Life is a journey and Gordon Gibson’s travels from the Prime Minister’s Office of 1968 to 1972 to being a senior fellow of the Fraser Institute in 2014 were unusual. Not that his ideas have improved much over the years. He wrote in the Globe and Mail last week that Canada can benefit from President Obama rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline. The solution is far-fetched but the expectation of what the American President will do might be bang on.
Gibson thinks that it would be a serious mistake for the Americans to kill Keystone XL but beneficial for Canada. His reasoning is that Canada should be refining the oil sands products into gasoline and diesel fuel products rather than shipping bitumen to world markets. He notes that the end products are easier to ship, less likely to create catastrophic spills and would earn more tax revenue for Canada. As logical and as naïve as his idea sounds, it would leave this entire country knee deep in carbon fallout within a decade. The consequences of the pollution caused would be appalling.
And his extolling the idea having a refinery at Kitimat to process all the bitumen coming over the Rockies instead of putting it directly on tankers is a pipedream of dramatic proportions. Mind you he points out that Enbridge has screwed up its public relations in regards to that pipeline in “a textbook case of incompetence.” The final proof of incompetence for Enbridge will be when its Line 9 through Toronto ruptures because of the high pressure of heated bitumen, they are going to try to force through it.
Gibson thinks that TransCanada’s EnergyEast is a “no-brainer” He believes it should just get built. What Gibson does not seem to understand is that there are many people in the East who think the people proposing it are the no-brainers and they should all get stuffed.
Gibson actually writes that just Quebeckers need to “accept a bit of reality therapy on this issue.” While Quebec is much more aware today to the very high risk for marine life in the lower St. Lawrence River, it is Ontario that has been sounding increasing alarms on these hair-brained eastern pipelines.
While the federal government has effectively blocked the more knowledgeable writers and environmental groups from filing meaningful objections to the pipelines with the Calgary-based National Energy Board (NEB), we have hardly been defeated.
Gibson is obviously not aware that Alberta already has the upgrading capability to convert more than a million barrels a day of bitumen into synthetic crude oil. The problem is that the province does not have the ability to deal with the pollution.
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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