Editor:
I understand that over the past few years, multi-national oil companies and oil companies owned by countries such as China have introduced a new national resource strategy for Canada's oil.
This strategy will turn B.C. into an oil tanker port for Alberta. What will happen to the environment, tourism and commercial fishing is evident given the results of an oil spill such as the one in 2010 that dumped 800,000 gallons into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. Enbridge is the same pipeline company that may lay the one in B.C. and Alberta.
Oil sands crude oil, called bitumen, needs to be upgraded before refining. This is where a lot of the economic wealth and jobs flow. It does not come from taking the oil out of ground and shipping it off to foreign countries, allowing them to reap the gain by turning the raw resource into end-use products.
At one point this upgrading was going to be done in Alberta by going from one million barrels per day to 3.5 million. But when the financial crunch came, it was scrapped. Now the new oil sand production of bitumen will be shipped to either Asia or the U.S. along with the government revenues, jobs and labour income. These foreign nations are smart. They know that by controlling the supply it will ease the pain of rising oil prices in their countries. In the meantime, the oil sector is staying silent. These companies that own Canadian exploration and production rights also own the refineries in the U.S. and China and they don't like Canada's labour and environmental standards. So, the value-added capital will be moved to foreign countries.
Let's keep our jobs' value-added production money and wealth right here at home and at the same time lessen the chance of an environmental disaster.
Larry Honeybourne, Madeira Park
