The controversy surrounding the Kinder Morgan pipeline has inspired a Camosun student to put together a campaign to educate people on the impacts of the project. The Stop Kinder Morgan Teach In, co-organized by first-year University Transfer student Andrew Swain, will be held in the Library Learning Commons multi-purpose room, on the Lansdowne campus, on Thursday, March 22 from 1:30 pm until 3:30 pm.
Swain says the campaign to stop the pipeline is in full swing and he was ready to do something around the college to voice his thoughts on the matter, but he couldn’t quite figure out what—until now.
“It’s following the old-fashioned way of trying to bring [together] community activists and members of the faculty that have something to contribute,” says Swain.
Swain says that there are two main focus points around the pipeline issue. One is concern around spillage of bitumen, a heavy petroleum product with a high sulphur content; the other is reconciliation. Swain says indigenous reconciliation “must occur for the pipeline to be accepted” and that bitumen is “not regular oil in any way.”
“It doesn’t flow normally,” he says. “It has to be diluted with a very volatile chemical… This chemical evaporates in the air, leaving the bitumen to sink to the bottom of the ocean.”
Even if the oil doesn’t spill, the chemicals will still seep into the atmosphere, says Swain, making reference to the Kalamazoo River oil spill that occurred in July 2010.
“It’s turned out to be very challenging and expensive to fix just a river,” he says. “How hard would it be to try and clean up the Salish Sea?”
Swain says the number of tankers—five or six a day—transporting oil is a huge issue as well.
“The pipeline’s going to be pumping 24/7, 365 days a year,” he says, adding that there is nowhere for the tankers to go except through terrain like Galiano Island, which has almost shut down Vancouver Harbour in the past.
“With this massive increase in bitumen, we need to stop this,” says Swain. He says that the amount of energy it takes to refine bitumen is also important to note. What scares Swain the most, he says, is a tanker sinking.
“I think the more systemic issue is the climate change. A lot of people want to say that’s a separate topic,” says Swain, “but this is it. 100 percent of this bitumen will be spilled into the air… Our real point here is that this is absolutely atrocious for the atmosphere and for any attempt at reducing our greenhouse emissions globally.”