What’s going on in South Portland, Maine? Elected officials in the port city are on the verge of banning crude oil from Canada’s tar sands from entering their port. With a large and busy port, South Portland is the home of the Portland-Montreal Pipe Line, which pumps millions of barrels of oil each year.
According to PressHerald.com, the proposal to “ban tar sands oil from coming into the city won the Planning Board’s endorsement.. The board voted 6-1 to recommend that the City Council approve the proposal…”
The proposal would prohibit loading crude oil, including oil sands, in bulk onto tankers and block construction or expansion of port terminals for that purpose.
A public hearing on the ban held on on July 9 attracted more than 500 people, including Alberta’s Representative in Washington D.C., former Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers President David Manning. Standing at the microphone, Mr. Manning defended Alberta’s oil sands, citing the Alberta government’s climate change and carbon capture strategies (see video above).
While Mr. Manning was likely just sticking to government’s standard talking points memo, the examples he cited were unfortunately timed.
Last week, Alberta’s Auditor General ripped into the provincial government, claiming he found no evidence the Department of Environment and Sustainable Resource Development properly monitored the performance the provincial government’s six year old climate change strategy. The Auditor General also criticized Alberta’s carbon capture program, saying that “with only two carbon capture and storage projects planned, the total emissions reductions are expected to be less than 10% of what was originally anticipated.”
As stewards of the land in which the oil sands are located, Canadians need to approach this debate intelligently and ensure that our politicians put the best interests of current and future citizens as priority. As the long-governing Progressive Conservative Party is expected to coronate Jim Prentice as Alberta’s next premier, Albertans should pray that our new leader looks to the wisdom of former Premier Peter Lougheed, rather than blindly preaching the status-quo of bad planning and limitless export.
Canada’s oil sands have become a lightning rod in American politics, and not just in regions impacted by controversial pipeline projects like the Keystone XL pipeline. Over the past months, protests and petitions against oil sands crude have made headlines across the New England states.
While there is no doubt that oil sands exploitation continues to produce significant environmental impacts, there are natural resources that cause a much larger impact – like dirty coal.
It is unclear whether there were ever any plans to ship crude oil from Canada’s oil sands to South Portland or whether the municipal ban would actually stop any shipment. But with the debate around Canada’s oil sands expected to be a hot-button issue in the American mid-term election season, expect there to be more debates like the one being held in South Portland, Maine.
