Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr says “Getting more oil to the West Coast so it can be loaded on tankers and sold to China will be better for the country...”

Minister Carr and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are wilfully ignoring crucial facts that they are well aware of.

First, the largest tankers that can be loaded at Burnaby, the terminus of the Trans Mountain expansion, can carry only 500,000 barrels of dilbit because of shallow water under the Second Narrows bridges (there are two). That is a competitive disadvantage in southeast Asia markets.

Second, the shortest shipping route to southeast Asia from Canada’s west coast is from Prince Rupert BC via the northern Pacific Great Circle shipping route – another competitive disadvantage for the proposed Trans Mountain expansion.

Third, Minister Carr knows that as a result, and due to declining production in Alaska and California, the primary market for the Trans Mountain expansion can only be California’s coastal refineries.  However, as Minister Carr points out, 99% of Canada’s crude exports already go to just one market – the U.S.

Fourth, an oil pipeline from the oil sands to Prince Rupert has strong First Nations and local support.  In fact, the First Nations-led Eagle Spirit Energy has proposed just such a pipeline.  The Trans Mountain expansion and tankers off BC’s Lower Mainland are strongly opposed by First Nations and local municipalities.

Finally, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has introduced Bill C-48, the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act to ban oil tankers off BC’s north west coast to this fall session of Parliament – over the objections of coastal and inland First Nations  – to “protect” the Great Bear Rainforest.  The Great Bear Rainforest was dreamed up over wine in a San Francisco restaurant by Tzeporah Berman and her Greenpeace/eco-warrior cabal.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who dropped out of engineering studies at Montreal’s École Polytechnique and failed to complete a Master’s degree in Environmental Geography at McGill, has swallowed the Great Bear Rainforest hokum – hook, line, and sinker.

Tankers off Canada’s east coast importing 759,000 barrels/day of foreign crude are apparently OK with Trudeau, and another 400 tankers per year through Vancouver’s busy inner and outer harbours, under the Second Narrows bridges, under the Lions Gate bridge, past Stanley Park, through the Gulf Islands and narrow Haro Strait, and down the length of the Salish Sea past the provincial capital of Victoria and through the Strait of Juan de Fuca, are also apparently OK with Trudeau.

But not tankers off Prince Rupert, the safest and best port on Canada’s west coast!

What we have instead is the Trudeau government’s approval of Enbridge’s Line 3, Keystone XL, and the Trans Mountain expansion which will all export more crude oil to our only customer – American refineries.

A U.S. Public Radio International news story recently noted how his (Trudeau's) “green and progressive” image disappears when talking about increasing oil and gas exports to the United States, a fact not lost on Bill McKibben: “He's as big a hypocrite as there is,” said the well-known environmentalist. “I don’t know whether he’s confused or if he’s just a straight up liar, but those seem like the two possibilities.”

And now we have the cancellation of Energy East because of the Trudeau government’s insistence on evaluating upstream and downstream GHG emissions for the project – unlike any other pipeline approval.

Obviously Trudeau doesn’t understand that the oil sands are responsible for only 0.16% of global GHG emissions.

Whatever happened to upgrading, refining, and adding value domestically, encouraging home-grown petro-chemical industries in Sarnia, Montreal, Levis, and Saint John, accessing new overseas markets for our crude, displacing 759,000 bbl/day of foreign crude oil imports, Canadian energy security, and a Canadian energy strategy?

All of that was sacrificed so that Trudeau could keep his 40 Liberal seats in Quebec – and Alberta, and Canada, be damned!

Mike Priaro, P.Eng.

Calgary 

403-281-2156