The Herald has chosen to print an article by Blake Nicholson of the Associated Press (“North Dakota, Washington at odds over oil train rules,” The Herald, May 1) and I wonder why? The way it is written does not support our agenda here in Washington state. We are not at odds. They are.
The oil fields in the Bakken formation of northeastern Montana and northwestern North Dakota are the result of a massive investment by the petroleum industry to extract by fracking processes, this high-pressure high-quality product that the world is going away from, and which the Alberta tar sands also produce and is being avoided by both British Columbia and Saskatchewan provinces because of the impact on climate change.
Now comes the state of North Dakota, awash in petroleum dollars, threatened by the prospect of inaccessible choice markets and now ignoring any implications for climate change, being driven by the greed of profits delivered at the expensive risk taking by the states of Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. British Columbia, Washington and Oregon are under pressure to allow these climate-changing fuels through our states without mitigating the risks inherent in these high-pressure fuel sources. Clearly, North Dakota wants to avoid any state’s rights to militate against their presumed markets on the Pacific Northwest coast. We have already experienced derailments in the Columbia Gorge.
Support Gov. Inslee in his signing the bill requiring fuel shippers to meet our standards. At the same time, support British Columbia’s attempts to stop the Alberta Pipeline through to the coast. Both North Dakota and Alberta are flexing political muscle to sell their petroleum products by shipping or piping them through our state and the Province into the Puget Sound and the Salish Sea.
Samuel Bess
Stanwood
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