British Columbia’s coastal waters are a global treasure and a cradle of life for the northwest Pacific Ocean. Transporting millions of barrels of crude oil and condensate through B.C.’s fragile marine ecosystems poses significant risks to
wildlife
and threatens the
livelihoods
of many people who rely on marine resources for tourism, sport and commercial fisheries.
There is no way to recover oil from a major tanker spill or to keep oil spills from happening. Even with modern technology, the ability to clean up a marine oil spill is very limited. A clean up is considered a success by industry if only 15 percent of the oil is recovered. Once oil hits a beach it is impossible to clean up.
In 1977, the Government of Canada evaluated the risk of an oil port in Kitimat. The
report
found that serious oil spills would be inevitable and that these spills would likely have major adverseimpacts on fisheries populations in the northern coastal region.
Allowing tankers into coastal B.C. waters will be a recipe for disaster. Oil spills are an inevitable part of tanker traffic. In 1990 Environment Canada did an analysis of the likelihood of tanker accidents occurring in Canadian waters. The
report
concluded that "based on current [1990] levels of tanker traffic, Canada can expect over 100 small oil spills,about 10 moderate spills and at least one major spill offshore each year. A catastrophic spill (over 10,000 tonnes) may occur once every 15years."
Tanker accidents
appear to be happening with less frequency than they were prior to 1990, however they still occur at an alarming rate. Internationally there has been an average of 5.5 large tanker spills every year for the past 10 years resulting in an estimated 370,000 tonnes of spilled oil entering the oceans.
