#sinesofinsanity

Numair: Yes I can, Ozorne. We all can.

Ozorne: Oh yeah? How do you know?

replied to your photo

“Another protest against Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Pipeline...”

Question for you: Preface: Pipelines are the safest way to transport oil compared to the only two other options comparable by volume: ship and rail. Feel free to dispute preface instead of answering question. Question: Is there any proposed pipeline project you support? Why / Why not?

Ok rant time because I’m tired of people like @sinesofinsanity​ using conjecture rather than fact on this topic.

Pipelines are the safest way to transport oil compared to the only two other options comparable by volume: ship and rail

Shipping oil by pipeline in general is safe for transportation but not when it comes to oil from the oil sands, as that oil is primarily shipped in a thick viscous fluid matrix called Bitumen:

Georgia Straight: Is it safer to ship bitumen by train?

Elizabeth May: The safest way to ship bitumen is by rail. Now, there are other things that you get doing it that way. There's probably more greenhouse gases in shipping it by rail. I think certainly there are. On the safety issue, on which they implicitly connect in our brains the notion of Lac Magentic and a fireball killing people in a small community, that accident, that tragedy, did not involve bitumen. We were talking not just crude, but Bakken shale. Bakken shale is bad stuff and enormously inflammable.

Bitumen, on the other hand, solid bitumen, you can try with a blowtorch to try to get it catch fire and you'll have no luck. And if you had [transport] bitumen [by rail, here's] how they do it: you have to heat up the bitumen because it's a solid. You can't pour it into the train. It's a solid thing. You heat it up enough to put it in a railcar. And then it cools down in that railcar. It's not going anywhere until it gets to its final destination when you have to heat it up again to get it out of the railcar.

So you don't mix it with diluent. You just heat it up. Put it in the railcar. And it goes solid again.

If that railcar were to catapult off a high place and crash into a brook below, it would make a mess of splintered and fractured railcar parts as it broke apart but the bitumen wouldn't be going anywhere. It would be sitting there as a lump. It wouldn't catch fire and it wouldn't blow up.

I don't think this is a smart thing to do. Why do we want to ship out raw product as fast as possible without getting any value added? But if you were going to do that for some reason, the safest way to do it is by rail.

Also when it comes to Kinder Morgan, the oil would be shipped by pipeline AND then by ship, so you’ve introduced 2 dangerous forms of transport to one of the most pristine environments in Canada. Not a smart move.

Question: Is there any proposed pipeline project you support? Why / Why not?

None of the current pipeline proposals I support for several important reasons:

1. Indigenous Rights. Canada claims to support the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples which states:

This is from article 32, 2. of the UNDRIP:

States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indig-enous peoples concerned through their own representative institu-tions in order to obtain their free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources, particularly in connection with the development, utiliza-tion or exploitation of mineral, water or other resources.

To compound this, most First Nations in BC are not on treaty land. The BC and Federal Governments have no basis of claim to the land. The land is completely unceded. It was never given away.

So if you cannot get consent from First Nations and municipalities, a pipeline cannot be built, period. Pipeline companies should redirect the route onto land that is in agreement with the project.

2. Climate impacts:

The science actually says that if the world is to meet its climate change commitments to prevent catastrophic climate change, most of Alberta’s oil must remain in the ground:

85% of tar sands must stay in the ground to limit climate change to 2 degrees Celsius

Oil sands must remain largely unexploited to meet climate target, study finds

Most of Canada’s oilsands must stay in ground if world to limit global warming: report

This is inconsistent with the idea of large pipelines which are expected to be used for decades, and which will grow the oil industry in Canada.

Also I’ve seen no sign from oil companies on off setting climate emissions by carbon capture or investment in renewables to counteract the increased emissions from a growing oil sands industry.

3. Economics.

Oil pipelines are a huge waste of money when it comes to Job creation. They produce few direct, full time, permanent jobs.

Kinder Morgan’s pipeline will only create ~50 permanent jobs in British Columbia.

This pipelines costs are already estimated at over 7 billion dollars. Are we really convinced that we want to spend that amount of money for 50+ permanent jobs? All those other thousands of jobs that are bragged about are temporary construction based. After about a year, once the pipeline is built those jobs are gone.

Also all of these oil pipelines are export pipelines. They’re not going to create value added (refinery based jobs) in Canada. They’re just shipping raw product to other countries, who will then create more jobs refining the raw products.

I’d be more open to oil pipelines in Canada, if they actually created more permanent jobs here in Canada.

4. Oil Spill Risk

I’m opposed to oil pipelines like Kinder Morgan because the risk of a large oil spill is far too great, especially on the BC coast.

Bitumen oil spills cannot be effectively cleaned up and the main area this pipeline would end is Vancouver’s world renowned harbour.

Here are the risks from that:

5 Years Since Massive Tar Sands Oil Spill, Kalamazoo River Still Not Clean

The Cost of an Oil Spill in Burrard Inlet: $40 Billion…For Starters

Spill from Hell: Diluted Bitumen

Unique Hazards of Tar Sands Oil Spills Confirmed by National Academies of Sciences

Oil spill could cost Vancouver $1.2 billion: report

Study shows oil spill near Fraser River estuary could kill over 100,000 birds

New report adds billions to cost of oil spill off B.C.'s south coast

Pipeline called threat to B.C.'s tourism industry

And lets not forget that Kinder Morgan’s existing pipeline has already spilled several times. This company does not have a good track record:

WHAT IS KINDER MORGAN’S RECORD OF SPILLS?

Kai Nagata: CBC pretends Trans Mountain's 69 oil spills never happened

Daine: No pressure, huh?