The Tilbury Jetty needs to be stopped before it begins

If you have a gas stove, furnace, or fireplace in B.C. then you probably have heard of Fortis. It owns a patch of land on Tilbury Island near the mouth of the Fraser River. That’s where it has recently been approved to build a marine jetty – basically a pipe and dock system – so that ships can sail up a narrow arm of the Fraser and fill up their tanks either to use for its own power, or to fill up the tanks of bigger ships like cruise ships. Right now the facility is relatively small, and supplying the fuel to justify LNG’s expansion across industries wouldn’t be possible – but Fortis has cooked up a simple plan: build a bigger tank.

Fortis is saying that it needs the tank for “grid resiliency”. It says that its worried that it can’t supply gas to all their customers under all circumstances, and want to be able to store more in case of emergency. But here’s the thing: the big consumers of gas aren’t people at home, it’s industry. Homes are getting off gas, and installing cool gadgets like heat pumps and induction stove tops. Industry, on the other hand, is moving towards gas – and gas production in BC is increasingly from fracking.

Doctors and researchers know that having gas in our homes is bad for our lungs, especially young lungs. Check out this CBC article on some Canadian research on this.The key take away is that people are switching away from this indoor pollution source, and it is the absolute right choice that parents can make for their kids. 

Fortis claims that its new, monolithic tank will be very safe as it is full of a fuel that is stored at -162℃. However, accidents happen, and if LNG got out, then it would certainly have impacts on whatever it touched before it warmed up. Tilbury is an island, which means that one of the first things that really cold gas will touch if it spills is the river water that surrounds the facility. If the spill isn’t stopped, new cold gas will flow out and keep freezing everything it touches before warming up and becoming fireball material. Methane is most explosive when it is mixed with air at 5-15%, so it doesn’t take much to create the possibility of a very large fireball. As the cold and heavy gas might spread after a leak, if it dilutes instead of staying concentrated, then that really poses a risk that so much as a poorly put out cigarette butt would turn the whole area into a fire ball.

Accidents do and have happened – check out this report for Greenpeace in Germany about the threats. 

If Fortis plans to use the new big storage tank to hold more gas and fill up tankers for export, then this is a direct threat to endangered orcas. Southern Resident killer whales are having a harder time finding their food than ever before. Ships cause waves and noise underwater from their propellers and anything else loud on board. This translates into an ocean that is difficult for mammals who depend on sounds to navigate. Can you imagine trying to order dinner at a restaurant that was in the middle of a busy traffic intersection? Well that is the reality everyday for orcas, except, for them, it means life or death. More tankers will add to that noise. 

These tankers will also have to pass over top of one of Metro Vancouver’s notably busy traffic points – the George Massey Tunnel. Imagine if something goes wrong during rush hour when countless commuters are stuck in their cars waiting to merge.

LNG is made up primarily of methane – this gas is more than 80 times more powerful at warming up the atmosphere than CO2 and if it gets burned it turns into CO2 anyways. All of this is dangerous climate pollution, similar to the amount that the city of Vancouver will put out each year. We have goals and regional plans, but we are abandoning them for what? For a risky investment that won’t serve us long term.