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Kinder Morgan Canada is seeking to twin its Trans-Mountain Pipeline between northern Alberta and Burnaby. This is the first of a three-part Black Press series looking at the logistics, risks and politics involved. Neil ENGLAND/photo
The 249-metre Everest Spirit, an Aframax-class tanker, sails towards the Second Narrows Bridge in Burrard Inlet, flanked by tug boats.
JEFF NAGEL Black Press
The Everest Spirit, an oil tanker the length of two and a half football fields, nudges slowly under the Second Narrows Bridge. In its bowels is enough crude oil to fill more than 30 Olympic swimming pools, loading it down so that it sits 13 metres deep in the water, close to the carefully prescribed maximum safe draft for the narrow, shallow channel. The ship is one of 32 tankers that last year loaded crude from Burnaby’s Westridge
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terminal, the end of an 1,100-kilometre pipeline that runs from northern Alberta southwest across B.C. to the Pacific. But Kinder Morgan, which owns the Trans-Mountain pipeline, has big plans to turn the current trickle of oil through Vancouver’s harbour into a gusher. It is beginning the process this spring to twin the pipeline and increase its current 300,000-barrel-per-day capacity to as much as 850,000. Some would continue to flow to refineries in Burnaby and Washington State, and some is in the form of refined products. But export oil bound for tankers is
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projected to soar from a current 80,000 barrels per day to 450,000 or more if the project proceeds. The number of tankers filling up in Burnaby could hit 288 in 2016, four times more than the record 69 crude tankers in 2010. That prospect has alarmed environmentalists who worry the risk of a catastrophic spill is increasing and say Metro Vancouverites never signed on to become Alberta’s oil port. “People are terrified about this,” said Georgia Strait Alliance executive director Christianne Wilhelmson.
“If an accident happens, we live here. We’re going to lose our orcas. We’re going to lose our salmon. We’re going to lose our businesses that rely on a pristine environment. “It’s simply not worth the risk.”
SPILL SAFEGUARDS The tankers move in the harbour with extensive safeguards. Tankers must be accompanied by three tugs from Westridge Terminal all the way to English Bay.
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