Northern Gateway and tanker risks

Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway project is about more than just pipelines and tar sands. What sets this project apart from others, is oil tankers. Really big oil tankers.

Northern Gateway is really a tanker-pipeline megaproject. If approved, it will bring 225 crude oil tankers to Canada’s Pacific North Coast for the first time in order to ship the world’s dirtiest oil to markets in Asia. These tankers are the length of three and a half football fields and carry nearly eight times more oil than was spilled by the Exxon Valdez in Alaska. Introducing them to Canada’s Pacific North Coast is not a good idea. Why you ask? Here are a few reasons:

Taxpayer pockets at risk for cleaning up oil spills

The ongoing environmental disaster from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico might have you asking yourself the following question: “What would happen if a similar spill were to occur here at home?” As BC currently has in place a moratorium on offshore drilling, we will hopefully never find out. However, we do not have a ban on oil tankers, and they’re currently a serious threat. For the sake of argument, let us say that a slightly smaller spill than the Deepwater Horizon occurs, somewhere in magnitude around the Exxon Valdez. Aside from the obvious devastation of marine life and local economies (see our oil-spill model), there would be a substantial cost to clean up the oil itself.