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Oil Pipeline Safety
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Pipeline+spills+exception+Alberta+they+...
Pipeline spills are not the exception in Alberta, they are an oily reality
Since 2006, province's pipelines have spilled the equivalent of almost 28 million litres of oil
BY STEPHEN HUME, VANCOUVER SUN JUNE 14, 2012
STORYPHOTOS ( 1 )
A boom stretches out to contain a pipeline leak on the Gleniffer reservoir near Innisfail, Alta., Tuesday. Plains Midstream Canada says one of its non-functioning pipelines leaked between 1,000 and 3,000 barrels of sour crude into the Red Deer River on June 7.
Photograph by: Jeff Mcintosh, Cp , Vancouver Sun
When a smiling Alberta Premier Alison Redford describes last week's pipeline spill of 475,000 litres of oil into a pristine river as an "exception," she is serving up unadulterated spin.
Something is exceptional when it happens so infrequently that when it does occur, it's a surprise.
But I know from my reporting career, which was ushered in by a series of massive pipeline spills in Alberta more than 40 years ago, that these events occur with depressing regularity.
The pipeline industry has had almost half a century to work on the problem, yet oil spills, explosions, fires and toxic pollution as a consequence of ruptures are anything but exceptional. They still happen on an almost daily basis.
So when enthusiasts for the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline project rush to hype the safety of pipeline technology and denounce doubters as part of some sinister conspiracy while scoffing at questions about risk as public hysteria, take it all with several pounds of salt.
Sean Kheraj, a York University history professor, has been crunching the official numbers and posting his startling findings about the grimy past of the pipeline industry.
He has pored over the dryasdust jargon, arcane acronyms and metrics sufficiently complicated that one must assume the unspoken intent of regulatory bodies is to discourage ordinary folk from finding out what's really going on.
For example, Kheraj notes that Alberta's Energy Resources Conservation Board calculates the frequency of pipeline accidents by comparing the number of failures to the total length of the pipeline system. This is both weird and confusing.
Why use distance to measure intervals of time? Would we accept fire statistics calculated relative to the length of the city's road system? Or the frequency of airline accidents as a function of the total length of landing strips?
And why must a lay citizen develop the skills of a forensic auditor or a cryptographer just to find how many pipeline accidents occur over what duration of time and what the cumulative releases of oil or gas are to the environment?
However, back to Prof. Kheraj and his examination of the record.
He's looked at oil pipeline spills in Alberta over the last 35 years. His conclusion is that these spills are "endemic" rather than exceptional.
It's hard to disagree. Between 1990 and 2005, the Alberta Energy Utilities Board recorded more than 16,000 "releases" by pipelines, of which more than half involved hydrocarbons and roughly 30 per cent were "hydrocarbon liquid," which would mean oil or distillates.
Since 2006, Kheraj notes, pipeline ruptures number in the thousands and have spilled the equivalent of at least almost 28 million litres of oil.
In 2010 alone, he observes, pipelines in Alberta carrying either oil or some combination of oil, gas or distillates failed on average every 1.4 days and they spilled roughly 3.4 million litres of oil.
Now, consider the campaign by the B.C. Used Oil Management Association to educate citizens here regarding the environmental threat posed by small quantities of oil.
A single litre of spilled oil, the campaign points out, can contaminate a million litres of groundwater.
So, consider the impact of 28 million litres of spilled oil on water resources - at a time when your Vancouver Sun's front page headline reports that conservation of water is becoming crucial. Multiply 28 million litres of oil by a million. I get 28 trillion litres of contaminated water.
The proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline would cross a thousand fishsustaining streams and rivers in rugged terrain that's known for massive earthquakes and land movements.
Demanding a full, transparent and rigorous evaluation of risk and challenging the objectivity of the process is neither hysterical nor foolish.
It's what the circumstances and potential consequences demand.
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
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Feds flagged Enbridge project for inadequate oil spill response
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Feds+flagged+Enbridge+project+inadequat...
BY MIKE DE SOUZA, POSTMEDIA NEWS JUNE 17, 2012
STORYPHOTOS ( 1 )
Protesters gathered recently on Kitsilano Beach in Vancouver hold up their hands to show their opposition to the Northern Gateway pipeline and the use of oil tankers in local waters.
Photograph by: ANDY CLARK , REUTERS
OTTAWA — Federal officials flagged safety concerns about Enbridge's proposed Northern Gateway pipeline project nearly two years ago, while warning that the Alberta-based proponent had an "insufficient" oil spill response plan along sensitive areas on its route from Alberta to the British Columbia coast, internal records reveal.
The warnings were highlighted during a meeting by a team of environmental assessment experts from multiple government departments, including Natural Resources Canada, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Environment Canada, Transport Canada and Aboriginal and Northern Affairs Canada.
A spokeswoman for Enbridge said an updated oil spill response plan, submitted in March 2011 to a panel reviewing the project, provides updated information that the government would not have known about at the time of the meeting.
