I came to The Netherlands with an expectation that I’d get some interesting views on the touchy subject of pipelines, particularly those full of fuel. What kind of debates and reactions do they get when someone proposes to dig up a tulip field to run another line of jet fuel to Schiphol airport, I wondered.
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Nope. Nada. No one I met seemed overly concerned.
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Probably because they’ve been living with underground pipelines for so long. Or because they haven’t blown up. Or because they consider the alternative so much worse – like trucking the stuff. From their logistical perspective, whenever a human being gets introduced into the flow: problems. A pipeline by comparison is the safest form of transmission they know – so long as they can keep human hands off it.
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So they’re always checking. In one corridor, for instance, helicopters fly over every kilometre every fortnight just to make sure no one is starting to dig a hole in some right-of-way. Consequently, no accidents, they claim, for over 30 years.
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The other reason for the lack of controversy is likely that the Dutch get their piece of the action in a way that justifies taking the transmission risk: they use the products domestically, 
particularly natural gas from their own fields in Groningen (right). (However, one side effect they discovered recently: earthquakes.)
particularly natural gas from their own fields in Groningen (right). (However, one side effect they discovered recently: earthquakes.).
British Columbians don’t expect the current pipeline proposals to provide them with cheaper energy; the product is for export, for which the province is expected to take what many believe to be a disproportionate risk for not-enough benefit. Change that equation, and we might look at pipelines more like the Dutch.
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You’d also expect they’d be more anxious about a more obvious risk: flooding.
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And yet, as with the pipelines, I found a surprising indifference to the prospect of sea-level rise, given the finger-in-the-dyke mythology we have of the Dutch. But as one of them put it, “when you’re already five meters below sea level, what’s another one or two?”
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The trauma of the flood of 1953, when the dykes were breached and hundreds of lives were lost, resulted in the construction of infrastructure secure enough (they believe) to withstand a ten-thousand-year storm surge. But as the floods in eastern Europe have shown this year, that time-frame may not be the one they will actually be dealing with.
I think this analogy is incorrect:
“British Columbians don’t expect the current pipeline proposals to provide them with cheaper energy; the product is for export, for which the province is expected to take what many believe to be a disproportionate risk for not-enough benefit. Change that equation, and we might look at pipelines more like the Dutch.”
The dutch import/export carbon fuels at much higher levels than their current domestic need. I would infer that they see favourable risk/benefit by being an carbon fuel port for the wider region, over different jurisdictions,