Several mega-projects have recently been proposed to build
pipelines through northern British Columbia to move oil and
petro-chemical products between the Alberta tar sands and B.C.’s North
Coast ports. Some projects are already under construction while others
are seeking financing and/or environmental assessment. Several plans are under consideration to expand port infrastructures
for an increasing number of cargo and container vessels, and cruise
ships.
Enbridge: The Northern Gateway mega-project would involve two 1,170 kilometre pipelines. One would carry oil from the tar sands to Kitimat, where 525,000 barrels of oil per day will be loaded onto oil tankers that will thread their way down Douglas Channel to the Inside Passage, bound for Asia. That works out to about 225 loaded, massive oil tankers per year, passing each other in the channel and other narrow, confined areas along the coast. And it would violate the longstanding ban on oil tanker traffic in B.C.’s northern waters.
The other pipeline would carry condensate from Kitimat to Alberta, where it is used to thin tar sands oil so that it can be transported through pipelines. Condensate is classified as a dangerous good by the federal government and is so toxic that it kills marine life on contact. The pipelines would cross approximately a thousand streams and rivers, many of which are in the Skeena and Upper Fraser watersheds. These two river systems are B.C.’s most important wild salmon rivers.
Prince Rupert
could become Canada’s second largest container vessel terminal, capable
of handling the largest container vessels in the world.
Trans Mountain Pipeline transports oil via pipeline from Alberta and
northeastern B.C. to the west coast; some of the oil is delivered to
the Chevron Refinery and Kinder Morgan’s Westridge Marine Terminal on
Burrard Inlet for export, mainly to California. Kinder Morgan plans to
expand their pipeline’s capacity resulting in either larger tankers or
more tanker traffic travelling in and out of the busy waters around
Vancouver.
Kinder Morgan proposes to expand its B.C.
pipeline system from the Alberta tar sands to Kitimat where crude oil
would be loaded onto tankers for export. This project could require as
many as 14 tankers per month to load oil in Kitimat.
Encana’s Methanex terminal in Kitimat received the first delivery of
condensate by tanker in May 2006 with the approval of Transport Canada
and without public consultations. Condensate is presently sent by
railcar to Alberta where it is used to thin the tar sands oil so it can
be moved through pipelines. Encana has proposed to build a pipeline to
transport condensate to the tar sands that has been offloaded from
tankers in Kitimat. Increased storage capacity at the terminal will
result in approximately four times the current vessel traffic per year
(7-9 vessels to an expected 32 vessels).
Proposals to build Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) importing and exporting
terminals could see 90 carriers per year arriving at Kitimat and 36 per
year at Texada Island. There are no LNG carriers on B.C.’s coast at
present. LNG in containment is relatively involatile, but once released
it immediately begins to vaporize, then becomes flammable and explosive.
The combined increase in traffic at the Kitimat Terminal if all
proposed projects were developed would bring an estimated 300 tankers
per year into inside coastal waters. The majority of vessels would be
large, ocean-going commercial vessels.
