Real NIMBY
I’m watching, with interest, the story out of South Portland, ME. There, the locals are passing an ordinance to restrict the outflow from a pipeline.
Let me rephrase that. The pipeline has been in place for years. That’s one of the entry points of crude to refineries in the United States and Canada. Tankers arrive and offload to a holding area, and then the product moves inland. Except that there’s now a source for crude, in Alberta. And since the more you can ship and sell, the richer you shall be… the new plan involves sending a limitless supply through the pipeline, in the opposite direction. Export to other parts of the world of our version of “black gold, Alberta tea”.
Crude oil is dirty stuff, and our particular version is dirtier than most. From which the uproar. If, ever, the pipeline should spring a leak and foul the shores of Maine, it’s not clear who would fix the mess. The oil industry talks about how we all need their product; less about the negative aspects. Not good for the PR hacks.
And so here’s the thing. Should a local group have the right to stymie the access to market for someone far away. The true NIMBY question. In a better world, the crude would be refined where they find it, and a (somewhat) cleaner product would be moved to consumers in a very controlled fashion. The oil industry doesn’t want to spend their (windfall) profits on expensive things like refineries, when others, away have sufficient undercapacity to swallow the flow.
