Can oil tankers navigate safely in BC waters?
Images of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico oil carry a grim message for Canadians. The message is simple: if Enbridge brings oil tankers to British Columbia’s coast, we will wake up one day to the same kind of disaster on our own shores. It’s a future Coastal First Nations cannot imagine. It’s a future we won’t allow to become reality. Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline would carry the world’s dirtiest oil from the Alberta oilsands to Kitimat on the B.C. coast, to be loaded onto foreign-bound supertankers. Some 225 tankers per year would attempt to navigate the waters where a passenger ferry sank in 2006, and where last year a freighter ran aground. Enbridge is trying to convince Canadians oil tankers are safe at a time when the oil industry has zero credibility. One has only to see photos of BP’s burning oil platform to realize the ridiculous nature of such assurances. Oil platforms are safer than oil tankers — and look what can happen to them. The BP well is 66
