The stand-off between Alberta and British Columbia over the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline seems to grow in intensity by the minute.

On Tuesday the B.C. NDP announced a proposal to restrict the flow of diluted bitumen from the oilsands through the province until further scientific study is conducted on its behaviour in water.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley fired back on Twitter, arguing B.C. “does not have the right to re-write our constitution & assume powers for itself that it does not have.”

Since then, Alberta has suspended talks over $500 million in annual electricity imports from B.C. and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has hopped into the ring suggesting that national carbon pricing and ocean protection plan may not go ahead without the pipeline getting built.

Oh, and let’s not forget an Italian restaurant in Fort McMurray is no longer serving wine from B.C. in retaliation. It looks like a trade war is brewing between the provinces.

Amongst all of the politicking, it’s easy for the substance of the debate to be lost. The B.C. government is responding to a very real concern about the risk of a spill of diluted bitumen in water. In 2015 the Royal Society of Canada identified seven major knowledge gaps when it comes to the risk of a diluted bitumen spill in water. And B.C. has the responsibility to regulate hazardous substances under the B.C. Environmental Management Act.

It’s worth recalling that the National Energy Board review of the Trans Mountain project never even considered the impacts of oil tankers on the marine environment, so when Trudeau says his government made a “science based” decision, you’ve got to take it with a mega grain of salt.

At the same time, Notley also has very real concerns about the pipeline not going ahead, with the cost differential for Alberta’s oil widening, an industry that’s been hurting from the crash in the price of oil and an election around the corner.

DeSmog Canada chatted with David Moscrop — a political theorist, postdoctoral fellow at Simon Fraser University and regular contributor to Maclean’s magazine — about the unfolding situation.

“It’s really hard to say. Nobody wins from a trade war. Somebody might lose more than someone else. But nobody wins.” https://t.co/sAsdn5HzfL

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) February 2, 2018

The B.C. government seems to have been framed as being somewhat unreasonable in their approach to Trans Mountain. What do you make of that?

It depends on which lens you use.

If your lens is that John Horgan needs this in order to win the next election, or to continue to be propped up by Andrew Weaver because the Green Party’s demanding that he opposes the pipeline, then I think it’s fair enough to say that he’s playing chicken with the federation because you want to win — although any of them would do the same damn thing.

Everyone’s a hypocrite, everyone’s full of shit. Everyone’s playing politics.

But on the actual substantive side of it, there are a number of people in the province and party who see pipelines as an existential threat insofar as they contribute to climate change. They look and say “we want an aggressive, radical agenda for addressing the greatest threat to humankind in at least the last 10,000 years.” Is that being unreasonable? They’re interested in the survival of the species. I would say in some sense, in the long run the folks who are being unreasonable are those who refuse to commit to an aggressive climate change agenda.

What do you make of Premier Rachel Notley’s response, bringing up how this is an attack on Confederation and all the rest?

Oh my god, are you kidding me? It’s all so stupid. Crack open any Canadian politics textbook, even the bad ones, and it’s a history of the federation fighting from even before day one. This is what we do.

I wrote about this a little while ago for Maclean’s. We’re always smacking each other and always fighting with each other and with the federal government. We’re always playing one another off this province or that province or the feds. It’s hyperbole.

She’s in a tough spot. I don’t begrudge her the politics of it. She’s in the same spot in some ways that Horgan is in British Columbia. They want to win the next election. That’s politically reasonable, it’s just the nature of having a federation. But that doesn’t mean that the New Democrats in British Columbia shouldn’t be fighting this tooth and nail for both political and substantive reasons.

Were you surprised to see Alberta announce that it’s suspending discussions about electricity purchases over this?

No. The only thing that would have surprised me is if they got a posse together and marched across the border. That would a little bit surprising. I think we could take them. Anything short of that isn’t surprising to me because Premier Notley has to be seen as being tough on British Columbians by standing up for Alberta in the same way that Horgan has to be seen as being tough on Albertans and standing up for B.C. To give the Prime Minister some credit, he has to be seen as standing up for the federation. And he thinks that means he has to support the pipeline.

It’s one of those cases where it’s short-term gain, long-term pain. To oversimplify it, but here’s the essence of the problem: our political and economic cycles are too short. They’re thinking the next election, or the next 10 years — not the next 100 years.

How do you think Trudeau has responded?

He’s hitched to the Alberta wagon now, I think, like it or not … He can’t go back on it now. The political hit on going back on that would be devastating, especially given that people are still talking about electoral reform and he seems a bit of a duplicitous hypocrite.

He’s stuck with it. Alberta’s stuck with it. B.C.’s stuck with it. It’s a standoff, and I don’t think anybody knows how it’s going to end.

If I had to guess, I’d say it might end with Kinder Morgan saying “oh boy, this project isn’t viable anymore, we’re out.” I would imagine that’s the strategy of those who want to stop the pipeline: wait them out, make it become financially unviable or scare off investors. That would certainly be my strategy.

In some ways, all three political groups — the federal government, Alberta and B.C. — would politically win. That might be the political theodicy outcome, the best of all political worlds. If the construction pushes ahead and British Columbians are opposed to this — and boy, the ones who are opposed are really opposed — think they’re not being taken seriously or listened to, it’s going to get nasty very, very quickly.

I would imagine to the point where we’re going to see a kind of reaction that we haven’t seen seen since Montebello or Oka. We’ve already seen some of it on Burnaby Mountain.

Just a reminder that there’s two dimensions that I think people argue across without ever making explicit.

There’s a political dimension — which is to say an electoral dimension, who wins and who loses based on party support — and there’s the substantive policy dimension of it, like what’s good for the economy and what do you trade off against addressing climate change. There’s a legitimate debate to be had on both. But there’s a lot of bad faith activity on both sides, with people conflating those two things and the population is caught in the middle. That’s politics. That said, it’s the future of the country.

Politics is stupid.

You tweeted recently that politicians have done a bad job at addressing a lot of these causes of anger. What would it look like in your mind if politicians were actually addressing them?

These things need to be addressed structurally, and when I say that I mean that we need to find a way to make sure that cycles of boom and bust, continued environmental degradation, continuous growing unaffordability — features that are often common with liberal democracies and capitalist systems — are addressed in a way that’s at least semi-permanent if not permanent.

