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Kinder Morgan Canada announced on April 11 that it will seek to twin its Trans-Mountain Pipeline between northern Alberta and Burnaby. The twinning would mean a huge increase in the amount of crude the pipeline carries, and in the number of oil tankers passing through local waters each year. This second instalment of a three-part Black Press series looks at the risks involved. Next week: A look at the politics of the pipeline, and alternatives.
What’s coming
WANDA CHOW Black Press
Down pipe the
Ask an environmentalist what they think of the potential for a massive crude oil spill in Burrard Inlet and invariably they bring up the Kalamazoo River near Marshall, Michigan. That’s where in July 2010 an Enbridge pipeline ruptured, releasing about 19,500 barrels (3.1 million litres) of oil into the nearby river, making it the largest inland oil spill in the history of the U.S. Midwest. More than 18 months later, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency continues to struggle to clean up the mess. So what does an inland oil spill 3,000 kilometres away have in common with what could happen here in Greater Vancouver? Well, the spectre of an oil spill is being raised in light of Kinder Morgan Canada’s proposal to twin its Trans Mountain pipeline that stretches from Edmonton to Burnaby. The project is aimed at exports of bitumen crude oil from the Alberta oil sands to China, on supertankers that could hold as much as one million barrels.
‘WORST CRUDE
OF
ALL’
MARIO BARTEL/Black Press file
The common denominator is bitumen crude, a less refined crude thick as molasses that contains additives to allow it to flow freely enough to travel through pipelines. “Of all the crude oil in the world, bitumen from the tar sands is the worst of all,” said Rex Weyler, co-founder of Tanker Free B.C., a group that wants to see oil tankers banned from B.C.’s coast. When bitumen hits water, it separates into gases, creating a toxic cloud that includes toluene and benzene, known carcinogens, Weyler said. Indeed, in Michigan, a large area near the spill was evacuated and hundreds of residents complained of headache, nausea and respiratory symptoms consistent with exposure to crude oil, according to a report by Michigan health officials. What doesn’t go into the air sinks to the bottom of the river or ocean and “suffocates all the fundamental biological organisms at the root of the food chain,” Weyler said. Those organisms, which consume dead matter in the water, provide food for the surviving fish, but they won’t survive for long with the food chain disrupted. As for the cleanup and economic cost of a spill in Burrard Inlet, he noted that estimates for the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico are in the $50 billion range including the cost of compensating the fishing industry and tourism losses. Based on that, Weyler estimates the cost of a spill here, with potential impact on tourism, fishing and shellfish industries, and the damage to Stanley Park, to be upwards of $40 billion. And that’s if you can find those responsible to pay up, he noted. While BP and Enbridge were clearly the polluters who had to pay for the cleanups and other costs, in the case of an oil tanker, they’re operated at an “arm’s length distance” from the oil companies themselves, said Weyler.
Protestors from the Wilderness Committee were at the gates of Kinder Morgan’s Westridge oil terminal in Burnaby in August 2011, to protest the company’s plans to expand its Alberta-B.C. pipeline.
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