I think Colin Kinsley is likely right that the Enbridge pipeline project, if built, would bring new jobs to northern B.C. Unfortunately, I think most of these jobs would be doing clean-up work after the first, and other spills from the proposed facility occur.
Spills from oil pipelines and tankers are inevitable if they are operated for long enough.
It was only several years ago that the relatively small crude oil pipeline from Taylor to Kamloops ruptured, dumping crude oil into the pristine Pine River, contaminating the city's drinking water for a long period of time and severely affecting the environment generally.
The flows through the proposed Enbridge pipelines are massive in comparison - a total average flow of about 720,000 barrels per day of crude and condensate. This is almost 75 times more flow than was estimated from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
I thought it interesting that Mr. Kinsley has landed one of the first "jobs" from the pipeline project. But specific facts about the effect on our local employment workforce are strangely lacking.
Is it reasonable that the pipeline construction crew would be picked up along the 1,172 km length? More likely the entire construction job would be contracted out and the construction workers would move along with the project.
Where will these workers come from? Where will the massive ammout of pipe itself come from?
I would love to see new, permanent jobs for our area, but I think there are a lot of issues and questions to be asked and written guarantees obtained to ensure we get what we think we will from any proposal of this type.
In closing, I thought it was tragically coincidental that Mr. Kinsley, with a fresh pressed shirt and clean white hands was on the front page of Saturday's paper, and on the last page of the same section was a brown pelican from the Gulf oil spill covered in oil. It was sad to see, but maybe it is a wake-up call as to what happens when crude oil gets in the wrong places.
This project, including the expansion of the oilsands areas of Alberta for increased capacity, needs to be thought through before we "sell the farm" to Asia or the U.S. so they can produce low-cost goods to sell back to us and put our own manufacturing economy further into the hole.
John Viney,
Prince George