But representatives from Aboriginal and Northern Affairs Canada, formerly known as Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, expressed concerns that Enbridge gave "insufficient information on the general oil spill response plan and pipeline route through reserve lands," said notes from the Nov. 25, 2010 meeting, released by the fisheries department through access to information legislation.
The teleconference came a few months after federal biologists expressed concerns that Enbridge was not making significant efforts to avoid "sensitive areas" along approximately 1,000 waterways crossed on the proposed route. One fisheries department scientist said that in some cases, Enbridge was "pushing for the cheapest option," the Vancouver Sun and Postmedia News reported last week.
Representatives from all departments reached a "general consensus" at the November 2010 meeting that "Enbridge had not submitted enough information on the pipeline route," noting that its proposed one kilometre corridor was too broad for an adequate evaluation of areas of concern.
Officials from Natural Resources Canada also expressed concerns at the meeting about "preliminary management and safety plans for (the) operation of (the) pipeline," as well as a lack of information on the company's land and water resource management plan. Environment Canada representatives also raised concerns that the company needed to do more research regarding wildlife potentially affected by the project.
The Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Affairs Department was not immediately able to say whether Enbridge had addressed all of its concerns.
The federal government also was warned in November 2010 that the courts could overrule the review process of the project because of "unreasonable" consultation with aboriginal communities.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty responded in its last budget by offering $13.6 million over two years to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency to support consultations with aboriginal communities.
The Harper government, which had been heavily lobbied by Enbridge over concerns about DFO demands, tabled Fisheries Act amendments in its budget implementation legislation, bill C-38, in April.
Those changes, which according to critics would "gut" DFO's ability to protect habitat, became a flashpoint in the opposition's battle against C-38.
A spokesman from Natural Resources Canada, Paul Duchesne, said department specialists were doing their job prior to making formal information requests that the company responded to in October and November of 2011.
He said the department subsequently recommended, through a government submission to the review panel in December 2011, that Enbridge make commitments for "additional studies and considerations during detailed design and project implementation." These requests must now be addressed by the panel.
"NRCan's expert scientists, as well as those at Environment Canada, are dedicated to ensuring that Canadians' interests are protected through the evaluation of rigorous mitigation plans to protect our environment in every review," said Duchesne.
At a cost of about $7 billion, the Northern Gateway Pipeline would be nearly 1,200 km in length from Edmonton to Kitimat on the west coast of British Columbia. It would carry an average of 525,000 barrels of petroleum per day to the west, and an average of 193,000 barrels of condensate, used to thin petroleum products for pipeline transport, per day to the east.
The proposed pipeline, crossing through B.C.'s Great Bear Rainforest, would also benefit oilsands companies, opening the door to new markets in Asia, allowing them to sell their heavy oil at higher prices than they now get from U.S. markets. But internal records also have suggested that the shipping routes of oil tankers that would transport the oil from the coasts could threaten critical habitat of species such as humpback whales and fin whales.
Enbridge's March 2011 oil spill response plan indicated that the company was meeting or exceeding Canadian standards and that further operational spill response plans would be completed six months before the commissioning of the project with appropriate details to support the "emergency response along the right-of-way of the pipeline and its shipping routes in Canadian waters."
Enbridge's director of corporate and business communications, Jennifer Varey, said that the company always has had an "aggressive emergency response" drill and training program with comprehensive plans in place to respond to spills.
She said the company also created a special cross-business response team in 2011 "to respond to large-scale events anywhere in North America that would require more resources that a single region, or business unit, could provide.
"All of the company's operating facilities maintain regular contact with communities and first responder organizations to keep them up to date and co-ordinated with Enbridge's operations and contingency plans," she said. "In addition, Enbridge works closely with landowners, regulatory agencies and other concerned parties to develop remediation and monitoring plans."
mdesouza@postmedia.com
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Original source article: Feds flagged Enbridge project for inadequate oil spill response plan: document
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Pipelines behind C-38 battle
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/06/14/peter-foster-pipelines-behin...
Harper right to streamline pipeline regulations
Although this week’s amendment-packed “slumber party” to hold up passage of omnibus Bill C-38 focused on Stephen Harper’s alleged contempt for Parliament, perhaps the most contentious element of a contentious bill related to the streamlining of environmental regulation for new resource infrastructure, in particular pipelines.
This reflects the fact that the petroleum industry is more politicized now than at any time since the 1980 National Energy Program. Then, the issue was a fight between Pierre Trudeau’s Ottawa and Peter Lougheed’s Alberta over the spoils of higher oil and gas prices. Now, it is a struggle between the Harper government’s aspirations to facilitate and enhance Canada’s status as a petroleum superpower, and an environmental movement that wants to kill the fossil-fuel industry. Meanwhile, old-style interprovincial jealousies have also been stoked by NDP leader Thomas Mulcair’s invoking “Dutch disease:” the suggestion that an oil-boosted Canadian dollar is costing manufacturing jobs.
