Tanker ban a broadside at Enbridge Gateway project
Now that the dust has settled over the successful NDP motion in Parliament urging a ban on oil tankers in northwest waters there are likely many different discussions going on.
The motion, put forward Tuesday by Skeena NDP MP Nathan Cullen, is non-binding but pressures the Conservative government to formalize what has been an unwritten moratorium on tanker traffic in the Hecate Strait, Dixon Entrance and other waters around Haida Gwaii (formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands).
You can read more details here.
Realistically, since the government isn’t likely to take up the challenge it has been thrown, the motion is equally a signal to government of what might happened if it planned to formally end the moratorium.
The motion was a broadside attack on Enbridge Inc.’s $5.5-billion Northern Gateway project, which would see a 1,100 kilometre pipeline to ship oil sands bitumen to an ocean port at Kitimat.
That project is proceeding through a joint review of the National Energy Board and the federal Environmental Assessment Agency, which has been fraught with opposition of first nations and environmental groups.
Enbridge’s initial reaction to Cullen’s motion was, well, defensive.
Company spokeswoman Gina Jordan took issue with Cullen’s characterization of its proposal for oil shipments from Kitimat as proposing “an imminent risk” to the environment.
In a statement distributed following Parliament’s vote, Jordan laid out Enbridge’s commitment to establishing a “world-class” marine safety program using modern, double-hulled tankers, tug escorts and a technological infrastructure to make B.C. “a model of world-class marine safety.”
“It deeply concerns us that a rigorous public regulatory process established by Parliament and being conducted by two institutions created by Parliament is at risk of being ignored in a rush to come to judgment without the benefit of reviewing or testing the evidence on the matter,” Jordan said in the statement.
Then she alludes to the other story that hasn’t had a lot of discussion yet: For all the kerfuffle over tankers in northwestern waters, B.C. already exports oil from the Port of Vancouver.
Not a lot, some 255 tankers carrying about 55-million barrels of oil (25-million barrels of crude oil). There is potential for this amount to grow, however, with an expansion of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline.
Environmentalists have staged a couple of quiet protests at English Bay over the issue, but this is likely the environmental battle that has yet to be fought.