FEDS ‘REWRITING HISTORY’ OVER OIL TANKER MORATORIUM
By Leanne Ritchie
The Daily News ( Prince Rupert )
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Any attempts by the federal and provincial governments to deny the existence of a crude oil tanker moratorium in the Queen Charlotte Basin is an effort to rewrite history, said Dr. Gerald Graham, oil spill expert and consultant.
He knows, he says, because he was around at the time and was thrown for a loop when he was recently told by government that it doesn’t exist.
“It’s a contentious issue. Up until about a year ago, it was generally assumed there was a crude oil tanker moratorium,” he said. “It came as a complete shock to me. Government is essentially rewriting history.”
The issue of the tanker moratorium has resurfaced because of a proposal by Enbridge, a Calgary based company, to build a billion dollar pipeline from Edmonton to Kitimat in order to export crude oil to China and the U. S.
Government and the company say the moratorium doesn’t exist, only a voluntary moratorium for U. S. tankers traveling from Alaska to the southern United States. But others, like Graham, say it does.
In fact, he said it pre-dates the offshore oil and gas exploration moratorium.
Graham said that in 1972, at the urging of David Anderson, the Federal Government imposed the moratorium on crude oil tankers traveling through Dixon Entrance, Hecate Strait and the Queen Charlotte Sound.
“Then someone said we have to be consistent and that’s when the offshore oil and gas moratorium was imposed,” he said. “In a nutshell, the original moratorium was a tanker moratorium.”
And any future changes to this policy require strategic environmental assessment as a result of a cabinet directive passed in 1996.
Graham says it’s ridiculous for government to try and ignore the existence of the moratorium given two of their own recent panels studying offshore oil and gas recognize it.
The terms of reference for the Priddle Panel, the most recent public panel exploring offshore oil and gas development in the Queen Charlotte Basin, expressly mentioned the moratorium.
And the Royal Society of Canada, which conducted the scientific review, only made two recommendations, he said, one of which was to keep the crude oil tanker moratorium.
Graham is a consultant of 33 years who used to work for the Canadian Offshore Oil and Gas Lands Administration. He also wrote about the tanker exclusion zone as a consultant for Canada’s Public Review Panel on Tanker and Safety and Marine Spills Response Capability, the so-called Brander-Smith Panel in the late 1980’s.
The panel was established following the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill in Alaska and the Nestucca barge spill in Washington State. The Panel’s Final Report led to a complete overhaul of Canada’s spill response regime.
Graham isn’t the only one claiming the current Conservative and former Liberal government are trying to re-write history.
Former Minister of Environment David Anderson, who pushed for the tanker moratorium, recently told the Victoria Times-Colonist that the policy exists.
“The idea that somehow you can pretend it doesn’t exist is stretching it a good deal,” he said.
And critics were recently outraged when, they say, the moratorium was violated.
In late June, a tanker carrying approximately 350,000 barrels of condensate – a mix of chemicals and petroleum derivatives used to dilute crude oil – entered B. C.’s inside passage bound for Methanex’s terminal in Kitimat. The tanker off-loaded its condensate into railcars for transport to Encana’s operations in Alberta.
Enbridge is also proposing to import condensate alongside its crude oil exports at its proposed Kitimat Terminal.
However, provincial Minister of Energy and Mines Richard Neufeld said the current government says the moratorium doesn’t exist.
“They agree with us,” he said. “There is no moratorium.”