A Rolling Pipeline

It is clear that in spite of the federal government’s commitment to expand the pipeline to the west coast, there is a surplus of oil waiting to get to a refinery and no way of it getting anywhere. The Canadian expansion faces months and months of hearings and debates, eventually I suspect ending up in front of the Supreme Court again. Even after all of the political horse trading that will happen both in the mass media and behind closed doors, there is no guarantee that the pipeline will ever get built within my lifetime. A pipeline route to the south of us seems to be almost as unlikely.

I am not sure if I understand why our reduced capacity to ship Alberta’s raw crude the the USA means that we get less for it, but apparently it is worth less as we can’t ship it in any large quantity. Personally I think the international oil companies are just messing with us. Regardless, Alberta has a problem, its revenues are down and it needs money to operate. If the NDP government of Rachel Notley does not appear to do something, not only will there potentially be a significant shortage of operating funds but they will resoundingly lose the next provincial election - the party could even be reduced to almost no standing in the provincial legislature. One of her short term solutions is for the Albertan government to buy more rail cars so that the crude can be shipped by rail.

This may be the only solution - it is not a good solution.

1) It is an expensive option. According to the Globe and Mail (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/cn-to-buy-200-locomotives-from-ge-as-freight-volumes-surge/article37418466/) each engine could cost three million (US), a new oil car could cost up to $150,000 each (https://business.financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/alberta-plans-to-buy-7000-railcars-to-ease-crisis-in-oil-price-differentials)

2) The carbon footprint to manufacture those engines and cars would be significant

3) As much as there is a legitimate fear of a pipeline cracking and leaking hundreds if not thousands of litres of crude oil before the flow is cut off, there is an equally legitimate concern as to the risk of an train derailment and the resultant spill. At least some of the thousands of miles of railroad tracks in Canada go through remote parts of our wilderness where there is no road access. Cleaning up any spill would be difficult and very expensive. Furthermore, at other times, the tracks go through major population centres and any accident involving a train derailment could cause an incomprehensible amount of damage to both the city’s infrastructure and to human lives.

4) Our rail system is already over crowded. As frequent readers of this blog are aware, our national passenger rail service is a disgrace with cross-country trains running a minimum of 12 hours late on a regular basis. Putting more cars on to those tracks could be the death blow to our passenger rail transportation. VIA rail, outside of southern Ontario could go the way of the Greyhound bus.

5) There is some doubt as to whether or not there are enough trained engineers to operate the existing trains never mind adding more. According to CBC (https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/ottawa-warns-of-dangerously-exhausted-train-crews-as-alberta-ramps-up-oil-by-rail/ar-BBQmQr0?li=AA521o), well before Notley’s announcement, Transport Canada express concern that rail crews were all ready over worked with insufficient time off to rest.

Shipping crude oil by train is expensive, dangerous and could be the death blow to our transcontinental passenger train system. I am am not too sure if the potential damage is not as great if not greater than the shipping our crude by pipeline.

One has to wonder as to why more people are not expressing more concern.