To the Editor,
Anyone who thinks Canada will somehow benefit from getting ‘our’ oil to international markets doesn’t understand the business.
Oil is sold on the open market in U.S. dollars only. That’s why we pay twice as much at the pumps as Americans do; having a pipe to tidewater won’t change this.
It’s only ‘our’ oil when it’s in the ground. When it’s extracted, it’s owned by the international company that extracted it. It only reverts to our ownership if one of their tankers happens to dump it into ‘our’ ocean or a pipeline bursts and dumps it into one of ‘our’ rivers.
Over 80 per cent of our energy today can come from non-fossil sources. Solar, wind, geothermal, hydro and conservation are not only more healthy, they are cheaper. If not for government subsidies ($4 billion a year in Canada) the oil and gas industry would have been dead a decade ago.
Regardless of very real environmental concerns, there are economic reasons against expansion of the Kinder Morgan pipeline.
Jim ErkiletianNanaimo