Last Wednesday, Lori Ackerman, Mayor of the City of Fort St. John, published an insightful perspective concerning role Canadian resource development plays within our communities and the world at large.
She titled the piece “USA stops importing Canadian oil and gas” as a faux warning as to the implications of what could happen to the Canadian and British Columbia (and Alberta/Saskatchewan for that matter) economies if certain policy trajectories currently undertaken by more left leaning governments and espoused by many Canadians adamantly opposed to natural resource development in Canada are followed.
In her article she quotes Blair King an Environmental Scientist and writer: “We live in a world where all the work we do to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions in B.C. can be undone with the flick of a pen in China or India. No matter what we do, those developing countries are going to get electrical power to their populations – if not with LNG, then with coal; and if not with B.C. LNG, then with lower intensity (read: dirtier) LNG from one of our competitors. In both cases the end result is higher global GHG emissions than if B.C. LNG was used.”
She had the following to say regarding pipelines:
“So let’s talk about pipelines. I know pipelines are a safe, cost-efficient means of oil and natural gas transportation and emit fewer greenhouse gases than alternate transportation methods. Canada has 830,000 kilometers of pipelines. Three million barrels of crude oil is transported safely every single day. B.C. hasover 43,000 kilometers of pipelines. If we took that oil out of the pipelines, we would need 4,200 rail cars to move it. How many of those cars would you like rolling through your community? Between 2002 and 2015, 99.9995% of liquid was transported through our pipelines SAFELY. You probably spill more when you fill up at the gas station.”
Along with those comments, Ms. Ackerman makes several more meaningful comments surrounding the contentious pipeline debate we as Canadians all find ourselves in.
The full article can be found here.