Enbridge Northern Gateway this week suggested activists may be misleading the public about the safety of Douglas Channel for supertankers.

On its blog, Northern Gateway wrote:

In an online campaign, a group of activists are suggesting our animated pipeline route illustration is meant to misinform the public about the Douglas Channel.

Our pipeline route animations were never meant to provide you with information about our proposed marine operations, the Douglas Channel or the B.C. coast.

In the animated pipeline route flyover video we provided the following disclaimer: "The animation is for illustrative purposes only. It is meant to be broadly representational, not to scale."

Segments of the pipeline route flyover video were also used for illustrative purposes within another video discussing the safety planning that went into our proposed pipeline route design. This video does not discuss marine safety or the Douglas Channel.

For people interested in marine safety and the Douglas Channel, we produced another far more detailed video discussing our marine plans. The video is accurate geographically and its illustrations are to-scale where noted. The video contains a comprehensive discussion of our proposed marine operations and B.C.'s north coast, including the Douglas Channel. Our comprehensive marine safety plan discussed in this video went through Transport Canada's TERMPOL review process successfully.

... From 1982 to 2009, some 1,560 vessels carrying methanol and condensate called on the Kitimat port -- which is actually over 3,100 transits of vessels dedicated to the transport of petroleum products.

When you add all industrial vessel activity into the Kitimat port, the number jumps to 6,112.

To be clear, the number of ships servicing industry arriving at the Kitimat port between 1978 and 2009 is 6,112. That's 12,224 transits of the Douglas Channel. That's a long history of safety.

And it's a safe history that opponents of the project will rarely, if ever, acknowledge publicly. Is that because it's the intention of some activists to mislead you about our project and the safe use of the Douglas Channel?

Crawford Kilian is a contributing editor of The Tyee.