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Letter: What’s the point of the pipeline?

To push a pipeline through pristine B.C. wilderness seems pretty arrogant for Alberta.
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If 90 per cent of the oil wells in Alberta are American owned, (Suncor is Petro-Can) then why are we even looking at a pipeline through B.C. anyway?

Yes, the tar sands belong to Alberta, but who actually owns Syncrude? If it’s not a Canadian-owned company, then why don’t they send it south? Alberta has a direct route into the U.S. The product is refined in the United States into diesel and gasoline and we buy it back. That doesn’t seem like good business to me. Just like B.C. sold raw logs to China a few years ago, and we bought the furniture back.

The Alberta bitumen is diluted to get it into the pipeline so it will flow freely and has to be treated at the refinery. Canadian bitumen is lower quality anyway, which is why it is much cheaper than Texas oil. Processed Alberta oil costs more to refine than uncontaminated Texas oil, so to save shipping costs and market fluctuation, doesn’t it make sense to keep our oil here and refine it ourselves for Canadian use?

I was quite upset when I started seeing television commercials from Alberta on how the pipeline is going to help build schools and hospitals and bring prosperity. Who gets them? British Columbia gets the pipeline and maybe a little money for what goes through it, but Alberta is the big winner here.

To push a pipeline through pristine B.C. wilderness seems pretty arrogant for Alberta; which incidentally follows the Thompson and Fraser Rivers all the way from Jasper to Burnaby. I can’t think of a more dangerous route if there was a spill, not to mention how long it would take to get workers and equipment on site.

Try this website:

https://www.wildernesscommittee.org/kinder_morgan_pipeline_route_maps

As a mechanic for most of my life and having also worked in the oil patch in the ‘70s, I honestly think that we need to focus more on anything other than gasoline and diesel vehicles.

We already have the skills and the technology here in Canada. All we need is the will to work for ourselves. Someday we will also need to grow more of our own food as foreign countries soon might not, or will not be able to supply everything we want.

Buy local: at least we know it’s not full of unregulated chemicals.

Paul Elmont