Part of that has to rely on bringing citizens into the decision-making process, making sure that not only are they listened to but they’re engaged in ways that are more meaningful than a town hall. You have citizen juries or citizen assemblies. You have regular meetings where people are given time and resources to sit down and take part in decision-making and be listened to. And then — and this is critical — you listen to them, follow-up and you do what they think you should do. There’s a lot of well-meaning chatter that never translates into action. We call it “democracy-washing.” You get cover because you went and did a town hall but then you go back and it’s life as usual.

What does that mean? It probably means we need to dedicate state funds to making sure that people can afford to live. We probably need to decriminalize drugs, especially in the case of the opioid epidemic. We need to end housing speculation. We need to decide whether we’re all in on climate change or not. A pipeline agenda is inconsistent with that. These are big things, and it takes a lot of political capital and a lot of guts to get it done. But we’re not doing any of them, really.

When do you guess this might be resolved?

It’s really hard to say. Nobody wins from a trade war. Somebody might lose more than someone else. But nobody wins.

I would imagine all the politicians involved will probably take a bit of punishment because people will get frustrated. If it does stretch out for too long, whomever is up for re-election will bear the brunt of it the most.

One hopes that at some point, everyone realizes that by escalating everyone loses. But I’m not convinced anymore that’s going to happen. This might actually get quite nasty. If they push on and continue to develop the project, at some point the government of British Columbia is going to run out of options. I’m sure the courts will be vigorously involved. At some point, it’s going to hit the ground.

And then it’ll be up to the citizens of British Columbia to react however they think is appropriate. That’s where I think it’ll get particularly nasty, because it will no longer become political in the sense of relations between the provinces and the federal government. It’ll be political in the streets. It will stretch on ’til it’s over, one way or the other — whether it gets built or not. It will never not be a political battle. The question is whether it’s a battle in the courts, in the legislatures, in the press or in the streets? We’ll just have to wait and see.

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British Columbia won’t allow any increase in shipments of diluted bitumen through the province until the results of a scientific inquiry into the risks of oil spills in marine environments is completed, according to an announcement from the B.C. government on Tuesday.  

“We are proposing we restrict the transport of diluted bitumen until we hear back from the B.C. scientific community about the impacts of a spill and what we would need to mitigate that,” B.C. Environment Minister George Heyman told DeSmog Canada.

Diluted bitumen is a mixture of bitumen — the unrefined, thickest form of petroleum extracted from Alberta’s oilsands —  and natural gas condensate — the same substance the Iranian tanker Sanchi was carrying when it collided with another ship in the East China Sea. Condensate is added to allow the viscous substance to flow through pipelines.

The announcement has major implications for the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline.

Jessica Clogg, executive director and senior counsel of West Coast Environmental Law, celebrated the manoeuvre as “courageous.”

“Effectively the province has said if the science doesn’t show that you can clean up a dilbit spill safely and effectively then Kinder Morgan may never be able to turn the taps on, even if they can get the pipeline built,” Clogg told DeSmog Canada.

The announcement comes alongside a suite of new proposed regulations under B.C.’s Environmental Management Act to improve oil spill response and recovery.

Heyman said the move is a part of the government’s promise to employ every tool in the toolbox to protect British Columbia from a diluted bitumen, or dilbit, spill.

“Effectively the province has said if the science doesn’t show that you can clean up a dilbit spill safely and effectively then Kinder Morgan may never be able to turn the taps on, even if they can get the pipeline built.” – Jessica Clogg, @WCELaw https://t.co/fZdnnmT8sD

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) January 30, 2018

“Clearly as a province B.C. is not responsible for regulating vessel traffic but we do have authority to look at the impact of a spill if it lands on the coastline or a spill if it lands in local waterways,” Heyman said.

“What I’m determined to do is show British Columbians that what they expect from us is going to be delivered. We are going to do everything in our power to protect our coastline.”

The existing Trans Mountain oil pipeline runs from Hardisty, Alta., to Burnaby, B.C. Kinder Morgan’s proposal to build a new pipeline on a similar route would boost capacity from 300,000 barrels per day to 890,000 barrels per day, increasing the number of oil tankers in B.C.’s waters seven-fold from around 60 to 400 each year.

The project received federal approval — with 157 requirements — in November 2016, but faces strong opposition from First Nations and municipalities along the proposed pipeline route.

B.C. to address knowledge gaps in dilbit spills

In 2015 the Royal Society of Canada released a study that identified seven major knowledge gaps when it comes to the risk of a diluted bitumen spill in water.

“We want the advisory panel to look at the Royal Society of Canada information gaps and do it very specifically in a way that addresses conditions in British Columbia, with B.C. interests in mind and considering the different forms that heavy oil could be transported through B.C. via, rail, truck and pipeline,” Heyman said.

Christianne Wilhelmson, executive director of Georgia Strait Alliance, said today’s announcement is proof B.C. acknowledges “diluted bitumen behaves differently than conventional oil.”

“The best available science says it can sink or be suspended in water,” Wilhelmson said. “Currently, there is no effective technology that exists to clean it up, making prevention the only safe approach to protect our local waters, communities, economies and ecosystems.”

The behaviour of dilbit in water has become a touchstone issue in the debate about building new oilsands pipelines. While a 2012 Enbridge study found dilbit did not sink in a laboratory environment, a 2014 report released by the federal government found dilbit sinks when mixed with sediment.

In 2010 an Enbridge pipeline ruptured, spilling nearly three million litres of dilbit into a tributary of the Kalamazoo river where it mixed with sediment on the river’s bottom, triggering one of the most expensive onshore oil spill cleanup efforts in U.S. history.

“A pipeline rupture over salmon-bearing streams would be extremely detrimental to some already weak and declining salmon stocks,” Wilhelmson said, “regardless of whether the polluter is required to pay significant restitution costs.”

B.C. Green Party leader Andrew Weaver welcomed the plan to do further scientific research.

“I look forward to the new panel providing complete, robust and accurate information on this matter to the minister that reinforces that which we already know — that there is no way currently to adequately respond to a spill of diluted bitumen.”

“We simply to not know enough to properly assess the risk and potential damages associated with a diluted bitumen spill in the Salish Sea,” Weaver said in a statement.

The province will release an intentions paper in February to solicit feedback on the restriction of dilbit transportation as well as new regulations related to spill response times, localized response plans for B.C.’s unique geographic regions and compensation.

Proposed regulations a boon to protect Indigenous rights, at risk species

The province’s move could provoke legal backlash from Kinder Morgan, Clogg said, but “by standing up for British Columbians, B.C. is reducing other types of risks.”

