Canadian Chat → Re: First nations group pulls out of pipeline hearings

But the effects of one are pretty catastrophic & long lasting.

Imagine a pipeline which crosses the Fraser River in BC, and it has a rupture near or over the river crossing. All water downstream of the rupture is contaminated - 1 part per billion is enough to make water non-potable. All communities downstream can't use Fraser water for drinking, or even passing through reverse osmosis membranes - oil kills the membranes.

If it happens during the salmon run, the females all die before they can lay eggs - the salmon population is decimated, thousands of people lose their livelihoods immediately, and the price of salmon skyrockets across the country (please Mr Oil Company, us Toronto consumers want compensation too).

Then, as in Alaska in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez, oil gathers in backwater eddies of the river, under clumps of stone, or wherever it finds an natural gathering place, and clumps together. And for dozens of years this coagulated oil continues to leach slicks into the fresh water, contaminating it.

In the late 1970's, the Amoco Cadiz - a VLCC tanker, went aground off the coast of Brittany, France. This is an area of ocean which has highly active wave action and scour. Yet they're still cleaning up oil off the beaches to this day, nearly 35 years later. Ditto the Exxon Valdez.

Nothing man does is entirely safe. In situations where the 'downstream' effects can be catastrophic to communities, there MUST be hearings and as many safeguards as possible put in-place if a project like this is approved, otherwise it just isn't worth the risk.

And you can bet your last penny that if the shit did hit the fan, the company won't have enough insurance to pay for the cleanup; that the profits the company made have long since been distributed to mostly foreign shareholders; and anything the government does to cleanup the mess will be mostly cosmetic.

Oh, one last thing......BC is a seismic zone too, but it'll probably be some low-bidder steel pipe that fails causing the accident.

i recommend you don't look at this:

»maps.google.ca/maps?hl=e ··· t=h&z=13

the oil platforms were actually erected to get the oil that was seeping out of the land (onshore and offshore), contaminating the area for tens of thousands of years.

all i'm saying is the doomsday scenarios don't help...i'd rather the oil came to Sarnia and a refinery was set up there to process it...perhaps Ontario Oil (an oil version of the LCBO) could be set up, with profits going to the province.

*bangs head against wall*

I like the idea of a West -> East pipeline. I think it's long overdue. But i'm fairly convinced that I read that post wrong because I can't believe anybody would advocate giving the LCBO control of Gasoline....

i'm not expecting Venezuela gas prices, but if we're going to pay $1.30/litre for gas, at least our province could get billions in profits to help pay down the debt...everyone knows we need it, especially from the way our government has messed things up the last 8 years.

Except if the LCBO ran it, we would be paying $2.60/litre for gas in the name of Social Responsibility

well, they wouldn't have a monopoly, they would have to compete on the open market with other refineries...the pricing would be the same as what we have, we would simply get some of the profits...the oil companies don't seem interested in extra refining capacity, we should do it ourselves.

It's not so much they're not interested,the environmental hoops they have to jump through are huge.

understandable...and there should be solid reasonable policies in place to protect the environment to minimize the impact should something happen.

Gasoline & liquor together ..... what could go wrong?
They don't call it 'firewater' for nothing.

You mean since Harris was elected.

Part of the problem is that gasoline demand is decreasing as vehicles get better mileage, hence that's PART of the calculus in closing refineries. The other part is to create scarcity of supply so prices go up in the face of declining demand.

I'm just about ready to pull the trigger on a Tesla S - I rather like the idea of going nearly 500Km on $6 of electricity vs. nearly $90 in my 2nd choice - a new BMW 5-series.