I am not sure how your reporter concluded that most attendees at the Kinder Morgan Open House were opposed to their project, but I did not receive that impression. My sense was that most were there to learn, other than a small number of "anti-oil" types.
Jim Stephenson believes that oil pipelines exporting Canadian crude oil contribute to global greenhouse gas emissions with potentially "disastrous consequences." This is over simplistic and largely untrue.
This thesis assumes that if Canadians refuse to sell crude oil to (for example) China, the Chinese will not buy the commodity elsewhere. This is a ridiculous assumption; they will buy the commodity from another supplier, and the world greenhouse gas emissions will stay approximately the same. There might be slight differences in GHG emissions due to the crude's quality or the relative cleanliness of local production and transportation practices, but these differences are generally small on a "wells to wheels" basis.
It's disappointing to see Vancouver residents unaware that tankers have run crude oil and petroleum products through Vancouver Harbour since 1915 (the start-up of Imperial's Port Moody refinery) without incident. Few know that 70 per cent of B.C.'s crude and petroleum products are imported by a combination of tankers and pipelines. All petroleum for Vancouver Island and Haida Gwai is tankered to them and many other B.C. ports. If these tankers and pipelines did not exist, we would all be walking or on bicycles, and have no way to get food and other goods to citizens.
John Hunter, North Vancouver (Editor's note: Mr. Hunter is president and CEO of his own company involved in the energy sector. He always declares this connection to us when he writes on the topic.)
