Once upon a time, these common crude-carrying metal tubes criss-crossing the country were little more than a planner's afterthought.
Not anymore.
In 2010, a major pipeline burst in Michigan, spilling millions of litres of oil into the Kalamazoo River. That was followed by international antioi-lsands campaign that pressured U.S. President Barack Obama to indefinitely stall the construction of the Keystone XL pipe to Cushing, Okla. Now, crude pipelines are the polarizing cause du jour.
The sudden interest has created a sticky political situation for the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, the subject of ongoing hearings across B.C. and Alberta. The $5.5-billion, 1,170-kilometre project would push oilsands bitumen from northern Alberta to the city of Kitimat, B.C. From there, crude would be shipped on massive oil tankers to Pacific markets.
Environmentalists are railing against the project and the federal government is railing against the environmentalists; One side argues Gateway presents an unacceptable risk to land and wildlife, while the company behind the plan, Calgary's Enbridge Inc., insists the possibility of failure is nominal. Add to the mix documented claims the pipeline's most enthusiastic detractors are receiving funding from U.S. sources. Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver labelled the lot "radical groups." Between them are First Nations, on whose lands the pipeline would cross, by turns concerned with economic development and environmental preservation.
Although the project would pump billions into the Canadian economy, lost in the mire of such rhetoric are many genuine environmental concerns. A massive project, the pipeline would be the first to stretch across that section of remote British Columbia, a swath of land known for mountains, valleys, fish-bearing streams and virtually untouched temperate rainforests.
The formal assessment of environmental concerns is ongoing, but environmentalists have highlighted three major issues: Firstly, they believe the type of oil to be transported is substantively different than conventional crude oil, thus making the pipeline more likely to corrode, leak or break. Second, if the Northern Gateway did fail, it would damage sensitive ecosystems and harm rare animals. Lastly, oil tankers raise the prospect of major spills off the sensitive northern B.C. coastline.
These risks are stacked atop the product the pipeline is meant to carry. The process that separates oil from sand emits about three times the greenhouse gases as the process to produce conventional crude.
(Industry would argue that actually using its products in trains, planes and automobiles creates far more pollution. But that's another debate.)
So a banal pipeline has provoked the latest proxy battle in a war between economic development and environmental stewardship.
"The pipeline industry is not a risk-free business. It's not a matter of if a pipeline will leak, it's a matter of when and where," said Nathan Lemphers, a senior policy analyst with the Pembina Institute, an environmental think-tank. He wrote a report published in November that detailed the crux of environmental concern over Gateway. "This is a greenfield pipeline, creating an entirely new right of way, (although) there will be alignment with several natural gas pipelines."
In an oft-duplicated claim, Lemphers wrote that the product pulled from the oilsands is fundamentally different than the millions of barrels of crude that cross the continent in other comparable pipelines. When Alberta's thick, tarry bitumen is pulled from the ground, it's diluted to create a substance that can be pushed along a pressurized line.
He claims this product, called dilbit (a portmanteau of diluted bitumen), is more viscous than conventional crude. As a result, he said, the pipeline operates at a higher pressure, which creates more friction on the metal. Dilbit also contains more sulphur, naphthenic acids and particulate matter. All of these contribute to corrosion, he argues, and results in more failures and spills.
This analysis and claims like it were refuted by reports published last September by Alberta Innovates, a provincial government initiative.
Many of these environmental claims seem to stem from a confusion between crude oil and fuel. The former is what's pulled from the ground; black, unrefined, thick and loaded with substances like sulphur. The latter is the gasoline that fuels car and planes; refined, clear and thin. The two products use an entirely different network of pipelines.
Dilbit, which has the feel of maple syrup, is not any more viscous than many other kinds of conventional crude - precisely because it is diluted. Northern Gateway proposes to use a diluent of natural gas condensate and other additives.
As a result, the pipeline would operate at the same temperature as other crude pipelines and at the same pressure. Further, the chemicals cited in environmentalists' studies are not corrosive until they reach refinery conditions and temperatures of 200 degrees Celsius - well above the ambient heat common to pipelines.
Similarly, all crude pipelines are limited to the same amount of particulate matter, or sand.
In an apples to apples comparison, the Alberta Innovates report found that conventional crude pipelines were no more likely to fail than those moving dilbit.
Which is to say, they fail very rarely.
"Pipelines are by far the safest way to transport oil and gas products over long distances, if you look at the reliability factor," said Philippe Reicher, vice-president of external relations with the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association. "Our reliability rate is 99.8 per cent, and that tells you something: It is extremely safe and it is extremely reliable."
But failures do happen. According to the Alberta Innovates report, between 2002 and 2010 in Alberta, there were 1.97 failures per 1,609 kilometres of crude oil pipe per year. The province has about 18,000 kilometres of pipe.
