On Friday evening I was walking through the street market when someone I knew from the past came up and asked me to sign the anti-pipeline petition.
I was surprised because when I knew this person years ago he had an abundance of common sense, which seems to have evaporated in the intervening years.
If I was in the mood I might have asked “Which pipeline?” because there is the Northern Gateway, Kinder Morgan, Keystone XL and the proposed Alberta east.
I worked on the Yellowhead Highway and did preliminary work on the Coquihalla Highway in the 1970s, and we had to work around the KM pipeline. They even helped out by allowing our staff to hitch rides on their patrol helicopter.
If anti-pipeline people are so opposed to pipelines, why do they not petition to close down the KM pipeline? I wonder how that might affect the economy of the Lower Mainland?
We have seen famous movie stars flying into Washington to protest the Keystone XL pipeline. Do these people not realize that below the city of Los Angeles there is a huge oil field, which is pumping out crude oil from beside schools and other buildings?
In addition, the US west coast imports 1.5 million barrels per day, with 24 per cent coming in by tanker from Saudi Arabia, a distance of 11,400 miles.
Tankers also carry heavy crude from Venezuela to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico, and to Canada’s east coast. It seems that anti-pipeline people prefer oil hauled by tankers and by rail, rather than through pipelines.
Where is the common sense?
And speaking of flying, it seems that a senior Greenpeace executive, Pascal Husting, has been commuting from his home in Luxembourg to his job in Amsterdam by air instead of by train. This makes a mockery of the Greenpeace campaign to reduce flying.
“Environmentalists” have been very active in Europe protesting proposed oil and gas fracking, including making films. Who is funding and backing most of this campaign? Russia! Primarily the big gas company Gazprom and various Russian politicians.
Is it any coincidence that Gazprom has doubled the price of gas to the Ukraine, and now has cut off all supplies? Russia uses fracking as a part of its industry. Russia also supplies a lot of gas to other European countries, and seems to want to control those countries too, apparently by what some people might call blackmail.
Our anti-pipeline, anti-fracking people seem to be throwing their support behind the Russian dictatorship and encouraging attacks against the Ukraine. And what about North Korea?
North Korea is totally dependent on a pipeline from China for its oil supplies. Our anti-pipeline people are not opposed to that pipeline. Why not?
The New Democratic Party appears to be taking a leadership role in trashing the oil industry (greedy corporations and capitalists) and proposed pipelines. I would not feel so bad if these anti-pipeline people would act on their beliefs and boycott the products.
They should stop using the products for transportation, energy, cell phones and computers etc. (around 80 per cent of cell phones and computers contain plastics from the oil industry).
This anti-pipeline organization reeks of hypocrisy. I believe it would be appropriate for these people, particularly the NDP, to put up big signs reading “Blockade Alberta.”
Roger Pratt
Nelson
