‘The latest chapter in Canada’s quest to become a full-blown oil superpower unfolded this month in a village gym on the British Columbia coast.
‘Here, several hundred people gathered for hearings on whether a pipeline should be laid from the Alberta oil sands to the Pacific in order to deliver oil to Asia, chiefly energy-hungry China. The stakes are particularly high for the village of Kitamaat and its neighbors, because the pipeline would terminate here and a port would be built to handle 220 tankers a year and 525,000 barrels of oil a day.
‘But the planned Northern Gateway Pipeline is just one aspect of an epic battle over Canada’s oil ambitions — a battle that already has a supporting role in the U.S. presidential election, and which will help to shape North America’s future energy relationship with China.
‘It actually is a tale of two pipelines — the one that is supposed to end at Kitamaat Village, and another that would have gone from Alberta to the Texas coast but was blocked by the Obama administration citing environmental grounds.
‘Those same environmental issues are certain to haunt Northern Gateway as the Joint Review Panel of energy and environmental officials canvasses opinion along the 1,177 kilometer (731 mile) route of the Northern Gateway pipeline to be built by Enbridge, a Canadian company.
‘The fear of oil spills is especially acute in this pristine corner of northwest British Columbia, with its snowcapped mountains and deep ocean inlets. People here still remember the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989, and oil is still leaking from the Queen of the North, a ferry that sank off nearby Hartley Bay six years ago.
‘The seas nearby, in the Douglas Channel, “are very treacherous waters,” says David Suzuki, a leading environmentalist. “You take a supertanker that takes miles in order to stop, (and) an accident is absolutely inevitable.”’
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