The Canadian government is presently considering approval of a 1,172 km pipeline that would carry 525,000 barrels per day of crude oil from the Alberta tar sands to the BC coast and load it onto supertankers bound for China and the west coast of the US. Enbridge’s oil tanker and pipeline plan is all about exporting massive quantities of Canadian oil just so tar sands oil companies can get a better price than they already get for their crude in Canada.
The Enbridge project will threaten the coast of BC and the Great Bear Rainforest with hundreds of oil supertankers a year and the threat of an oil spill catastrophe. More than 1,000 rivers and streams — including two of the world’s most important salmon rivers, the Fraser and the Skeena — will also be at risk from pipeline oil spills. And it will allow a 30% increase in tar sands production — already Canada’s fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas emissions and a massive source of water pollution and forest degradation. The Enbridge project puts so much at risk — jobs, families, rivers, coastlines, and communities — just to allow oil companies to earn a few extra dollars per barrel of oil and for a very few extra permanent jobs in BC.