BURNABY (NEWS1130) -
Kinder Morgan is looking to see if there is enough commercial interest to ship more oil through Burnaby. The Burnaby-Douglas MP says the public needs to know more about what the company wants to do.
If the Trans Mountain pipeline expands in the city, it would mean more tanker traffic in the Burrard Inlet, according to New Democrat
Kennedy Stewart. "If this pipeline expansion went ahead, we could be seeing up to five per cent of our total port traffic being large tankers, which... is something that needs to be discussed in public."
"There is a great uncertainty right now as to if this expansion would go ahead, what kind of public involvement would there be in terms of scrutinizing if this is a good thing to do rather than keeping the pipeline the way it is," he adds.
Steward says there's also the potential for environmental risks, with many folks still trying to move on from the 2007 oil spill. The pipeline's maximum capacity right now is 300,000 barrels a day; Kinder Morgan wants to double that.