Just finished Big Jump in Oil Tankers in Vancouver's Port at the Tyee.ca . Great article. From it i learned that the flow of tar sands crude through Burrard Inlet has been quickly rising in the last two years, and will more than double again soon. The proposed Enbridge Gateway pipeline to Kitimat is stirring strong public opposition, but in the meantime, tanker traffic on the B.C. coast through the Port of Vancouver is quietly being scaled up virtually under the radar. Kinder Morgan's pipeline from Haines Alberta to North Burnaby has had its capacity recently expanded to 300,000 barrels per day - almost 60 per cent of the proposed volume of the Enbridge Gateway pipeline in Northern B.C. Kinder Morgan plans to further expand the pipeline capacity to 700,000 barrels per day as soon as possible. Safety is an even bigger issue through the Vancouver Port because of the treacherous waters and the huge numers of smaller tankers that the Vancouver Port's conditions dictate.
'Safety' sounds like such a HUGE word to me right now as i nightly watch the oil soaked birds being hauled from the Gulf of Mexico. Everyday we burn more oil not less, everyday we exhaust more tons of crap into our common atmosphere. The Gulf blowout is a tiny fraction of the amount we exhaust each and every day into the air we all share, we just don't see the full cost as easily as we do the Gulf's slick or dead birds, but it's there coating our lungs, fouling our world, changing our climate and killing our fellow earthlings.
We need a new drug.
