When it comes to ports and the commodities they handle, it's wise to never say never.
We're told Port Metro Vancouver doesn't have any plans at the moment to ship Canadian crude oil or liquefied natural gas through the superport at Roberts Bank, and I see no reason not to take port officials at their word, but that doesn't mean the situation couldn't change at a moment's notice.
Ports are businesses - big businesses, in fact - that are influenced by an everchanging global economic situation, so adapting to what the world throws at them is absolutely imperative in order to survive.
When the superport was under construction here back in the 1960s, various commodity scenarios were entertained and much land was expropriated to potentially support them. However, for the first quarter-century of the port's existence on our shores, the only product it handled was coal.
There was a feasibility study in the 1970s for a petroleum facility, which would have introduced liquid bulk at that time, but nothing ever came of it, leaving coal as the lone commodity.
That all changed in the 1990s when the Deltaport container terminal opened, and it wasn't long before container volumes ate up both remaining pods and necessitated construction of a third berth. There are now plans for Terminal 2, which would see a second three-berth container terminal built at Roberts Bank.
From none to possibly six container berths in the second quarter-century for the Roberts Bank superport shows how commodity volumes are subject to change. You see it at the Fraser Surrey Docks too, where there's currently a proposal to expand the product inventory in order to ship U.S. coal to the Far East.
So does that mean oil and LNG are the next commodities to be handled at Roberts Bank? Not necessarily, but it does get you thinking when you add the port authority's excursion to Norway last week with the Liberal government's plan to hook the fortunes of this province to liquefied natural gas.
We're told when the superport was built, a stipulation at that time was that liquid bulk not be handled there, so the port would have to overcome that hurdle should it want to go down that road.
Oil and LNG aren't in what the port is calling the "near term," but should the stars decide to align on that front, it's not a stretch to think the restriction from more than 40 years ago will be lifted.
We'll be told, like so much happening in Delta, that it's for the greater good.