The new regulations could ease pressure in ongoing and potential legal battles to protect Indigenous rights and species at risk.

“It’s not aimed at Kinder Morgan in any way,” Clogg said. “It’s a regulation that applies across the board, to rail, pipelines —  it’s very much focused on provincial jurisdiction.”

“The Environmental Management Act is directed at protecting the environment, species as well as people and human communities from toxic substances, that is what this is about,” Clogg said.

ICYMI: How Canada is Driving Its Endangered Species to the Brink of Extinction

By asserting jurisdictional authority, B.C. may be setting the stage for better protections for species at risk, especially the remaining 76 members of the endangered southern killer whale population, which is not expected to survive the increase in tanker traffic from Trans Mountain.

The federal government’s decision to approve the pipeline is a violation of the Species at Risk Act, according to project opponents currently fighting its approval in the courts.

Canada’s Species at Risk Act is meant to protect the critical habitat of endangered species, regardless of plans for industrial projects. . But Canada’s track record on protecting species at risk is poor and, so far, rules haven’t been strong enough to prevent proposed projects from moving forward, despite impacts to endangered species.

This winter the independent scientific panel responsible for monitoring species at risk recommended the federal government add B.C.’s struggling sockeye salmon populations to the federal Species at Risk registry. The Trans Mountain pipeline has been identified as a significant risk to sockeye salmon.

ICYMI: We Exposed Sockeye Salmon to Diluted Bitumen. Here’s What We Found.

“The way I see it legally, B.C. has the right and responsibility to look after things within its jurisdiction,” Clogg said.

“We live in an era of collaborative federalism and really when the review and federal go-ahead was given it was with a number of conditions, which included the Kinder Morgan project having to follow provincial and federal laws and permitting processes,” she said.

“All B.C. can do is act according to its responsibilities, which it’s clearly done here.”

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Amid continued controversy, Kinder Morgan is poised to break ground on its $7.4 billion Trans Mountain Expansion Project. When the pipeline is complete, it will triple the volume of diluted bitumen, or Dilbit, that reaches Canada’s Pacific shoreline to 890,000 barrels per day.

The Trans Mountain pipeline has been in operation since 1953. It crosses numerous waterways as it snakes its way from Edmonton to Burnaby, B.C., including the lower portions of the Fraser River — North America’s primary salmon-producing river system. The pipeline expansion has raised concerns about how its failure might have an impact on these fish.

It is efficient and cost-effective to transport oil by pipeline, and leaks have been infrequent and usually small in Canada.

Yet catastrophes do occur.

Just ask residents of Marshall, Mich., about the 3.2 million litres of Dilbit that contaminated the Kalamazoo River in July 2010 after an Enbridge pipeline failed.

Salmon are integral to Canada’s West Coast

Pacific salmon are deeply ingrained in the fabric of Canada. They are a key link between aquatic and terrestrial food chains, connecting marine algae to bears and forests. They are a central element in First Nations cultures and economies. And they generate more than $500 million in revenue annually through the combined activities of sport fishing, commercial harvest and tourism.

As a biologist, what fascinates me most about Pacific salmon is their remarkable life cycle.

Take sockeye, for example, an iconic and abundant species of Pacific salmon. Sockeye eggs develop slowly during the winter months, buried in the same gravelly river sediments once occupied by their ancestors. After hatching, they spend up to three years swimming through inland lakes before transforming into silvery, salt-tolerant fish that escape to the Pacific Ocean.

Years later they return by the millions for a single chance to spawn in their birthplace streams. Afterwards, their bright red bodies decorate the riverbank, becoming a staple meal for bears and eagles, and an essential nutrient source for the forest ecosystem.

How do we prepare for a “worst-case scenario” — a pipeline failure that contaminates sockeye habitat? via @salderman80 https://t.co/fChyYqhRI4

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) January 22, 2018

In recent years, the number of sockeye returning to spawn has decreased dramatically, and this is especially true for populations of the lower Fraser River. Many factors, like urbanization, have contributed to this decline, and it is clear that the survival of the salmon’s early life stages and its successful ocean migration are key to the long-term stability of Fraser River sockeye.

Understanding how a Dilbit spill would affect sockeye during these early life stages can help prepare us for a future we hope won’t happen.

What is Dilbit anyway?

Bitumen is Canada’s black gold. It is a heavy, viscous type of crude oil found in vast quantities in Canada’s oilsands. Extracted bitumen is blended with lighter hydrocarbons (diluents) to relax its tar-like consistency into a flowing liquid ready for transport. The blended products are called Dilbit, short for diluted bitumen.

Diluting raw bitumen has another advantage besides allowing it to flow. It lowers the heavy oil’s density to below that of water, meaning that any Dilbit released into the aquatic environment should float.

But the behaviour of spilled Dilbit in water depends on many things, such as water flow and turbidity. Not to mention that the diluent evaporates rapidly, taking its added buoyancy with it. So the possibility that spilled Dilbit will sink is a valid concern — and sunken Dilbit is hard to clean up.

Four years after its spill in the Kalamazoo River, Enbridge was still dredging river sediments for sunken bitumen.

What would a spill mean for sockeye?

Like all crude oils, Dilbit is a mixture of hundreds of chemicals, and we know that many of these are toxic to fish.

One consequence of crude oil exposure in developing fish is the damage it can cause to the heart. Much of this toxicity is blamed on a single class of chemicals in crude oils called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs for short. Fish embryos exposed to individual PAHs or to crude oil, at real-world concentrations, can develop heart deformities that affect cardiac function.

Often, and perhaps not unexpectedly, this cardiac toxicity can lead to reduced swimming performance. For a sockeye, that’s a scary thought. These aquatic athletes depend on their strong hearts to complete two rigorous migrations.

So how do we prepare for a “worst-case scenario” — a pipeline failure that contaminates sockeye habitat?

Using science to plan ahead

For the past four years, I have been working with experts in cardiovascular adaptations, oil toxicity and salmon physiology to build a comprehensive understanding of Dilbit toxicity to early life stages of salmon. Our collaboration is part of an ongoing commitment by Fisheries and Oceans Canada to support research on environmental issues related to the oil and gas industry.

In controlled laboratory experiments, we expose salmon to low and environmentally relevant concentrations of Dilbit over realistic exposure times. We test fish at a variety of early life stages and look for sub-lethal effects that might indirectly affect their survival.

