“Community Columnist” Michael Schrader

(About the “need to know”)

Written 04 March 2017

I have received overwhelming negative feedback about my recent criticism of the reckless video posted about the incident at the Imperial Refinery. Let me state on the record very clearly – the men and women who oversee the operation of the Imperial Refinery are highly trained professionals who are committed to safety of not only the employees but of the community, and to imply, that by somehow not broadcasting information when the general public demands it, that they are deliberately putting people in harms’ way, is insulting.

Engineers, when they get licensed, are duty bound to protect the common good. I know this because I am a licensed engineer in several states, and I am held to the same duty. If engineers are found to be negligent in performing in upholding this duty, they lose their license, and I have not met an engineer yet who has been willing to lose his or her license. To get a license, an engineer has to go to four years of college, take an eight hour test, do four years of apprenticeship, and take another eight hour test.

So, as an engineer, when I hear people imply that engineers are willfully and deliberately putting peoples’ lives at risk and abrogating their sworn duty, I get rather annoyed. When you post a video with the comment “What is happening in Sarnia?”, that implies that something sinister is going on, that information is being withheld, and that is insulting to the professionals who operate the refinery. It is my opinion that the poster of the video, and all those who made rude and insulting comments about Imperial Oil, as Imperial Oil is not a thing, but the people who work there, should publicly apologize to the good people who work there, but I will not hold my breath.

Prior to moving to Michigan, I lived and worked for ten years in Oklahoma. Oklahoma is the state that oil built. Bartlesville and Ponca City are company towns, with most people having an affiliation, in one way or another, with oil companies. Tulsa, at one time, had more oil companies than Houston. Oklahoma City is the home of numerous oil and energy companies. On 9/11, one of the places that there was real concern about was the small central Oklahoma town of Cushing, hub of many of the oil pipelines and home to one of the world’s largest oil storage facilities. You see, oil facilities are considered national strategic assets; in war, they are primary targets. Take out refineries, storage yards, and pipelines, and you cripple the ability to fight.

Because of the importance of oil facilities, they are very secure and secretive. I worked next to two refineries in Tulsa for several years, and not a day went by that I did not hear alarms and loud speakers. What went on? I will never know, but I do know that the professionals at the refineries obviously knew what they were doing because I am still alive to write about it. Because of the national security importance of refineries and oil facilities, employees are not allowed to divulge specific details of what happens. When the alarms went off, all that was said is there was “an incident” being addressed, the exact nature of which was never disclosed. Having worked in the defense industry, which is also shrouded in secrecy, I understood the national security ramifications of saying too much. When the operations staff at the refineries said there was “an incident” and it had been addressed, I accepted the fact that they could not divulge more than that.

Back to Imperial. Several of the negative comments I have received focused on the “right to know”. Sorry, but because of the importance of refineries to national defense, we really do not have the right to know. We especially do not have the right to know when that national asset is in another country. When the border patrol is cruising up and down the streets, we do not have the right to know what they are doing; again, it is a matter of national defense.

We want to secure our borders; we need to allow Canada to do the same.

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