Dear Editor,
RE: Pipeline Concerns, May 17. My complements to Brent Taylor for describing so clearly the risks to Canada of the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion project. There are more reasons to reject the project. By the time the project is completed, if it is ever completed, there won’t be a market for the tar sands dilbit. Here is why.
The port to which the pipeline will deliver the dilbit can accommodate ships no larger than the Aframax class, whose maximum capacity is 550,000 barrels of oil. Over the past decade the Aframax tankers were being scrapped and replaced by a global fleet of about 750 Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) which can hold about four times the load of the Aframax tankers with a lower shipping cost.
Further, the refining costs of dilbit are greater than the high-grade, low cost shale oil produced in the United States, not to mention the problem of disposing of mountains of the chemical crud left over and the greater costs of producing dilbit in the first place.
Terminals like the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) with their bi-directional pipelines can pump oil at an astonishing 100,000 barrels per hour. VLCCs can arrive with one load for refining and leave with another while barely dropping anchor, so different to the ticklish navigation problems of the Burrard Inlet.
And now Trudeau wants to throw good money after bad, calling on taxpayers to support Kinder Morgan, a US company, in case there are delays in building a pipeline to deliver a product where there will be no buyers. Seems like Mr. Trudeau is not only flogging a dead horse, he wants to enter it in the Kentucky Derby.
Ron Moore
Hillsburgh
Ron Moore
