{"id":6306,"date":"2018-09-17T14:25:11","date_gmt":"2018-09-17T18:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/boilermaker.ca\/?p=6306"},"modified":"2018-09-17T16:04:29","modified_gmt":"2018-09-17T20:04:29","slug":"time-to-end-the-guilt-parade-about-the-oil-sands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/boilermaker.ca\/en\/time-to-end-the-guilt-parade-about-the-oil-sands\/","title":{"rendered":"Time to end the guilt parade about the oil sands"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Boilermakers dressing a vessel for the oil sands industry<\/p><\/div>\n

The following was published in the Edmonton Journal on Sept. 13<\/em><\/p>\n

By Joseph Maloney<\/p>\n

Enough with the guilt trip. I\u2019m proud to represent people who work in the oil sands. They\u2019re proud of the jobs they do. And they should be.<\/p>\n

As a union leader, I represent thousands of oil sands workers. These people are extremely skilled at keeping our oil plants and refineries operating. And guess what? They care just as much about the environment and global warming as the people who want to shut the industry down.<\/p>\n

It might not be popular to say so, but the people who work in our oil sands are crucial to our way of life. Nearly 200,000 Canadians depend directly on the oil and gas industry for their jobs, almost three quarters of them in Alberta. Hundreds of thousands more in just about every industry in Canada couldn\u2019t work without refined oil products.<\/p>\n

Our lives depend on Alberta oil \u2014 and I\u2019m not just talking about the oil and gas that lubricate and power our vehicles. Even if we could electrify every car in Canada overnight, we\u2019d still need oil, and lots of it.<\/p>\n

Most people don\u2019t realize how much oil is used to make the asphalt and cement in our roads and buildings. They forget that plastic is a petroleum product. They don\u2019t even think about industrial lubricants, pharmaceuticals, fertilizer, refrigerant, food preservatives and dozens of other commodities. Without oil, modern life would be unsustainable.<\/p>\n

Why then, is this industry being demonized? I\u2019m not talking about people who want to see a cleaner oil industry that makes less of an impact on our carbon emissions. I am talking about the people who claim Alberta\u2019s oil is \u201cfilthy\u201d and want to leave it in the ground.<\/p>\n

These folks would rather see us buy oil from Russia and Saudi Arabia than employ Canadians. They don\u2019t want Canadian tankers in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, but don\u2019t mention the ones from Alaska and Russia that supply oil for BC drivers. The refineries of Washington State could get their oil by pipeline from Canada far more safely.<\/p>\n

Certainly, the oil and gas industry has a lot to answer for. But in Canada, people do care about the environment and our governments have listened. They\u2019ve made regulations over the years that have made the industry cleaner, safer and more benign in its environmental impact. They\u2019ve forced the industry to adopt and embrace practices that are anything but common in other parts of the world.<\/p>\n

As a result, we have exhaustive hearings before major projects are undertaken. The industry has bolstered its role in environmental protection with new technology and procedures that make the extraction and shipping of Alberta oil cleaner all the time.<\/p>\n

The examples are many. Shell\u2019s carbon-capture project north of Edmonton and one of similar scale in Saskatchewan will soon pass the two-million-tonne mark annually in carbon reclaimed. The newest technology makes oil from the sands as clean as intermediate crude from Texas. A major new refinery in Alberta collects and reclaims carbon by pipeline from industries as much as 100 kilometres away. Two proposed new refineries in BC claim they will be carbon neutral.<\/p>\n

Canada is leading the world in developing new ways to extract and ship oil sustainably and safely. We\u2019re certainly doing more than Donald Trump, who wants to turn back the clock to the 19th century. And as far as the other big oil exporters, like Russia, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, let\u2019s not even go there.<\/p>\n

Far from dwindling, worldwide demand for oil is forecast to increase until about 2050. The countries where that demand is growing will buy their oil from somewhere. Why shouldn\u2019t it be from us?<\/p>\n

Canada and Canadian oil workers have nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, they can be proud of the environmental, labour and human rights regulations and protocols under which our oil is produced. Canada needs to sell the world more oil, not less.<\/p>\n

(Joseph Maloney is International Vice-President for Canada of the Boilermakers union.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following was published in the Edmonton Journal on Sept. 13<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[193],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/boilermaker.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/boilermaker.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/boilermaker.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boilermaker.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boilermaker.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6306"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/boilermaker.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6317,"href":"https:\/\/boilermaker.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6306\/revisions\/6317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/boilermaker.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boilermaker.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boilermaker.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}