Interview with Adam Olsen on Trans Mountain's request to keep its Emergency Management Program (EMP) for their proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline confidential. Starts at 8:28.

For immediate release
Aug. 12, 2014

VICTORIA, B.C. – The B.C. Green Party welcomes the Province of British Columbia’s response condemning Kinder Morgan’s request to the National Energy Board (NEB) to file their Emergency Management Program (EMP) for the proposed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion confidentially.

March 18, 2013

A Little Pipeline Filth - Relatively Speaking

I remember as a kid I got caught by my Mom taking a cookie without permission.  My excuse to my Mom was that my brother took two.  She said that was hardly an excuse! Just because someone else behaves similarly or worse does not make your behavior OK. It’s an important lesson in moral behavior that most of us heard from our mothers.  Despite Mom’s best efforts we still see some grownups and some people in business rationalizing their behavior in this way. Folks who study business ethics refer to this as the Doctrine of Relative Filth. I feel OK about what I am doing because someone else is doing the same or worse.

Pipelines seem to be a good case in point where the doctrine of relative filth serves certain interests. The proposed Keystone Pipeline is intended to transport heavy Alberta tar sands crude to the Texas Gulf Coast.  The heavier Alberta Crude is tougher on the environment because it emits a lot more Green House Gases (GHGs) than most crude oils. Relatively speaking tar sands oil is dirtier oil. But that’s not a problem for pipeline proponents because it is likely to displace crude from Venezuela with a similar carbon content and which can be just as heavy and just as dirty  … and besides they use steam injection in Venezuela and in the (California) San Jauquin Valley, just like they do in the tar sands. Thank goodness someone else is making a product that is just as dirty as ours.

There is no doubt that tar sands oil stresses our environment more severely than almost any other source of energy.  During tar sands extraction vast tracts of land are ripped open; huge quantities of energy are used and large quantities of emissions are expelled in processing the tar sands to dilbit (diluted bitumen) a state where it can be shipped; it has to be shipped huge distances to market; refining to an end product is more intense; not to mention the emissions from final combustion. All told the “well to wheels” emissions of tar sands oil is at least 20% higher than other sources of crude. If there is a starting point to begin to contain the impact of fossil fuels, this would be it.

Nevertheless the desire by both government and business for increased revenue means there is much momentum toward expanding tar sands production and in increasing access to markets by way of pipeline construction.  Plans are underway for as many as five new tar sands pipelines including the Keystone XL.  There are two pipelines which would cross British Columbia.  The Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline would carry tar sands oil across north central British Columbia to its terminus in Kitimat. Kinder Morgan proposes twinning their Trans Mountain Pipeline to carry tar sands through to the Westridge Marine Terminal in Burnaby on Burrard Inlet.

Pipelines may be a safer way to go than truck or rail, but there is still a very real risk of oil spills. Two recent and serious pipeline spills include the 2010 Enbridge pipeline spill into the Kalamazoo River (Michigan) and the 2011 Exxon pipeline spill into the Yellowstone River(Montana).  The cleanup of the Kalamazoo took over two years to complete and cost over $800 million, but still is not resolved with the US government still addressing issues with Enbridge. The Exxon oil spread over 70 miles of shoreline on the Yellowstone River, and cost Exxon over $135 million to clean up.  In both the Exxon and Enbridge events the companies failed to respond quickly to early warning alarms allowing oil to flow unchecked.

Closer to home Trans Mountain Pipelines report 78 spills on their Edmonton to Vancouver line over the last 51 years. None of these spills were of the magnitude of the Kalamazoo or Yellowstone spills, but they do raise alarm given the frequency and the dynamics of certain incidents.  70% of the spills occur at pump stations and terminals – not especially good news for the people of Kamloops, Abbotsford and Burnaby.

The most dramatic incident in recent memory may be in 2007 when a contractor ruptured a line adjacent to the Trans Mountain Westridge terminal in Burnaby. 234, 000 litres of oil escaped from the rupture, including 70,000 litres which flowed into Burrard Inlet by way of adjacent storm drains.  Cleanup was in the order of $15 million and 250 residents were evacuated. There was a further leak at the Westridge terminal in 2009, but this was largely confined to the containment facility.

Less dramatic, but also alarming was the 2012 leak of 90,000 litres of crude oil from a storage tank at Trans Mountain’s Sumas (Abbotsford) Pump Station.  This oil leaked from the tank, but was caught within a secondary containment system.  That’s the good news.  The troubling aspect is that the alarms and monitoring equipment in Edmonton which indicated trouble were ignored for up to 6 hours. The spill was only detected after workers had arrived for day shift.  This particular event highlights the potential escalation of risk when equipment failure and human error combine. This particular facility in Abbotsford had leaks in 2005 and 2009.  In the 2009 event oil was not contained and environmental damage was sustained.

If both the Enbridge and Trans Mountain projects were to be built well over 1,000,000 barrels of oil per day could be delivered to British Columbia’s coastline to be loaded on tankers for shipment abroad. 400 to 500 tankers per year would sail in and out of Vancouver and Kitimat. I am sure there will be an emphasis on safety and undoubtedly things have improved in the wake of past tanker incidents. The problem is that even a rare event could be catastrophic. The volume of oil on each of these tankers is enormous. We need to remember that even low frequency risks are real ones.  Our reminder comes as recently as three months when (on December 7, 2012) a bulk carrier hit the Westshore Terminal at Roberts Bank.  It destroyed the coal conveying system dumping coal into Georgia Strait. Coal, not oil, but an instructive event nonetheless.  Even with strong risk management plans in place, things can go wrong.

Despite the significance of the pipeline and tanker risks I think that they are still secondary to the bigger environmental question. Our addiction to fossil fuel continues.  We talk about starting a diet, getting on a global program to reduce carbon emissions. But there is simply no evidence of that. We contemplate these megaprojects which not only add huge volumes of fossil fuel to the market place, but add fuel that is much higher in terms of its carbon emissions.

It is time to speak out. We need to get beyond relative filth as an explanation.  Now is the time for stewardship, leadership and responsibility.