VANCOUVER, BC - The author of a new book on BP's Gulf oil spill speaks tonight in Vancouver as part of a forum warning of the dangers of oil tanker traffic in Burrard Inlet and on the BC coast.

What: Book Launch for Antonia Juhasz's Black Tide: The Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill, featuring Ben West of the Wilderness Committee and Tanker Free BC making the connections to the current threat to Vancouver's harbour and the BC coast posed by oil exports. 

When: Tonight, Thursday, June 9, 7p.m. 

Where: The new W2 Media Arts Cafe (#250-111 W.Hastings)

Today's event can viewed livestreaming online at http://www.creativetechnology.org/

Antonia Juhasz is a US-based author and activist, and the Director of the Energy Program at Global Exchange. The Energy Program links communities across California, the U.S. and the World to expose the true cost of oil and reign in the entire oil industry. She is the author of The Tyranny of Oil: the World's Most Powerful Industry, and What We Must Do To Stop It, and The Bu$h Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time.

The story of the Gulf oil spill documented in Black Tide, Juhasz believe, has relevance everywhere the oil industry is present, "Unless both oil and those who crave it can be tamed, hell will surely once again come not only to the Gulf but also to the many others where oil lies just beneath the earth’s surface”. Copies of Black Tide will be available for sale and signing at tonight's event. (More information on the book is available at black-tide.org)

Ben West of the Wilderness Committee says there are important lessons for Vancouver residents to take from the BP spill.

"BP assured us all that we had nothing to fear in the Gulf of Mexico and we are hearing the same thing from Kinder Morgan here in BC," said Ben West, Wilderness Committee Campaigner and a member of Tanker Free BC.

"Most people are totally unaware of it, but right now every week a couple tankers carrying three times more crude oil than what was spilled by the Exxon Valdez pass through the Burrard Inlet, right past Stanley Park," said West.

"What's worse is they are now very quietly trying to drastically expand this dangerous business without any public consultation," said West. "It is our intent to stop this expansion and ban oil tankers off the west coast -- we need to learn from the BP disaster and make sure it doesn't happen in BC."