So far, our research shows that spill-like exposure conditions can impair the swimming performance of juvenile fish by as much as 10 per cent and lead to pathological changes in heart tissue.

This is a big deal. It means that persistent Dilbit contamination in a young salmon’s environment could conceivably reduce their chance of successfully migrating out to the ocean, and contribute to further population decline.

Our current work will determine if swimming performance can be recovered and if the heart pathology is reversible once the fish move to clean water.

We are also working towards developing blood biomarkers of Dilbit exposure. Blood biomarkers are a valuable diagnostic tool, and could be used to monitor and manage the health of wild salmon following a spill.

A take home message

All eyes are on Kinder Morgan now, but the Trans Mountain pipeline is just one branch in transport network that delivers oilsands products across the continent. Like it or not, our world still runs on fossil fuels and Canada’s vast bitumen reserves are a difficult resource to ignore.

But there is a silver lining to this story.

At the lowest concentrations we tested, and at the shortest exposure times, the salmon’s swimming performance was not impaired. A rapid response to contain a Dilbit spill is therefore crucial to minimizing the effects on sockeye.

More importantly, the federal and provincial governments must rigorously enforce pipeline regulations to make sure that companies like Kinder Morgan build and maintain their pipelines to the highest standard.

Sarah L. Alderman, Research Associate in Environmental Physiology, University of Guelph

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Illustration: David Seibold via Flickr

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In recent months, there’s been a re-emergence of one of the oil industry’s most adored tropes: that without new pipelines, companies will ship oil by rail and threaten entire communities with derailments, explosions and spills.

The jury’s still very much out on whether shipments will actually increase by much more than what we’ve seen in the past. Regardless, there’s one thing that strangely never gets mentioned by proponents of the argument.

Transporting oil by rail doesn’t have to be nearly as dangerous as it currently is.

In fact, there are many rules and regulations that could be implemented by the federal government to help avoid another disaster like what happened in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, or Gogama, Ontario.

ICYMI: How the Spectre of Oil Trains is Deceptively Used to Push Pipelines

“We live within metres of the transcontinental CP line,” Patricia Lai, co-founder of Safe Rail Communities, told DeSmog Canada. “This is very real for us on a daily basis, and we know this exists for communities across the country. It’s fantastic to say that you’re committed, but we really need some action to happen more quickly.”

Here are just a few things the federal government can do to dramatically improve oil-by-rail safety.

Require Proper Assessments for Oil-By-Rail Projects

As MP Linda Duncan put it in an interview with DeSmog Canada, rail is the only industrial sector that’s effectively exempt from the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

To be sure, there are provisions in the legislation related to rail. But the way that environmental assessments work is that a “physical activity” such as building a new pipeline or dam of a certain length or capacity will trigger an assessment.

An assessment will get triggered if a new railway of 32 kilometres or more is built. Same with a rail yard with “seven or more yard tracks or a total track length of 20 km or more.” But the trigger doesn’t have anything to do with what’s actually being shipped on existing CP or CN railways.

“It doesn’t matter if one of the two major rail lines increases by a thousand-fold the transport of dangerous goods,” said Duncan, who introduced a private member’s bill in 2016 to improve oil-by-rail safety.

“They can transport whatever they want, at any time, in an overloaded many-mile-long train and continue not to maintain their tracks or trains properly.”

Duncan’s bill would require two related changes.

The first would amend the Railway Safety Act to restrict the shipment of dangerous goods to certain volumes unless the transport minister authorizes an exemption. Secondly, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act would require the environment minister to trigger an assessment if the activity poses a “potentially significant risk to the environment, human life or public health.”

“What I’m proposing is the tip of the iceberg,” said Duncan, who previously served as opposition transport critic.

While Transport Minister Marc Garneau has repeatedly stated that rail safety is a top priority for him and the federal government, he hasn’t yet voiced support for the bill.

Charles Hatt, staff lawyer at Ecojustice, said he’s seen something similar in his communications with Environment Minister Catherine McKenna on the subject. Ecojustice has requested the federal government to order assessments on all oil-by-rail terminals regardless of size.

“We know the rather appalling gap in the legislation for these kind of activities was pointed out directly to the minister and we suggested actions she could take, and she chose not to,” Hatt told DeSmog Canada. “There’s no doubt what this government thinks about this issue.”

Six Simple Ways Canada Can Make #Oil-By-Rail Way Safer https://t.co/jJGYuHzchh #cdnpoli #oiltrains #neatbit #lacmegantic #gogama

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) November 15, 2017

Accelerate Phase-Out of Older Train Models

In July 2016, the federal government announced the accelerated phase-out of the DOT-111 railcar for transporting oil.

That was the same model of railcar used in the Lac-Mégantic disaster, long criticized for being susceptible to puncture and explosions due to insufficiently thick walls and lack of full heat shield. Now, crude oil is transported by models such as the CPC-1232 (a modified version of the DOT-111) and the new DOT-117, which will replace all models by 2025.

ICYMI: What Have We Learned From the Lac-Megantic Oil Train Disaster?

But that’s many years away.

According to Bruce Campbell, former executive director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and author of an upcoming book on the Lac-Mégantic disaster, about 86 per cent of tank cars that transport crude oil are the modified versions of the DOT-111. Those only represent a slight improvement and have already been involved in multiple explosive derailments.

“It’s great that tank cars will have improved by 2025,” Lai, from Safe Rail Communities, said. “But we don’t even know for sure if those tank cars are strong enough.”

Reduce Volatility of Oil Before Shipment

An associated issue is that companies could easily reduce the volatility of oil by a process called “stabilizing,” which sees the flammable natural gas liquids removed from the product.

But that would cost money, around $2 per barrel according to North Dakota regulators.

“Oil companies have resisted strenuously doing anything to stabilize oil before it goes into the tank cars, removing its most volatile components,” Campbell said in an interview with DeSmog Canada.

ICYMI: Fiery Saskatchewan Train Derailment Raises Fresh Questions About Oil-By-Rail Safety

“There’s a way to transport bitumen in its raw form, which is not volatile. But that requires special heated cars.”

Raw bitumen, also referred to as “neatbit,” would greatly reduce the amount of diluent used in shipping bitumen and in turn decrease the risk levels of oil-by-rail. The process would require a significant amount of capital investment, and hasn’t been explored much by industry.

End Self-Regulation, Increase Government Enforcement

In 2001, the government introduced a new approach to regulating rail, called “safety management systems.” Essentially, it means that rail companies craft and implement safety protocols and the federal government audits them.