The heart of opposition to Mr. Harper’s superpower aspirations lies outside the mainstream Canadian political process. Indeed, it lies outside Canada entirely. Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver has pointed to foreign-funded “radical” opponents of resource development, but diplomacy (not to mention necessary political hypocrisy) prevents him from pointing the finger at the most radical element of all: The UN-based thrust to use the environment — or, more specifically, computer models projecting catastrophic man-made climate change — as a justification for more “global governance.”
Working locally to support the UN’s impossible dream are the cadres of “civil society,” those powerful environmental non-governmental organizations that have done a bang-up job of promoting public alarm, shaking down corporations, and bringing politicians to heel. Their most remarkable success was in pressuring U.S. President Barack Obama to give the thumbs-down to TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline, which would ferry diluted oil sands bitumen to the refineries of the Gulf Coast. Given the traditional U.S. obsession with energy security, not to mention its unemployment rate, the fact that Keystone XL’s oil would have displaced insecure sources such as Venezuela should have made it a shoo-in. That it wasn’t confirms that ENGOs had occupied the White House.
Keystone XL has thus also become an issue in the presidential election campaign. Republican candidate Mitt Romney has issued a campaign ad declaring that on “Day One” of his presidency, he will approve Keystone XL. The pipeline is sure to crop up again and again as a shovel-ready project that the president turned down so as not to offend his green supporters.
The domestic Canadian politics of oil sands and pipelines have proved at least as divisive, although ENGOs have definitely not occupied Sussex Drive. Mr. Obama’s Keystone decision inevitably frustrated the Harper government, which henceforth emphasized new oil markets in Asia. However, expanding those markets also required controversial new pipelines. The most controversial is Enbridge’s Northern Gateway, which proposes to take 525,000 barrels a day of oil through the Rockies to Kitimat, B.C. Yet again, ENGOs have moved to block the development, citing potential catastrophe and capitalizing on aboriginal discontent (which is not to suggest that aboriginal people have nothing about which to be discontented, or that the likelihood and impact of spills should not be assessed. That is why the National Energy Board is holding exhaustive meetings).
Critics claim that Mr. Harper’s desire for superpower status has led him to become a superbully. However, while one might well disagree with his attitude towards Parliament, he needed to draw a line in the regulatory sand. The current system often deteriorated into an open-ended therapy session cum trench warfare.
It should be remembered that organizations such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and the WWF don’t ultimately support responsible development: They want to close down the oil sands, which are in fact the heart of Canada’s petroleum future.
Canada already ranks as a petroleum superpower with the third-highest oil reserves behind Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. It is the largest source of U.S. imported oil. Last year, oil exports earned a record $68-billion. According to the latest projections from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, oil sands production will rise from 1.6 million barrels a day (mbd) currently to five million by 2030, but only if new pipelines are built.
As noted, Mr. Mulcair has managed to draw a dark cloud on this silver pipelining by invoking that Dutch disease, thus drawing sharp rebukes from everybody from the three Western provincial premiers to Brian Mulroney and Preston Manning. While there is obviously an element of truth to Mr. Mulcair’s claim, manufacturing as a proportion of GDP has declined in all developed countries. The Canadian rate of decline has not been exceptional. Meanwhile, one might suggest that Mr. Mulcair is himself suffering from the “British disease” of the 1960s: the belief that the answer to uncompetitive wages and flagging productivity is devaluation (perhaps soon to be renamed the “Greek disease”).
Dalton McGuinty too has stoked discord with the West by citing a manufacturing-unfriendly “petrodollar,” but he is seeking to escape blame for his own disastrous green energy excursions. Mr. McGuinty has certainly promoted an industrial strategy. The problem is that its main beneficiary is Korea.
Mr. Harper’s market-based petroleum development strategy appears eminently more sensible. He was right to pursue regulatory overhaul, even if it did cost parliamentarians a little sleep this week.
Spill Crisis: 'Whatever, We're Going Home'
Inside the Edmonton Enbridge control room that botched the worst bitumen pipeline leak ever.
By Andrew Nikiforuk, 22 Jun 2012, TheTyee.ca
http://thetyee.ca/News/2012/06/22/Enbridge-Oil-Spill/
- On July 25, 2010 a 40-foot long segment of Line 6B ruptured in Michigan and spilled more than 1 million gallons of diluted bitumen (more than 20,000 barrels) into 38 miles of the Kalamazoo River. To date the large bitumen leak has cost Enbridge $725-million and U.S. taxpayers another $37-million in clean-up bills.
- The U.S. Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the Michigan tar sands spill has found that operators in Enbridge's control room misread the spill as a "column separation." This is common with diluted bitumen.
- The Michigan bitumen spill cost 18 times more to clean up than conventional crude. Property damage and spill response cost approximately $36,000 a barrel for diluted bitumen compared to $2,000 a barrel for light crude.