I read Mr. Kolomyjec's letter and Ms. Cunningham’s letter of opinion and must make a comment. There are too many people in this world that see petroleum products as "bad." Many quote the phrase, "We need to look for alternative sources of energy." This is a very naÄŹve statement. I would ask those people who make this comment to give us examples of alternative sources of energy that are going to take the place of petroleum. There is nothing on this planet that can do so at this time, hence the petroleum energy industry is doing everything it can to clean up its products. There is not enough electrical power today to run cities. With roving blackouts in places, how would a city power its transportation by electricity alone? There are no other products that can sustain our society with energy than these two on a scale we need.
Let's look at some interesting facts. When Ms. Cunningham says we have spills, indeed we do. Why would that be? It is because we are not using safe methods to transport oil. By refusing to build pipelines, we increase the risk on the environment. Right now, train cars are transporting oil all over North America and when there is a derailment, there are spills. When we build pipelines, we can monitor them and keep them in a state of repair. One should investigate the amount of spills caused by various forms of transportation and will find out that transporting oil by pipeline is by far the safest method to do so.
Oil spills on land can be easily remediated and the effects of them controlled for the most part. Drilling at sea is high risk and I agree there needs to be better control over these kind of operations or even done away with.
I wish we could find alternative resources, but I don't foresee this happening in the near future. The cost of moving away from our present ways would be devastating.
Ted Durham, St. Albert
