Ribbons of Oil

Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

"Oil and iron can form the foundation upon which Canada could become a great world power," Howard Green, Progressive Conservative member of Parliament for Vancouver-Quadra, told the House of Commons early in 1949.2
Many politicians also sought to apply to pipelines the same basic nation­al policies that had guided railway construction. The railways were built in defiance of natural economic laws, and the geography of North America which dictates that the principal lines of transportation should run north and south. Canada wanted to build a nation east to west. The railway lines were built east to west, cutting across the grain of geography, at great expense, and had to be subsidized by the nation. If this was vital to the nation in the case of railways, the reasoning was, then it would be of the same importance in the case of pipelines.

But oil from the new fields of Alberta could be moved more cheaply by a route through the United States, some people counter-argued. "If that argument is sound, then why did we ever build railroads across Canada?" Progressive Conservative leader George Drew demanded in the House of Commons. "We built railway lines in Canada because we wanted our own transportation system for the opening up of our own area.” 3

"Surely it is in the national interest, regardless of cost," Howard Green declared in the Commons, "that the main pipeline carrying Canadian oil should be laid in Canadian soil." Pipeline routes cutting through the United States, even though achieving lower transportation costs, would represent "a great mistake in national policy.”4

It was this conflict between economics and an interpretation of nation­al policy which set in motion nearly a decade of political debate. It became a raging storm, the great pipeline debate, the major political issue of the day. It helped bring the defeat of the Liberal government after a 22-year term in office.

Pipelines were largely unknown in Canada when Imperial Oil made its Leduc discovery in 1947. There was a crude oil pipeline from Turner Valley to nearby refineries in Calgary, another from Portland, Maine which moved tanker-shipped South American crude to refineries in Montreal, and a third small system feeding U.S. oil into Ontario. The wartime Canol pipeline from Norman Wells to Whitehorse had been the largest pipeline project ever undertaken in Canada, but it lay abandoned. There was a fairly exten­sive natural gas transmission and distribution system serving Alberta, and another in the southwest corner of Ontario, while other principal Canadian cities were served by small distribution systems supplying high-­cost, manufactured coal gas. In 1947 there were 418 miles of oil pipelines in operation in Canada.

[Next>>]