But critics don’t think it’s nearly sufficient.

“It’s self regulation if it’s the companies doing it,” Campbell said.“The whole idea was that it was supposed to be an additional layer to conventional direct oversight. Of course, it isn’t, because they didn’t give Transport Canada the resources or the money.”

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada specifically identified a lack of safety culture, oversight and enforcement by Transport Canada as contributing factors for Lac-Mégantic, recommending that the department must make sure “not just that [safety management systems] exist, but that they are working and that they are effective.”

Yet in a December 2016 speech at a conference about Lac-Mégantic, Union of Canadian Transportation Employees president Christine Collins said that there still hadn’t been a significant change in the number or quality of inspectors, resources dedicated to the task, or any indication that newly announced federal funding for rail safety would actually improve safety standards.

Campbell added the actual number of rail safety inspectors and dangerous goods inspectors hasn’t increased since at least 2004, despite oil-by-rail shipments skyrocketing in volume.

“On-site unannounced inspections have just shrunk and it’s more and more just a paper exercise,” he said.

Listen to the Public

Then there’s the challenge of actually being able to influence how things are done given that almost all the major decisions made behind closed doors.

“It’s an internal conversation between the railway companies and the ministry,” Campbell said. “There’s no public consultation process. Nominally, they consult with the unions but they’re under no obligation.”

A related impediment to understanding the issues is that there’s very little information out there on the actual amount of oil being transported in Canada. While the National Energy Board reports the monthly volume of exports by rail to the U.S., there’s no similar numbers for internal shipments.

In addition, risk assessments and evaluations conducted by the companies are protected by commercial confidentiality, meaning that the public doesn’t have access to them. Combine that with lack of consultation, and it’s obvious there are improvements to be made when it comes to transparency and consultation.

“We really need to have more input on a regular basis,” Lai said.

“There has to be a better mechanism for moving things forward rather than saying ‘come and share with us what your concerns are and we’ll take it away.’ I think there really has to be some kind of working group or network struck that really does include stakeholders like the public who are really affected by this kind of thing.”

More Solutions At Hand

These solutions could massively increase the safety of oil-by-rail and even then, there are many more waiting to be implemented.

The government could require companies to reroute tracks to avoid heavily populated areas, or implement a new fatigue management framework, or order a strategic environmental assessment of all oil-by-rail shipments, or implement advanced rail safety technologies.

And, according to Duncan, the idea of dangerous oil-by-rail should no longer be used as an argument to push for pipeline projects.

“I get really tired of oil companies arguing they should be able to build pipelines because rail is more dangerous,” Duncan said. “That’s a really specious argument. We need to be making sure that we’re properly reviewing all means of transport of dangerous materials.”

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Either support new pipelines or your community will be incinerated by an oil-carrying train.

It sounds outrageous, but it’s been a foundational argument made by the pro-pipeline lobby ever since the horrific Lac-Mégantic disaster in 2013.

“This is almost like putting a gun to the head of communities, saying ‘well, if we don’t build our pipeline then we’re going to put more oil-by-rail traffic through your community,’ ” says Patrick DeRochie, program manager of Environmental Defence’s climate and energy program.

“I think that’s dishonest and the oil industry’s really manipulating legitimate public concerns about rail safety to push pipelines.”

On Dec. 20, 2016 — less than a month after the federal approvals of the Kinder Morgan TransMountain and Enbridge Line 3 pipelines — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau clearly stated that “putting in a pipeline is a way of preventing oil by rail, which is more dangerous and more expensive.”

The fact that it’s an oft-repeated sentiment shouldn’t overshadow the fact that this is a completely false binary.

Canada is hardly shipping any oil by rail. It never has.

And the only way that oil-by-rail shipments will seriously increase as predicted by the Canadian Energy Research Institute and National Energy Board is if Canada continues with its plan to allow for the massive expansion of Alberta’s oilsands in the coming decades, a move that will undermine calls for a moratorium on all new fossil fuel infrastructure in order to avoid the effects of catastrophic climate change.

Highest Amount Ever Exported by Rail Was Mere 178,000 Barrels Per Day

Here are the numbers on oil-by-rail.

In September 2016 — the most recent month reported by the National Energy Board on the subject — oil-by-rail exports to the United States were 69,292 barrels per day (bpd).

They had dipped as low as 43,205 bpd in June 2016.

This obviously reflects the extremely low per-barrel price that bitumen is fetching from American refineries, which is also why there’s currently around 400,000 bpd of spare capacity in the pipeline network.

Plus, oil-by-rail generally costs more than shipping oil by pipeline, making it an even less viable option in such economic times.

But rail shipments have never been particularly notable relative to total crude oil production.

In fact, oil-by-rail’s high point in recent years was in September 2014, when 178,989 bpd were transported to the U.S.

The same year, Canada was exporting a total of 2.85 million bpd. In other words, at its very peak, oil-by-rail accounted for a mere 6.28 per cent of total exports.

Newly Approved Pipelines Quadruple Capacity Historically Shipped by Rail

It should also be noted that not all oil transported by rail is exported to the States, with some simply transported to other parts of the country for storage or usage for purposes such as asphalt.

For instance, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers reports the oil-by-rail hit “almost 200,000 bpd by the end of 2013,” despite the NEB only reporting 166,570 bpd in rail exports during December 2013.

Domestic transport also helps explain why the Canadian Energy Research Institute reported in 2014 that about 35,000 bpd of oil-by-rail from Western Canada wasn’t exported to the United States (and thus not counted by the NEB).

Incredibly, nobody is keeping detailed, accurate numbers on oil-by-rail.

But we can assume — generously — that the highest oil-by-rail shipments have ever hit in Canada is 225,000 bpd (180,000 bpd in exports and another 45,000 bpd in cross-country transport).

The recent approvals of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain and Enbridge Line 3 pipelines will allow for the addition of 900,000 bpd in pipeline capacity from the oilsands, assuming a 15 per cent surplus for outages and maintenance.

That’s four times the amount of oil that has ever been shipped by rail, either for exports or domestic transport.

New pipelines are not about “displacing” oil currently being shipped by rail — there’s simply no evidence for that.

Instead, new pipelines are about preparing for a massive expansion of the oilsands by almost two million bpd between 2015 and 2040, and weaponizing people’s fears of oil-by-rail to do so.

