It would make more sense to build a refinery in Southern BC. We used to have five active refineries in the Vancouver area with only Chevron still up an running. 30% of our Aviation Gas and vehicle gas is coming from Washington State and 70% from Alberta. We export raw petroleum to Washington State and pay a premium to get the finished products back to BC. It makes no sense.
There is a very good reason we have the most expensive gas in Canada (not including taxes). It's a lack of refineries, growing population and having to rely upon imported gas from refineries in AB and WA.
Considering the Premier of Alberta wants to turn off the tap to BC if they don't get their way on Kinder Morgan, we should have our own refinery again to 100 % service the needs of the lower mainland not as an exporter. Just not located on the waterfront in the second busiest port on the west coast.
Well, yeah, we are underserved on that front.
The disgusting thing about the Kinder Morgan expansion is that, it is all about the overseas market, not domestic demand. All the extra capacity it is for exporting bitumen to China and elsewhere across the sea. Then they too will refine it (and maybe sell it back to us). We'll be taking even more risk of catastrophic oil spills to help out the overseas manufacturers who undercut our own industries already.
That being said, in the grand scheme of things, our Burnaby refineries are not very big (or very new). I'm not sure where the local refiners could build or expand a refinery here, except perhaps in Port Moody where the old gas-fired generating station is.
Some Canadian businessmen did propose a new refinery for BC rather than just a pipe to export raw material with, but I get the feeling that bid/project was not taken very seriously by the oil interests in Alberta.
For the Protesters who have cars, hypocrites I think (imagine their car having an oil leak....) oops not enough oil spilled to protest against themselves.....
When building a pipeline, engineers build them to high standards. Its the maintenance of the pipeline and the occasional dumb-ass that want to blow them up that is the problem.
The great fear is an oil spill in the seaway. Tankers have to have an double hull (all hulls have to be double hulled in case of collision). The greatest risk is loading the vessel (tanker) and there are oils booms surrounding the ship when loading. Once the oil is in the tanks,the oil doesn't move until its ready to offload. Bitumen is heavy and hard to move with out heat to make it go along, its a sludge normally thicker than molasses. If there is a leak at sea, it has to go through 2 hulls, and the bitumen will stay near the ship (does not disperse easily) and spreads slowly due to its viscoscity, unlike diesel oil which will disperse over the water very fast. Most ships have radars and in conjested waters keep a careful watch out.
Another problem is ships maintenance, if it is under Canadian Flag, maintenance in certain things is a must and must be adhered to. If it is a foreign flag of convenience, maintenance is shitty and shit will happen due to poor maintenance.
Well here's some issues in what you said:
- Ordinary people have had no say in what their cars run on, nor the power infrastructure that supports it. We certainly have the surplus electricity thanks to hydro power, but when it comes to building changers, is that even in the building code? (I'm betting no.) That's even if we could afford an electric car. Combustion-powered vehicles have reaped the reward of many decades of R&D and subsidies, and all that surrounding infrastructure was built that way it was because of them. This country used to rely much more on trains, buses, trolleys, and so on - after WW2, it all changed, and in fact a lot of existing rail capacity (like the Interurban) was actually taken out of cities in favour of car-based suburbs. GM and the other traditional auto makers killed their electric car projects under pressure from the oil companies. (A movie was made about this.) Imagine if they had put their full engineering resources into it, instead of waiting another 20 years for guys like Elon Musk to steal the auto-making crown from them. By now, electric cars would not only have been much more widespread but also affordable on a level with petroleum powered cars. But for an average consumer - even a protesting one - who needs a car, they do not get to make those engineering and infrastructure decisions, do they? Personally, it's mobility I need, not a combustion engine. I suppose when we learn to punish politicians who get into dirty-hookups with the oil industry, instead of supporting them, then those big decisions will finally go the right way. Until then, unless we can afford a luxury e-vehicle, we're stuck either driving a gas vehicle like everyone else, or walking.
