B.C.’S unhealthy obsession with oil tankers
British Columbians’ high regard for their majestic coastline is well understood. The prospect of more oil tankers plying the coast is one of the main objections to Enbridge’s Northern Gateway project and the twinning of Kinder Morgan’s pipeline, but if B.C. residents are sincere about protecting their marine environment, they would be putting the kibosh on freighters, ferries and cruise ships, too.
Writing on these pages recently, Nikki Skuce, a senior energy campaigner with ForestEthics Advocacy in Smithers, B.C., noted that the most recent fouling of the waters was caused by a ferry, not an oil tanker.
“We only need to listen to the Gitga’at First Nation, who were first responders when BC Ferries’ Queen of the North sank eight years ago along Enbridge’s proposed tanker route,” said Skuce. “The wreck still sits on the ocean floor, regularly burping up fuel.”
The Queen of the North had approximately 220,000 litres of diesel fuel on board and 23,000 litres of lubricating oil, which quickly created an oil slick in Wright Sound, south of Prince Rupert.
The Port of Vancouver alone welcomes more than 3,000 ships annually, all of them with fuel in their bellies to power their massive engines. If any one of them were to run aground or be involved in a collision, the environmental damage would be significant. The world’s largest cruise ship, for instance, consumes 11,361 gallons of fuel an hour, so it’s not hard to imagine how much fuel these vessels carry as they ferry goods from far-off places like Asia to Vancouver.
It’s very odd, then, that vociferous opposition to tankers doesn’t extend to all the other marine traffic that presents significant risk to British Columbians’ cherished coast. In fact, it’s estimated that less than 10 per cent of the fuel spilled into the world’s oceans each year comes from tankers and offshore facilities. The rest, of course, comes from those same ships that B.C. residents seem to have no problem with. Mind you, Victoria has been pumping raw effluent into the ocean for years, so we can see the anti-Alberta rhetoric for what it is, rather than some overarching concern for the environment.
Fear mongers point out that oil tankers often sail under a foreign flag, and they argue that holding companies to account in the event of an accident is more difficult as a result. But it’s not just oil tankers that register in jurisdictions such as Panama. Container vessels and even the cruise ships that sail into Vancouver and Victoria do the same thing without attracting criticism.
Vietnam was reminded of how hazardous shipping can be just last month. A cargo vessel ran aground on the reefs off Ly Son Island, south of the capital of Hanoi. It is estimated that 387 tonnes of oil spilled from two tanks into the water, which is the source of 25 per cent of the province’s entire seafood production. The oil spread over 20,000 square metres — giving West Coast residents something to ponder if they think oil tankers are the biggest threat to their environment.
Canada has the world’s
It’s estimated that less than 10 per cent of the fuel spilled into the world’s oceans each year comes from tankers and offshore facilities.
longest coastline, at more than 243,000 kilometres. Each year, says Transport Canada, 80 million tonnes of oil are shipped off Canada’s coasts. On any given day, there are 180 vessels operating within 200 nautical miles from shore with an incredible safety record.
Skuce’s hypocrisy isn’t limited to overlooking the risk ferries and other vessels present to the province.
“Introduce more than 225 oil supertankers per year to the Great Bear Rainforest, which has frequent 120 km/h winds, six-metre tides, severe storms and steep, rocky shorelines, and you have a recipe for disaster,” she wrote. “British Columbians will never believe that an oil spill can be effectively cleaned up on our north coast, because it can’t.”
Why then isn’t there more concern over Premier Christy Clark’s proposal to ship liquefied natural gas to China from the same region? Do environmentalists like Skuce think that the ships that would carry the gas to Asia run off fairy dust instead of fuel?
The biggest knock on Clark’s proposal, of course, is that turning natural gas into a liquid requires a tremendous amount of energy. Clean Energy Canada at Tides Canada believes that B.C.’s facilities would emit about one tonne of carbon pollution for every tonne of LNG produced, which works out to 36 million tonnes of carbon pollution for the three plants proposed for the Kitimat area. The B.C. government has talked of permitting seven plants, which could dwarf the greenhouse gas emissions produced by the Alberta oilsands.
You won’t hear many British Columbians lobbying to spike the liquefied natural gas plants, though. Not so long as they’re obsessed with oil tankers and vilifying Alberta’s oilsands.