How the Spectre of Oil Trains is Deceptively Used to Push Pipelines https://t.co/mWbMw5F4SK @james_m_wilt #cdnpoli #oilbyrail #propaganda

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) January 6, 2017

Oil-By-Rail Unsafe Because of Regulatory Lack

But there’s a second and related key problem with the pipeline versus rail debate, further undermining the argument for new pipelines.

Specifically, that there are technologies and regulations available to ensure that oil being shipped by rail is far safer than what the current rules mandate.

As a result, combined exports and domestic transport via rail could even rebound to 200,000 or 250,000 bpd and we’d never have to seriously worry about a Lac-Mégantic-like disaster again.

How?

Transport Canada could require rail companies to increase the number of inspectors and crew members on trains, reduce speed limits and require certain braking system protocols and better public disclosure.

The phase-out of the old CPC-1232 tank railcars and transition to new and safer TC-117 tank railcars could be accelerated. The federal environment minister could be required to order an environmental assessment of oil-by-rail projects, as recommended in September 2016 by NDP MP Linda Duncan.

‘Neatbit’ Would Reduce Risk of Explosions and Spills, But Initially Increase Costs

And then there’s the increasingly popular idea of “neatbit.”

Bitumen from the oilsands is current shipped in both pipeline and train in a form called “dilbit,” which requires about 30 per cent of diluent to allow it move. The diluent, usually made of a natural gas-based condensate, makes the mixture highly flammable, explosive and difficult to contain in spills.

These characteristics are dangerously compounded in the case of train accidents.

Conversely, “neatbit” only requires one to two per cent of diluent.

The product thus has the consistency of peanut butter, meaning it won’t flow in the event of a spill. It also doesn’t catch fire or explode.

David Hughes, expert on unconventional fuels and author of multiple reports for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), says: “In effect, shipping raw bitumen by rail is likely a safer alternative than pipelines.”

Shipping bitumen as neatbit would arguably save companies money in the long term. But it would also require a bit of upfront capital, and policy direction from governments.

Heavy oil refineries don’t have the infrastructure to receive it. It would take longer to unload. Upstream companies would have to build diluent recovery units and invest in insulated tank railcars with heated coils to keep the bitumen somewhat soft during transport.

And unlike pipelines, oil-by-rail doesn’t result in a “carbon lock-in” given that many other commodities can be transported by rail.

Bruce Campbell of the CCPA has concluded the oil industry “is not in any hurry to make the transition because of the (relatively modest) upfront investment.”

Kai Nagata of the Dogwood Initiative agrees: “The oil companies don’t want to do anything that is inconvenient or that would require them to build new facilities or spend more money. So far, I don’t think there’s much interest in moving that inert form of bitumen in regular rail cars.”

‘It’s Purely Out of a Profit Motive That They Invoke the Comparison’

Not only is it deceptive to claim that new pipelines are needed to replace oil-by-rail, but it also ignores the fact that oil-by-rail can be made much safer than it is at the moment (although it will continue to be more carbon-intensive due to its current reliance on diesel as fuel).

Yet Lac-Mégantic continues to be subtly weaponized by corporate execs and politicians as if these two facts aren’t true, or even worthy of acknowledgement.

Oil-by-rail has never been a major player in Canada. It never will be if international climate commitments are honoured. And even if it is used as a way to offer some flexibility to producers, it can be done in a way that’s safer than current practices require.

Nagata suggests that such players are relying on people’s fears about a non-issue in order to force them to a point of compromise that would allow them to build pipeline expansion infrastructure.

“It’s purely out of a profit motive that they invoke the comparison,” he says. “Not out of any sense of concern for the safety of communities along the route.”

DeRochie agrees: “It’s a legitimate concern. And I think the oil industry grasped onto that and used it as a scare tactic to push pipelines.”

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Knowledge gaps about the behaviour of diluted bitumen when it is spilled into saltwater and lack of information about how to deal with multiple problems that can result from extracting and transporting bitumen from the Alberta oilsands, make it impossible for government or industry to come up with effective policies to deal with a disaster, says a newly published research paper, Oilsands and the Marine Environment.

The study by ecologists from Simon Fraser, Stanford, Oregon State and Northern Arizona universities, who scrutinized more than 9,000 research papers, concludes that officials should collect more information about the environmental effects of bitumen before setting regulations.

“There just isn’t enough science in the public eye to answer questions about the risk bitumen poses to the ocean,” said lead author Stephanie Green, a Banting postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Ocean Solutions at Stanford University.

“We found almost no research about bitumen’s effects on marine species,” she said.

As controversy continues to swirl around the federal government’s approval of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion and as president-elect Donald Trump prepares to overhaul energy and environmental regulations and reopen the Keystone XL pipeline application, the lack of credible information highlights policy flaws, the researchers said.

“In this context, policymakers risk confusing the lack of evidence for particular environmental effects with evidence that there is no risk,” Green said.

Out of all the studies examined, only two addressed the toxicity of bitumen in the ocean, said coauthor Thomas Sisk of Northern Arizona University.

“We don’t even know for certain whether this form of petroleum will float or sink during an ocean spill,” he said.

Bitumen is the consistency of peanut butter when extracted from the oilsands and, as it is too thick to flow through a pipe, it is diluted with chemicals or lighter petroleum products such as natural gas concentrate, refined naptha or synthetic crude oil to make it flow. The diluted product is commonly known as dilbit.

However, a major block to coming up with spill responses or figuring out the exact behaviour of dilbit in the ocean is that there are dozens of different formulas and the chemical diluent mix is treated as a trade secret by oil companies.

“A crucial first step in filling this gap is a requirement that the chemical composition of oilsands products be made available for scientific study and impact assessment,” the study recommends.

Secrecy Around Composition of Oilsands Dilbit Makes Effective Spill Response, Research Impossible: New Study https://t.co/8p5OUwjDLe #bcpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) December 24, 2016

The paper, which was published this week in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, found that policy flaws include a failure to adequately address carbon emissions or the cumulative effects of multiple projects.

The scientist found there are 15 “pathways” through which the extraction and transportation of oilsands bitumen can negatively affect oceans.

Impacts include problems resulting from a spill, the effect of increased tanker traffic on marine animals and climate change effects such as increasing ocean acidity and temperature and rapid sea-level rise, says the study.

However, there are few scientific studies looking at the effect of two or more of the impacts arising simultaneously.

“Projects should not be considered in isolation and multiple types of impacts need to be considered simultaneously. Everything is connected,” said co-author Wendy Palen of Simon Fraser University.

