Fort McMurray Forum

Enbridge aims to quell environmental fears with costly pipeline ad campaign

The Calgary operator behind the Northern Gateway pipeline looking to drown out environmental concerns with a new $5 million media message.

The fuzzy cartoon animated ad campaign promises the Enbridge link will be an economic blessing and touts the company's safety record.

"It's a path to prosperity, a path to thousands of jobs, a path to thriving communities, a path of world-class safety standards and low environmental impact... it's more than a pipeline, it's a path to our future."

Spokesperson Paul Stanway says our neighbors to the West are more skittish than Albertans about oil and gas development and the ad is targeted at British Columbia residents.

"Issues around the movement of energy through pipeline systems is pretty well known and understood in Alberta, people are comfortable and familiar with it, that's not quite the same in British Columbia, especially west of Prince George where there's virtually no existing knowledge or comfort zone around the energy industry, there's an educational process that needs to happen there," said Stanway.

The Calgary-based operator was recently fined a record $3.7 billion for a three million litre rupture into the Kalamazoo River in 2010.

And according the Polaris Institute, the corporation experiences oil spills, on average, 60 times a year, but Stanway says the high figure is the result of diligent environmental reporting, not lax safety standards.

The proposed pipeline would span more than 1,200 kilometres, shipping over 500,000 barrels of Alberta crude to Kitty B.C, daily.