There’s an old saying that goes like this: “Don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind’s made up!” There is also another good one, “You can’t fix stupid, i.e. misinformed!”
Now take a look at these folks who were protesting the replacement of Enbridge’s Line 3 on July 14, at the Capitol in St. Paul. These are good people, but they’re very misinformed. Every one of them dressed in “nice clothes” all of which have a basis in crude oil, and the machines that make these clothes use lubricants that come to us from crude oil.
The leader of the opposition, Alan Roy, Secretary-Treasurer of the White Earth Nation, telling the assembled crowd that the Line 3 replacement should be stopped because of the possibility of a leak that might cause damage to the ecosystem.
Well now, using that logic, I guess we should stop the building of automobiles because someone might have an accident and either kill themselves or somebody else.
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Another thing that I should mention is just about everybody heats their home with natural gas, i.e. methane gas, C1H4 or propane, C3H8. And if they use wood it will be harvested with the use of an ax or some type of saw, which uses steel in its blade. Steel is manufactured with petroleum coke and sulfur that are direct byproducts of crude oil refining.
At the Capitol, Mr. Roy wore a symbol of his Native American heritage -- a necklace and a badge -- on his lapel that could not have been made without the use of byproducts of crude oil. I know these folks mean well, but they are wrong on resisting the use of crude oil as without it your life would be miserable.
One other thing I should mention is that the safest way to transport crude oil is by pipeline, not by tank cars or tank trucks. There’s only one thing worse than crude oil, and that’s not having crude oil at all.
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