- As for the Trans-Mountain pipeline, a dumb-ass did not blow it up, but one of them did punch through it with digging equipment. Big accident, with oil all over the Barnet Highway and pouring down into the sea. Nobody plans to have an accident; that's why they are called accidents. Most accidents are not due to some kind of technical failure, but human error and/or negligence. Negligence is a big one, because it is very often the case that the big companies that assure us they will never have an accident are the same ones that cut corners to increase their profitability, and that causes some sort of disaster. Want another example? The Mount Polley mine disaster. It was clear negligence and a violation of the engineering rules that allowed the project to be approved at all; yet they broke the rules, caused a disaster, and yet nobody got punished afterwards. No gigantic fine, no jail time, nothing.
- Even if it is not a CEO decision, all it has to be is is some ship's captain or work foreman or whatever who feels under pressure from his bosses' expectations and does some risky thing, and then some supposedly foolproof response plan kicks in and they discover it doesn't fucking work at all. So not only do they inherently cause their own accidents, but they then either cover them up or respond inadequately. Time pressures and cost pressures are always there, so the risk is never just what is calculated under ideal conditions with everybody following the rules.
- They tell us modern navigation on the BC coast is perfectly safe. Well the Queen of the North collided with a rock and sank - a fucking rock outcropping that they had passed by thousands of times. The bridge crew was not even on the bridge, so there's your textbook case of catastrophic negligence. Two people died, and also the area got fouled by oil (just from the ship's fuel tanks).
- They tell us modern double-hulled oil tankers cannot lose their cargo, much less sink. Well at the end of 2017 off the coast of Korea, one such tanker collided with another ship, then burned and sank, with all crew and all cargo lost. Lucky for the nearby countries its cargo was condensate not crude or bitumen; it all burned or evaporated away.
- That's another issue right there. Bitumen / dilbit, would sink in typical BC sea conditions, not float; once that dilbit or crude sinks, basically nothing can be done for the ocean floor, and it will be dead for centuries. Skimmers can only scoop a small portion from the water, even with crude. Even the recovery methods can sometimes be as toxic as the spill itself. When the Deepwater Horizon disaster happened, they spread a lot of chemicals to aid in the cleanup, but it proved almost worse for marine life than the oil.
- Speaking of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, now there's another time when every company involved swore up and down they would have a handle on any accident and the oil flow would automatically cease. They sure as fuck didn't, and it sure as fuck didn't.
- All that is assuming that the emergency responders (like the coast guard) are even aware enough and have the resources needed to respond. Remember the MV Marathassa spilling oil into local waters? The authorities responded way too slowly, and that was at a time when Stephen Harper had actually cut BC's coast guard and other emergency response abilities. Are we going to leave this at the mercy of capricious governments who are always looking for a way out of paying for anything?
- Speaking of paying, Deepwater Horizon again. BP still hasn't paid anything remotely adequate to Louisiana in compensation for basically poisoning their entire coastline. Is there is a catastrophic spill in BC waters, do you really think either Kinder-Morgan or the province of Alberta is going to ever pay us back the real amount of compensation for all the damage? Fuck not. They will continue to shirk their responsibilities, and stiff us. This is obvious. And that's even assuming money can make up for wiping out all the local sea life, which will never come back.
- Let's just be honest here, because it has been proven time and time again: the companies will lie through their teeth, about their ability to prevent accidents, about their ability to mitigate accidents, and even about the ecological effect of their accidents. These are elaborate lies, that they have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to say, but it should be clear enough from the evidence that they will tell any lie needed to get their projects into operation. As for the government, how's there record on telling the truth to the public? Yeah, thought so. Why should we trust them when we should know better? So let's not pretend that their word is "good enough", and the protesters concerns should just be dismissed out of hand. There are no second chances to get things right after the accident. All BC would get is a lot of "golly gee, we're so sorry" bullshit from business and government leaders afterwards. We are going to get permanently screwed, and nobody will do anything meaningful about it.
And that's my issue with it in a nutshell. Do we really have a hand in these big decisions? Or are we just being bulldozed into circumstances which are no good for us, without any measure of true consent? Those who have the power to steer things the right way won't do it unless citizens force them to do so.
