Road condition a real concern
The response from Energy and Resources Minister Tim McMillan to public concerns about the impact on roadways of building a massive oil rail hub in Kerrobert speaks to a mindset that focuses on short-term benefits to the exclusion of other considerations.
His boast that the proposed $100 million facility, which will be capable of handling 240 rail tanker cars to move 168,000 barrels of oil a day, shows that Saskatchewan can compete with Alberta or any other jurisdiction glosses over concerns of officials from nearby rural municipalities about the pounding their roads will take from trucks being used to supply the oil to rail cars.
For a provincial government that’s relying on oil to make up more than 15 per cent of its own-source revenues this year and 56 per cent of its resource income, it’s easy enough to look at the positive side of the ledger when it comes to a development that will further strengthen the ability of the industry to get the product to market.
However, the point being raised by those such as Lorne Sheppherd, a member of the West Central municipal governments committee, about the “astronomical” amount of oil that will be trucked in, with rural taxpayers being left to fix already damaged roads certainly cannot be ignored.
Certainly, Premier Brad Wall’s government continues to make historically high investments in the upkeep and improvement of Saskatchewan’s highways network. Yet, as those who travel across the province, especially in the province’s northern areas can attest, the very industries that form the backbone of Saskatchewan’s primary products-dependent economy and create much of the wealth also place huge stresses on the infrastructure that necessitate the continual repairs.
The statement by a Highways official that there are no specific plans to finance road maintenance in Kerrobert but that local officials are welcome to apply for funding simply underlines the point about the short-term considerations involved in government pronouncements, where it becomes more important to be seen as besting Alberta than analyzing rationally the ramifications, both positive and negative, of a project going ahead.
The Kerrobert project would become the largest port in Western Canada for rail shipments of oil, far exceeding the 120,000 barrels a day terminal capacity of current leader Hardisty, Alta., and nearly double that of Unity’s 90,000.
While Mr. McMillan is correct that Saskatchewan has long a history of safe rail transportation of goods, the oil moving through Kerrobert to the main CP rail line for shipment to East Coast or the U.S. Gulf comes with risks, as denizens of Lac-Megantic know so well. And with the Port of Churchill now experimenting with shipping oil through the remote Manitoba facility to compensate for the loss of wheat shipments with the demise of the Canadian Wheat Board’s export monopoly, it will be a matter of time before some of those rail cars are diverted north.
It all underlines why the Saskatchewan government needs a comprehensive transportation policy that goes beyond welcoming a rail hub and telling communities to get in line for road repairs. The editorials that appear in this space represent the opinion of The StarPhoenix. They are unsigned because they do not necessarily represent the personal views of the writers. The positions taken in the editorials are arrived at through discussion among the members of the newspaper’s editorial board, which operates independently from the news departments of the paper.