Kinder Morgan has announced plans to expand the Edmonton to Vancouver Trans Mountain oil pipeline, which would increase the number of oil tankers in Vancouver’s harbour shipping crude oil from the Alberta Tar Sands.

The expanded Trans Mountain pipeline would have an added capacity of 80,000 barrels of Tar Sands crude per day.
 
"We will stand up and mobilize the already widespread opposition to Kinder Morgan’s pipeline plans," said Ben West, Healthy Communities Campaigner for The Wilderness Committee."The threat of an oil spill is enough to convince most Vancouverites that this is a bad idea, since none of us wants to see crude oil washing up on the beach as we walk around the seawall at Stanley Park. We are drawing a line in the sand - this dirty and dangerous business must be stopped," said West.

Seeking financing for the mega-project, Kinder Morgan, a private equity company backed by the Carlyle Group and Goldman Sachs, is putting shares up for sale on the NYSE. “People in Vancouver are not going to tolerate Wall Street money and tar sands oil putting Vancouver’s harbor and the entire Pacific coast at risk,” said West.

"The world needs to phase out its dependence on fossil fuels, not ramp it up, yet our federal government is acting like a pusher instead of a responsible global citizen," said West. "We aren't going to allow this expansion to threaten our invaluable coast let alone the stability of the earth’s climate.”

The Canadian Auditor General’s office issued a report last year that showed that the Canadian coast guard is woefully unprepared to deal with an oil spill on Canada's west coast. In 2007, a port authority risk assessment panel allowed larger tankers to pass through the shallow, narrow and busy Vancouver harbour to export oil to Asia. No public process ever took place and residents were never given a chance to weigh in on what was an acceptable risk.

"It’s shameful how our government allowed this huge threat to our coast without any public involvement," said West. "This new proposal shows a shocking disregard for the devastating impacts of global warming that are being felt already by some of the world's poorest people," said West.

Contact:

Ben West, Wilderness Committee, Healthy Communities Campaigner, 604-710-5340