When failures happen they also tend to be small: Reicher said that two litres of oil spill for every one million that are transported. In Canada, three million litres cross pipelines every day.
"Can the airline industry ever promise that there will never ever be a plane crash?" Reicher asked. "Of course not. What we're saying is that we have an incredibly safe system and we continue to become safer all the time."
Nor is B.C.'s terrain unique, he added. The Trans Mountain pipeline has carried crude across the Rockies since 1953.
Statistics offer cold comfort to those who live downstream of the hundreds of rivers Northern Gateway is set to cross. Of those, 83 are deemed highly sensitive, such as salmon spawning streams, or home to rare aquatic wildlife.
A spokesperson for Enbridge said crossing these streams is straightforward and is done in a way to minimize any impact to creek beds. The proposal would use horizontal drilling to bury the pipeline up to 100 metres.
Enbridge's proposal would see Northern Gateway cross through the Great Bear rainforest, home of rare white spirit bears and numerous other animals. It's one of the largest virgin tracts of temperate rainforest in the world still intact.
In his report, Lemphers says Enbridge hasn't considered the risk of multiple simultaneous disasters; a rock landslide breaking the pipeline in inclement weather, for example. This is a claim Enbridge denies.
The last leg of Gateway would end in Kitimat, B.C., a city of about 9,000 sustained by a long-running aluminum smelter.
Northern Gateway is not the only major pipe proposed for the town. A natural gas line is also close to approval, which is a comfort said Mayor Joanne Monaghan, as several major industries have pulled out of the area over the past few years.
"When I took over as mayor three years ago, I used to think I was the mayor of doom," she said. "Right now I feel like the mayor of boom, we have so much going on."
Monaghan said companies are eyeing Kitimat because it's the only deepwater port left on B.C.'s coast - the northern port of Prince Rupert is out of room for growth.
"We have four or five industries waiting to come in if we can get (another) wharf," she said. "We've been waiting for people to wake up for a long time, we do have one of the few deepsea ports left on the West Coast that has not been utilized. It's very, very deep and it's very, very wide. Why people haven't realized it until now is beyond me."
Although recent Northern Gateway hearings in Kitimat focused on much of the Haisla nation's fears an oil spill would harm fish and wildlife, the town has long earned its bread in heavy industry.
Much to Monaghan's delight, the local Rio Tinto Alcan aluminum smelter has recently been approved for a $3.3-billion upgrade.
That's good news for the people of Kitimat, most of whom work in heavy industry, she said. "It's a shift worker's town."
Enbridge's proposal would increase traffic through the Douglas Channel leading to Kitimat by 250 tankers per year. Previously, it had docked 1,500 large ships.
To mitigate the risk of an oil spill, the Enbridge proposal ensures only registered, double-hulled tankers, equipped with the latest GPS technology and escorted by independent tugboats would be permitted into the waterway.
According to its analysis, the risk of a major oil spill would a one in 15,000-year event.
For Katie Terhune, the energy campaign manager with the Living Ocean's Society, that risk is too great.
This, after all, was the same West Coast that claimed the Queen of the North passenger ferry in 2006 - the best technology is not terribly effective against human error.
"The risk of oil spills along the route that Enbridge is proposing is incredibly risky," she said. "Hurricane force winds are common."
The channel, as narrow as two kilometres in some places, is pitted with shoals and hidden rocks.
"These tankers take up to two kilometres to come to a complete stop, even with the assistance of an escort tug," she said. "We've been very lucky not to have an oil spill, purely because of the fact that we don't have oil tankers in this area right now. We want to keep this area oil tanker free."
The waterways also provide a refuge for species such as orca, humpback and fin whales.
"It's an area that has all these amazing species and in numbers that are not found really anywhere else in the world and we're proposing to put a pipeline and tanker project through it," she said. "It's absolutely absurd."
Regardless of these fears, Reicher is among many in the pipeline industry who believes Northern Gateway will be approved: It has to be, he said. Pipelines are like highways, they're necessary to fuel the way we live.
"The consequence if there was to be (political pressure) for every future pipeline, this type of consequence we'd have to rethink how our society operates," he said. "But I don't see this happening because fundamentally that type of infrastructure is critical infrastructure.
"They're the backbone of how our society operates."
And therein lies the rub: how our society depends on oil is the problem. The pipeline itself may be relatively innocuous, but it's the weakest and most visible link to an oil that is considered dirty and hard to obtain.
"There are valid concerns about how the oilsands are managed, and the considerable carbon emissions that come with the oilsands," Reicher said. "Until we're able to better manage the oilsands, we will continue to have these concerns, regardless of where the pipeline is going through."
Original Article
Source: calgary herald
Author: Jen Gerson
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