Tanker traffic safer than critics Believe

The Federal Court of Appeal’s unwise decision regarding the Trans Mountain pipeline shows ignorance of the facts on tanker traffic.

There is already a great amount of oil tanker traffic on both the east and west coasts of Canada: Arab and Venezuelan oil on the east coast and Alaskan (Prudhoe Bay) on the west coast.

The Exxon Valdez spill is brought up again and again, in spite of the fact that it was a single-hulled tanker while all tankers now on our coasts are double-hulled.

This change has reduced spillage from tankers sufficiently close to zero to be far less than rail and truck spills, illegally disposed of oil and other land-based sources that reach the ocean by municipal storm drains.

Hundreds of millions of barrels of petroleum products have moved on the west coast in the Straits of Georgia and Juan de Fuca since the Exxon Valdez disaster and the only spill has been from the fuel tanks of the B.C. ferry wrecked near Prince Rupert.

In short, the likely amount of oil spilled from a tanker over the next few decades is far less than what has recently been spilled from rail traffic.

Ask the citizens of LacMegantic which they would prefer.

R. S. Lee, Vancouver