Dear Editor: The existing Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline, built in 1953, can no longer meet the needs of its customers, and one of its largest customers is our local North Burnaby oil refinery. This provides the Lower Mainland with about one-third of its motor fuel, and because the refinery cannot get enough crude oil feedstock by pipeline, it gets it by rail. Many Burnaby residents will have noticed trains of 100-plus cars continually rumbling along the flats past Burnaby Lake, many of those carrying crude oil from Alberta. Four years ago, one of those trains derailed putting seven cars off the track beside Winston Street at the east end of Burnaby Lake. Fortunately, they were carrying coal not oil and, referring to Lac-Mégantic, the fact that pipelines are safer than rail tankers has been demonstrated in the most terrifying way possible.
I am a Burnaby resident. I consider myself an environmentalist and I drive a zero-emission electric car, but I also understand risk mitigation. Further, this is the only pipeline in North America that can carry a variety of products: diluted bitumen, crude oil of various grades, diesel fuel, gasoline, etc. (not mixed, but one after the other). That’s Canadian oil, refined in Canada and sold in Canadian dollars.
If this pipeline expansion is cancelled, we won’t run out of gas; we’ll just get more from the BP refinery at Cherry Point in Washington State. Look on the map, it’s immediately east of Saturna Island and receives Alaskan crude shipped through Juan De Fuca Strait, past Victoria and around the Gulf Islands. If objectors to the pipeline are concerned about oil tankers in Georgia Straight, they’ve already missed the boat.
With more Alaskan oil refined in the U.S. and sold to us in U.S. dollars, we’ll likely see $2-per-litre gasoline soon. Perhaps this will provide a greater incentive for people to buy electric cars, and wouldn’t that be a good thing?
James Mason, Burnaby
