INNOVATION May-June 2015

l et ter s

Letters to the editor of 300 words or less can be e-mailed to innovation@apeg.bc.ca. While we welcome your input, due to space limitations we may be unable to publish all letters received. Opinions expressed in letters to the editor are not necessarily endorsed by APEGBC.

terminal to Roberts Bank as the Concerned Professional Engineers suggested in the November 2014 Vancouver Sun , and as they more gently suggested in the last edition of Innovation . The immense costs to move the pipelines and terminal would presumably increase the pipeline tariff charged shippers on the line, and reduce netbacks to producers and hence their taxes payable to governments—all for no apparent gain. As to their concern about tankers hitting the Second Narrows Bridge, these tankers from Trans Mountain’s facility have tethered tugs in the narrows. The larger risk to the bridge, based on history, is the non-tanker vessels, which hit

No Good Reason to Move Burnaby Tank Farm The letter by engineers Foschi, Hatfield, Peter, and Gunn (who normally call themselves the “Concerned Professional Engineers”) suggests Roberts Bank as an alternative to Trans Mountain’s existing Burnaby tank farm and docks in Burrard Inlet east of the Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Bridge for the export of dilbit. Given more than 100 years of oil-tanker spill free history in Vancouver Harbour (and more than 60 years by Trans Mountain), I question the wisdom of spending huge sums of money to relocate the well-sheltered Burnaby tanker

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