VANCOUVER, British Columbia, July 30 (UPI) -- British Columbia is asking for a major environmental catastrophe if Canadian energy company Enbridge gets backing for an oil pipeline, Greenpeace said.
Canadian pipeline company Enbridge Energy Partners is proposing a 725-mile pipeline to carry oil from Alberta to terminals in British Columbia. The pipeline would carry as much as 525,000 barrels of oil per for delivery to Asian markets, the company said.
Stephanie Goodwin, the director of Greenpeace in British Columbia, said the environmental record of the pipeline company is troublesome.
"If Enbridge's pipeline goes ahead, it's not a question of if a spill will happen, but when and how large," she was quoted in the Toronto Star as saying.
Oil companies are under fire in the wake of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Enbridge, for its part, is facing criticism from Michigan lawmakers following a rupture at one of its pipelines that dumped more than 20,000 barrels of oil into the Kalamazoo River.
Greenpeace activists Wednesday used oil apparently from the Gulf of Mexico spill to smear the windows of the headquarters of Enbridge in Vancouver.
The $5.5 billion pipeline slated for Alberta oil sands still needs to pass through a series of regulatory and environmental hurdles before moving forward.
Environmental and aboriginal groups worry that oil activity along the western Canadian coast could cause irreparable harm to the regional ecosystem.
