’re willing to accept. In the event of a spill, what would happen to our tourism and fishing industries, and the many local businesses and jobs that rely on them? What about our sandy beaches and rocky shorelines, and the sea lions, shore birds and whales?
The city of Victoria and Union of B.C. Municipalities have passed resolutions opposing the expansion of oil-tanker traffic on B.C.’s coast, with Victoria expressing “unequivocal opposition” to the Kinder Morgan proposal. More than 130 First Nations have signed the Save the Fraser Declaration, using indigenous laws to prohibit the transport of oilsands crude through their traditional land and waters.
The Kinder Morgan debate is not about “jobs versus the environment”; sustainable jobs simply can’t exist without a healthy environment. Starkly, the new Kinder Morgan pipeline would create only 35 permanent jobs. Contrast that to 200,000 jobs that could be jeopardized in tourism, real estate, film and TV, agriculture and coastal industries, should there be an oil spill.
And then there’s the role that B.C. aspires to play in slowing global warming, which is accelerating toward a catastrophic tipping point that scientists warn will result in the costly destruction of coastal cities and the extinction of up to 50 per cent of all species on earth.
According to climate scientist James Hansen, writing in the New York Times, it will be “game over for the climate” if the Alberta oilsands are fully exploited. Do British Columbians really want our climate change legacy to be the promotion of B.C. as a land and sea bridge for shipping carbon-intensive oilsands crude?
The new pipeline would be built alongside the 60-year-old Trans Mountain pipeline that Kinder Morgan purchased seven years ago from the B.C. Gas Company. Until recently, the Trans Mountain pipeline transported natural gas, jet fuel and light crude primarily for domestic use.
Now, alarmingly, that aging pipeline (it’s the same age as the pipeline that ruptured in Mayflower) is also ferrying diluted bitumen for export. The change happened without public debate or knowledge, and despite concern that dilbit may be more corrosive than traditional crude.
We think it’s time for a wide-ranging public debate about the global warming implications of shipping oilsands oil through B.C., about the proposed spike in oil-tanker traffic off our coast, and about the gamble that Kinder Morgan is asking us all to take.
Sarah Cox is the interim executive director of Sierra Club B.C. On Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Vic Theatre, Sierra Club B.C. is hosting a town-hall event to talk about the Kinder Morgan pipeline and tankers proposal.
