This is an open letter to Justin Trudeau. I do not want my taxes spent on a pipeline that will lock us into decades of increased emissions.
In relation to Canada’s 2030 target, we’re already expected to over-pollute by 125 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (UNFCCC, NC7, March 2018 report).
Trudeau, you seem to want your cake and eat it too. You said we have to phase out fossil fuels. You also told oil and gas executives at a March 2017 energy conference in Texas that “No country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and just leave them there.”
It will take a real effort to limit emissions to a ‘safe’ level. Increasing our fossil fuel infrastructure by expanding the Kinder Morgan-owned Trans Mountain pipeline is the wrong direction. It’s not only wrong, it’s reckless.
The fact that bitumen must be diluted means that shipping it is more expensive than other fossil fuels. Another thing that makes shipping oil out of Kinder Morgan’s terminal less competitive is due to the fact that Burrard Inlet is inaccessible to the supertankers that are just starting to service New Orleans and other ports around the world. When the expansion was proposed, the U.S. was an net importer, but now with the increase in U.S. production it’s now a net exporter.
Is Canadian oil in the same ‘boat’ as B.C. LNG? Is it just too uncompetitive compared to other places around the world? Perhaps that’s why Kinder Morgan is contemplating pulling out. That may also be why their stock prices have gone from 44USD in April 2015 to under 16USD in April 2018. Canada’s economy is doing fine without the expansion. We can boost the economy by implementing policy that increases investment in renewable energy, where there is enormous potential and is increasingly cost competitive with fossil fuels every year. In a Forbes article from earlier this year it was reported that the cost of renewable energy will be consistently cheaper than fossil fuels by 2020, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).
Let’s not be short-sighted with taxpayers’ dollars.
Paul Russo
Penticton