While Green party leaders called for all political parties in Canada to come out against the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion project on Wednesday, a representative from the company took issue with their facts.

Federal Green Party MP Elizabeth May, BC Green Party leader Jane Sterk and Vancouver City Councillor and federal Green Party deputy leader Adriane Carr joined first nations leaders to state their opposition to the company’s plan to expand their capcity for transporting oil from Alberta to Metro Vancouver and beyond.

“We would end up with as many as 300 to 360 super tankers a year trying to get out from under the Second Narrows, under Railway Bridge and under Lions Gate Bridge,” May said.

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Elizabeth May, Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands and Leader of the Green Party of Canada, Jane Sterk, Leader of the Green Party of British Columbia, and Adriane Carr, Vancouver City Councillor with the Green Party of Vancouver and Deputy Leader of the Green Party of Canada all joined forces today to say “No” to Texas-based Kinder Morgan’s project of twinning the Trans Mountain Pipeline between Edmonton and Burnaby, taking its capacity from 300,000 barrels of diluted bitumen per day to 850,000 barrels per day.

“Kinder Morgan wants to nearly triple the capacity of the pipeline. This is an environmental threat not only because consuming all this oil will aggravate climate change, but also because the risks of oil spills are unacceptably high. More than 100,000 litres of light crude oil was spilled at Kinder Morgan’s terminal in Abbotsford, BC, last January.

“The first round of Kinder Morgan expansion allowed off-shore buyers with tankers to out-bid the last remaining lower mainland refinery at Burnaby. We are so eager to ship out unrefined bitumen, at great environmental risk, that we are ignoring the fact that the local economy is also short-changed,” added May.

“This is an ‘old economy’ project,” said Jane Sterk, Leader of the Green Party of British Columbia. “We don’t need more supertanker traffic in the Vancouver Harbour. What we need is to build a new renewable-energy-based economy that will create good jobs, protect our environment and establish greater long-term energy security. ”

“As a Vancouver Councillor, I have been proactive in ensuring that the City of Vancouver has taken a leadership role in opposing Kinder Morgan’s pipeline expansion”, added Adriane Carr. “Our city needs parties at the provincial and federal levels, where the decision on Kinder Morgan’s plans will be made, to step up to the plate. Only the Green Party has done so, declaring its opposition to Kinder Morgan’s plans at all three political levels. I hope this moves the NDP and the Liberals, both of which are waffling, to join us in saying ‘No’ to all the pipeline and tanker projects that threaten our economy andenvironment.”

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Representatives of federal, provincial and municipal Green parties voiced their collective opposition today (September 12) to plans to twin the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline between Edmonton and Burnaby.

“This proposal would dramatically increase the number of super tankers carrying bitumen diluent—it would expand the size of tankers leaving the port of Vancouver and we would end up with as many as 300 to 360 super tankers a year, trying to get out through the Second Narrows Bridge, under the railway bridge, and under Lion’s Gate Bridge,” said Elizabeth May, the MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands and Leader of the Green Party of Canada, at a news conference in downtown Vancouver.

“These are areas with significant tidal influences,” she added. “The precision of movement of these super tankers would have to be 100 percent perfect every day of the year for us to avoid a serious accident that could foul our waterways, our beaches and our shorelines from the Lower Mainland to the Gulf Islands.”

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