The gaps in information on multiple stressors are particularly evident on a regional basis for eelgrass and kelp forest systems, the study says.

“Accounting for the effects of multiple projects, concurrently, in scientific assessments and planning processes will lead to more accurate assessments of oil sands contributions to cumulative effects on resources that are in the footprint of multiple industries,” it recommends.

Expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline from the Alberta oilsands to Burnaby will see the capacity of the pipeline triple to 890,000 barrels a day, compared to the current capacity of 300,000 barrels a day. The expansion will also mean the number of tankers, travelling through the Strait of Georgia and Juan de Fuca Strait, will increase to 34 a month from five a month.

The BC Liberal government has set five conditions for approving the pipeline expansion, but is showing every sign that it will get a green light, while the NDP and Green Party oppose it.

Green Party leader Andrew Weaver claims his party is the only one to consistently oppose the pipeline.

“You can’t clean up dilbit, so we should ban heavy oil tankers on the coast,” he said categorically.

Image credit: TransCanada

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Nobody knows how a spill of diluted bitumen would affect marine life or whether a bitumen spill in salt water could be adequately cleaned up, because basic research is lacking, says a new study.

The peer-reviewed paper, which will be published later this month in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, looked at more than 9,000 studies of the effect of oilsands products on the marine environment.

The paper is under embargo until Dec. 20, but the authors, from universities in Canada and the U.S., shared their findings with the federal government in hopes that the conclusions would be considered prior to pipeline decisions, said Wendy Palen, associate professor in the department of biological sciences at Simon Fraser University and one of the authors.

“As scientists, we feel a responsibility to speak out about the state of the science, especially with a government that has pledged to be evidence-based,” said Palen, who agreed to discuss general conclusions of the study with DeSmog Canada in advance of the embargo being lifted because of the government’s approval of Kinder Morgan’s $6.8-billion pipeline expansion.

The project will see capacity of the Trans Mountain pipeline, from the Alberta oilsands to Burnaby, triple to 890,000 barrels of diluted bitumen a day from 300,000 barrels daily. It will also mean tanker traffic from the Burnaby terminal will increase to 34 tankers a month from about five a month.

Those super-tankers, carrying diluted bitumen, will travel through the Strait of Georgia, around the Gulf Islands and southern Vancouver Island then through Juan de Fuca Strait on their way to foreign markets.

Pipeline opponents fear that a catastrophic oil spill is inevitable, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau insists the government’s decision was based on science and that the project would have been rejected if he believed there was any threat to the B.C. coast.

However, the study found that there are large unexamined risks to the marine environment from bitumen and claims that a spill can be effectively mitigated are unfounded because there have been no ocean-based studies of how bitumen behaves in the marine environment with rough seas and changing temperatures, Palen said.

“That means that the approval of new projects is problematic, maybe even bordering on irresponsible,” she said.

“Any new approvals of pipelines or transportation proposals are assuming a large amount of risk…The decision last week was troubling because of this knowledge gap.”

Transportation of heavy oil from Alberta’s oilsands has outpaced the science that can ensure projects are safe and although thousands of peer-reviewed studies are available on the behaviour of conventional oil and spills in fresh water, there is almost nothing on the behaviour of bitumen in the ocean, Palen said.

Review of 9000 Studies Finds We Know Squat About Bitumen Spills in Ocean Environments https://t.co/S2Zpkb8WCD #bcpoli #cdnpoli @LavoieJudith

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) December 9, 2016

One of the few studies looking at bitumen in the marine environment found it tends to float until it weathers and then sinks, but that study was conducted in the laboratory, not in the ocean.

One reason that the science is so sparse is that companies will not disclose what chemical mix is going into the pipe.

“The composition is protected as a corporate trade secret and the companies don’t have to disclose it. That’s something we called for in our letter to the Prime Minister and cabinet. We, in the scientific community, urgently need that information in order to allow science to catch up,” Palen said.

“We were quite surprised about it and concluded that some of the most basic questions remain unanswered.”

Bitumen is a very heavy oil that will not flow through a pipe without being diluted. Usually lighter petroleum products such as natural gas concentrate, refined naptha or synthetic crude oil are used to make it flow.

A previous study on diluted bitumen, by the U.S.-based National Academy of Sciences, found that, unlike lighter compounds that begin to evaporate when spilled, heavy oil weathers into an adhesive, dense viscous material when exposed to the elements.

“For this reason, spills of diluted bitumen pose particular challenges when they reach water bodies. In some cases, the residues can submerge or sink to the bottom of the water body,“ it says.

The study found that a pipeline failure that releases diluted bitumen poses danger to responders and the public, as well as to the environment.

“When all risks are considered systematically, there must be a greater level of concern associated with spills of diluted bitumen compared to spills of commonly transported crude oils,” it says

Six years ago a diluted bitumen pipeline operated by Enbridge burst, spilling bitumen into a tributary of the Kalamazoo River. The spill cost more than $1-billion to clean up and put the spotlight on the hazards of pumping bitumen through pipelines.

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You know you’ve got the attention of the fossil fuel industry when the Financial Post’s Claudia Cattaneo pens a dismissive column about your efforts.

On Tuesday, Cattaneo — recently dubbed “everyone’s favorite oil and gas shill” by American Energy News — bestowed the honour on a new report about TransCanada’s proposed Energy East pipeline, published by the Natural Resources Defense Council and 13 other environmental organizations including 350.org, Greenpeace and the Sierra Club.

“Canadian [sic] are also right to wonder why a deep-pocketed U.S. group with an army of lawyers is meddling in an all-Canadian pipeline project,” she opined in her 820-word column, shortly after insinuating the Natural Resources Defense Council “needed to conquer and make money off a new dragon” following the presidential veto of the Keystone XL pipeline in 2015.

The idea that Energy East only concerns Canadians is a curious perspective. But it’s certainly not a unique one.

The Energy East project, requiring 1,500 kilometers of new pipeline and the conversion of 3,000 kilometers of existing natural gas infrastructure in order to transport up to 1.1 million barrels of dilbit per day, has been heralded by many as a quintessentially Canadian project, comparable to the Canadian Pacific Railway in scope and significance. Even Rick Mercer argued for its construction.

Unlike the Kinder Morgan’s proposed Trans-Mountain Expansion, however, there’s been a fair bit of obfuscation about what the desired market is for the transported product.

That’s a key problem for a big picture defence of the project.

