A little more than a year ago, B.C. activist Ingmar Lee told a reporter that the petroleum-hauling vessel Nathan E. Stewart was a “disaster waiting to happen.”
Early Wednesday morning, that fear was realized when the American-owned articulated tug and barge ran aground near Bella Bella. Although the barge was empty after dropping off its cargo in Alaska, the tugboat began leaking fuel into the water, threatening the traditional clam fisheries of the Heiltsuk First Nation.
“It’s unfortunately a terrible thing to see it sunk there,” Lee said Thursday.
COASTAL FIRST NATIONS RENEWS CALL FOR OIL
TANKER BAN ON BC COAST IN AFTERMATH OF BELLA BELLA SPILL
Vancouver, BC (October 14, 2016) – Coastal First Nations renews its call today for a ban on crude oil tanker traffic and says First Nations must be at the table to determine what went wrong in Thursday’s diesel spill near the Heiltsuk First Nation of Bella Bella, BC.
"President Ian Anderson said Kinder Morgan Canada has been in “deep” conversations with policing authorities, including the RCMP."
Oct 12, 2016 - Major pipeline companies are grappling with blockades and repeated disruptions to operations as hardline activists demand an accelerated transition away from fossil fuels.
All it took was a pair of bolt cutters and the elbow grease of a few climate activists to carry out an audacious act of sabotage on North America's massive oil and gas pipeline system.
For an industry increasingly reliant on gadgets such as digital sensors, infrared cameras and drones to monitor security and check for leaks, the sabotage illustrated how vulnerable pipelines are to low-tech attacks.
On Tuesday, climate activists broke through fences and cut locks and chains simultaneously in several states and simply turned the pipelines off.
“We don’t want what happened to us to happen to the people in Dakota,” Piaguaje told teleSUR.
Indigenous groups affected by the contamination of Chevron in Ecuador—led by Humberto Piaguaje—joined the Native Americans protesting the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline in the state of North Dakota in the U.S.
The B.C. Oil and Gas Commission describes its vision as providing “oil and gas regulatory excellence for British Columbia’s changing energy future” and lists its values as “respectful, accountable, effective, efficient, responsive and transparent.”
Carrying out those lofty goals is difficult, however, when the commission’s main public accountability portal for its more than 43,000 kilometres of pipelines — an online ‘incident map’ — has been offline for more than a month.
A tug and barge that carries petroleum products to and from Alaska through B.C.’s Inside Passage has run aground near Bella Bella.
The Canadian Coast Guard confirms the Nathan E. Stewart, an articulated tug/barge owned by the Texas-based Kirby Corporation, ran aground at Edge Reef in Seaforth Channel just after 1 a.m. Thursday.
The coast guard says the 287-foot long fuel barge was empty, but the 100-foot tug itself is leaking diesel fuel. People on the scene at noon said that the tug was half under water and on its way to sinking completely.
A small group of climate activists on Tuesday forced the shutdown of five major pipelines carrying crude from Canada to the United States, stepping up opposition to Alberta’s oil industry as it seeks support for major export projects.
Play VideoPlay Current Time 0:00 / Duration Time 2:48 Loaded: 0% Progress: 0% FullscreenMute Embed Why we need to keep fossil fuels in the ground Damian Carrington
‘Shocking’ revelation finds $5.3tn subsidy estimate for 2015 is greater than the total health spending of all the world’s governments
Fossil fuel companies are benefitting from global subsidies of $5.3tn (£3.4tn) a year, equivalent to $10m a minute every day, according to a startling new estimate by the International Monetary Fund.
