Offshore moratorium won't stop Gateway

Offshore moratorium won't keep tankers from loading Alberta oil in
Kitimat, pipeline head says

Gordon Jaremko
with files and Wency Leung
Edmonton Journal
Monday, June 26, 2006

EDMONTON -- Supertankers will fill up with Alberta oilsands production and set sail for Asia from Kitimat starting in 2010, Enbridge Gateway Pipelines Inc. predicted, noting that a federal moratorium on offshore oil and gas exploration would not restrict tankers from traversing B.C.'s coastal waters.

The Edmonton subsidiary of Enbridge Inc. is on schedule with its $4-billion plan to build a 1,200-kilometre pipeline across Alberta and B.C. to a new terminal at Kitimat, Gateway president Arthur Meyer said. In advance of making construction applications to the National Energy Board later this year, Meyer said in an interview the project is already seeking federal approval of new marine traffic and docks.

"There is no moratorium," he added, rejecting claims by environmental groups resisting the Gateway project that jumbo oil tankers are legally banned along the B.C. coast.

In 1972, the federal government made a policy decision not to approve any new permits for oil and gas exploration off the west coast of Canada and to suspend all work obligations under existing permits. That decision was initially spurred by concern over tanker traffic in B.C. coastal waters.

But, according to Natural Resources Canada, a moratorium affects only offshore oil and gas exploration activities.

In addition, a 2002 report by a scientific panel appointed by the B.C. Ministry of Energy and Mines said that no order in council appears to have ever been made to formally impose the federal moratorium.

The report added that the purpose of the moratorium was to lift from license-holders any obligations to do work under those licenses.

"Tankers are not affected by the moratorium," Ghyslain Charron, media relations for Natural Resources Canada, said by phone on Friday.

Nonetheless, an Ipsos Reid poll commissioned by the Dogwood Initiative environmental group revealed this week that 75 per cent of the 800 British Columbians surveyed said they were in favour of banning oil tankers from the coast of B.C.

Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society is one of several environmental groups that supports a ban.

"Our biggest focus has been the risk to marine development," said Sabine Jessen, the society's conservation director. "If there's a spill up there, it will affect the whole area."

Enbridge Gateway Pipelines' project includes rapid acceleration and global expansion of marine trade in Alberta output, which currently sails mostly in small ships to refining centres along the northwest coast of the U.S.

The Gateway plan calls for up to 13 tankers a month to use the proposed Kitimat terminal.

About 75 per cent of the new Alberta exports will go to Asia and 25 per cent will sail to U.S. ports under transportation service contracts now being concluded with shippers, Meyer said.

Gateway's monthly marine traffic schedule includes up to seven VLCCs or Very Large Crude Carriers, each one 343 metres, or more than three football fields long, and 58 metres wide, plus six Suezmax vessels built narrower and shorter to fit through the Suez Canal.

The 320,000-tonne VLCCs will fill up with 2.3 million barrels of oilsands cargo for export. The 160,000-tonne Suezmax ships will land 1.1-million-barrels of gasoline-like condensate, an abundant byproduct needed for thinning tarry bitumen into a blend suitable for pipelines and refineries.

Safety and environmental precautions include requirements for all tankers to be double-hulled, two B.C. pilots to control each ship in coastal waters, and tugboat escorts for loaded vessels until they reach open sea.

The Gateway project also needs up to 6,000 construction workers in 2008-10.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006