Municipal leaders are asking for more consultation before Kinder Morgan proceeds with plans to nearly triple the amount of oil flowing into the Vancouver area.
The energy giant announced this week that its proposal to twin the Trans Mountain pipeline would increase capacity to 850,000 barrels per day, a much bigger expansion that environmentalists and local governments had thought. The pipeline currently brings in about 300,000 barrels per day.
Vancouver city councillor Adriane Carr sent a letter to the company on behalf of the city asking for consultation on the project, but says that hasn't happened yet.
"I think there have been several members of council that have sat down with them a couple times, but there has been nothing transparent, nothing open, nothing public, nothing with our whole community. And of course, that's what we want," she told CTV News.
Carr, like many environmentalists, fears a greater risk of spills because of an increase in tanker traffic to as many as 30 each month. She points to the major spill in Burnaby when the pipeline was ruptured in 2007.
But the company says the increase in capacity isn't a safety concern.
"We're not going to jeopardize public safety by having a bigger project than a smaller project," Kinder Morgan Canada president Ian Anderson said.
Kinder Morgan has said it will not reconsider the scale of the expansion, but would be open to changing the route if necessary. The company has already informed would-be customers to book space in the proposed expansion now.
The twinned pipeline would begin pumping oil from the Alberta oilsands by 2017.
With a report from CTV British Columbia's Peter Grainger
