Editor: State oil companies in countries such as Nigeria, Russia, Saudi Arabia and China are in it for the money. They do not care about human or individual property rights.
They can all bad mouth Alberta for working the oilsands, and they do sound convincing. These countries make it illegal for their own people to criticize their oil companies, and if they do, they may end up dead.
Petro China is the richest oil company in the world, and if you have oil on your land, then your land belongs to Petro China. The Exxon Valdez disaster was large, but compared to oil spills in some dictatorial countries, it was small. In the case of the Exxon Valdez, the company did clean up the aftermath in the best way possible.
If the western world is guilty of anything, it is of trying to keep the peace and having the majority of the world’s ethical oil. We complain because we can. Until we can find another dependable source of energy, we are dependent on oil.
When oilsands development first started, there was some criticism of the use of open pit mines. That is now an extremely part of the overall development. A lot of time, money and effort is being put into making oil extraction there as green as possible.
We are lucky in being able to say and write as we think. Sometimes we may be shooting ourselves in the foot by doing so. The thought of independent inspections of state-owned oil companies would be comical, if it wasn’t so depressingly hopeless.
The only concern I have had about the Northern Gateway pipeline has already been addressed. Initially, the pipeline was designed by Enbridge to ship bitumen to China. Now David Black wants to build an oil refinery, and have an oil company from Western Canada build the pipeline.
This sounds to me like a win-win, even for native people in the area, who could have some good jobs as a result. We would have a pipeline built by people who do respect the environment, and would not have bitumen shipped to China.
I feel blessed that we live in a democratic country, and we do have freedom of speech. Women are free here. Property rights are respected. Oil companies respect the environment.
If we want a clean environment, the cleanest one is the one we Canadians have control over. Let’s not give up our freedoms and way of life as a result of incorrect information about oil.
Why do we try to please some dictatorships, and not let everyone know where our oil is coming from? Why is the western world having no trouble getting oil from Saudi Arabia, yet so much trouble getting oil from Alberta?
Bill Taylor,
Langley
