Hughes quoted in Montreal Gazette on oil policy
January 30, 2012
Post Carbon Fellow David Hughes was quoted in this article on 5 reasons shipping oil to Asia is not in the national interest.
From the article:
Half of Canada is reliant on foreign oil. Most of eastern Canada is currently dependent on foreign oil from declining or volatile reserves in the North Sea and the Middle East. If our government really cared about the best interests of Canadians, they’d be at least considering Canadian domestic energy security. Instead, they are selling off our oil to foreign oil companies and pushing to allow them to ship it to Asia on supertankers through an ocean environment that Environment Canada rates as the fourth most dangerous body of water in the world (which also just so happens to be one of the last remaining pristine places on the planet).
As former senior federal government geologist David Hughes writes in his 30-page report submitted to the joint review panel: “The proclivity to liquidate these resources as fast as possible in the name of economic growth is a very short-sighted policy practised by the Alberta and federal governments at the expense of the long-term energy security of Canadians.”
Image credit: Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver – THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick