Canada Says They Would Be Prepared to Handle an Oil Spill

The Canadian Coast Guard has been practicing oil recovery drills in case a spill, like that in the Gulf Coast, were to occur.

BP has been criticized for not having a contingency plan in place in order to manage a spill, especially one of this magnitude. It might be too little too late in the Gulf at the moment, but that doesn’t mean that other oil suppliers can’t learn from this circumstance and ensure that they would be prepared should something so disastrous occur. In Canada, the Canadian Coast Card has been doing drills to ensure they’d be preapred to respond.

While Canada has yet to indicate how they might stop a leak were it to occur, they do seem to be taking the necessary steps to make sure that if the once unimaginable did occur, the effects wouldn’t be as grave. The situation in the Gulf encouraged the Canadian Coast Guard, with the support of the Canadian Fisheries, to do skimming drills to ensure they could act quickly to get the oil out of the water.

Canada has the seventh largest oil industry in the world with offshore oil drilling taking place in Northern and Eastern Canadian oceans. These oceans also happen to contain another hot commodity in the country: fish, which make up a large and hugely profitable industry. This means that perhaps their motivations are partially economic in nature, but whatever the reasons are the preparation could hopefully prevent a future disaster as large as what we’re seeing in the Gulf.

Image: pverdonk on Flickr with a CC license

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