Some have contended that Energy East will transport products for consumption in Eastern Canada, helping to foster energy security by breaking a reliance on imports from the Middle East. Such a reality would indeed seem like an “all-Canadian pipeline project” and justify Cattaneo’s confusion about why U.S. organizations are getting involved in the battle.

But as the Natural Resources Defense Council’s new 24-page report (ominously titled “Tar Sands in the Atlantic Ocean“) sketches out, the U.S. has many, many reasons for concern: threats to marine mammals, vulnerable ecosystems and progress on climate change, for starters.

“From the U.S. perspective, [Energy East] is a huge project that right now feels as if it’s being snuck in,” says Josh Axelrod, a Washington, D.C.- based policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council and co-author of the report in an interview.

”We’re worried if it remains on the down-low that our regulators will basically find out about dilbit tankers the day something goes wrong and will not be prepared for it. We would like to, at the very least, have them prepared, if not express their disapproval of the idea.”

Sinking Tarballs, Whale Collisions: Potential Impacts of #EnergyEast on the U.S. Coast Detailed in New Report https://t.co/wCTtKXg8bG

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) July 28, 2016

Tankers Could Move 328 Million Barrels of Oil Per Year in U.S. Water

Axelrod’s quick to point out there’s “no compelling case” for the suggestion that Energy East is planned to transport oil for Canadians to use.

In TransCanada’s May 2016 consolidated application to Canada’s National Energy Board, the company estimated it would ship up to 281 tankers every year.

Axelrod says the proposed tanker configuration amounts to 900,000 barrels a day.

By the report’s estimates, tankers could move up to 328 million barrels of oil to refineries in New Jersey, Delaware, Louisiana and Texas: the U.S. Gulf Coast sports 25 refineries, 17 of which have a history of processing heavy oilsands crude.

Meanwhile, New Brunswick’s Irving refinery doesn’t have the capacity or even necessarily the desire to process dilbit (Axelrod adds the reversal of Enbridge’s Line 9B in September makes Energy East less useful to the Montreal refineries).

This matters a great deal. If TransCanada was intending to transport and sell dilbit to Canadian refineries for Canadian usage, it would indeed be odd for a report to call for a moratorium on tankers; Cattaneo strangely suggested in her column that the proposed ban is “a bit surprising given that oilsands tankers would be leaving from a Canadian port, making it harder to block by the U.S. administration.”

For at this point, the facts seem clear: tankers will be leaving a Canadian port and travelling through American waters with potentially catastrophic impacts in the case of a spill or accident.

Dilbit Spills Notoriously Difficult to Clean Up

The report points to two major incidents that have occurred in the past few years — the 2010 Enbridge spill in Michigan’s Kalamazoo River, and the 2013 ExxonMobil spill in Arkansas — as examples of the difficulties of containing and cleaning up a dilbit spill.

A 2016 report by the National Academy of Sciences emphasized that dilbit sinks in water and doesn’t biodegrade easily, making a spill far more disastrous than its conventional counterpart.

And that’s not even to speak of issues like ship strikes (when ships hit whales or other marine mammals), noise pollution or the accidental transportation of invasive species.

These are all issues that one would hope regulators would consider in their review of projects. But Axelrod says the National Energy Board (NEB) has “really flubbed this,” using a process that fails to consider cumulative impacts or acknowledge difficulties with cleaning up other dilbit spills.

“The NEB likes to make it seem like their processes are straightforward but they’ve really made it into a disaster,” he says. “There’s pro forma discussion of some of the impacts but a very limited scope.”

Energy East Exempted From Environmental Assessment Overhaul

There is still lots of time to correct such problems: the NEB’s consultation process will be continuing until 2018, while the very earliest Energy East could start transporting dilbit would be 2021.

But companies including TransCanada and Kinder Morgan have already been told by the federal government that “no project proponent will be asked to return to the starting line,” with the exception of the evaluation of their upstream greenhouse gas emissions.

“I hope it’s being used as a way to look at a project’s impacts on provincial and national climate goals and international commitments, and if that’s the case it could be a useful tool,” Axelrod says. “But it really misses a lot of the project’s climate impacts.”

And given the NEB will almost certainly approve the project — since 2012, the body has had to conduct environmental assessments and consultations, tasks that are far outside of its original mandate — that’s a problem the federal cabinet will have to confront.

Kinder Morgan’s Trans-Mountain pipeline expansion will be decided upon before Energy East. But that’s a far more complicated project due to dozens of unresolved First Nations land claims. The Alberta NDP also appears to have put more long-term hope in Energy East due to such factors.

But if Canada does end up approving Energy East — and, of course, depending on who’s elected as president of the United States — it may end up seeing a similar conclusion to what happened with the Keystone XL pipeline: pushed for by Canada and rejected by America due to potential impacts on environments and wildlife.

Maybe, by then, it will have all started to make sense for Cattaneo and her pals.

Image: NRDC

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A lack of reliable scientific information about what happens when crude oil is spilled into rivers or the ocean and a fragmented system of response plans is hindering Canada’s efforts to prevent and clean up oil spills, says a major report by the Royal Society of Canada.

The lengthy report was written by a panel of seven experts on oil chemistry, behaviour and toxicity.

Case studies, including B.C.’s Pine River pipeline break and the April leak of fuel oil into Vancouver’s English Bay, showed delays in response time were common, with causes ranging from poor communication and coordination among government agencies to lack of preparedness.

But the main problem was an absence of reliable scientific data.

“There is a critical need for a coordinated and integrated database of information relevant to the assessment of risk of oil spills in Canada,” says the report.

Groups do not always share information and response scenarios can be unrealistic, according to the panel, which is recommending the formation of a joint government, industry and academic research program to come up with a national database to provide accurate information when an oil spill occurs.

“There is an urgent need in Canada to develop science-based guidance and protocols for oil spill impact, risk assessments and clean-up,” the report says

Sometimes the quality of existing data is questionable, the panel found. For example, pipeline leaks usually take hours to discover rather than minutes, so scenarios based on instant identification of a problem are unrealistic.

Panel chair Kenneth Lee, oceans and atmosphere director at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Perth, Australia, said in an interview that Canada has relatively stringent rules and processes, but they would be improved by a coordinated approach to research in key areas, such as the behaviour of different types of oil, pre-spill baselines, new techniques and the effectiveness of spill response options.

Lee would not speculate on the cost of a national research program or how it would be put together

“We are scientists so we come up with the recommendations. The policies and putting things in place are not our decision,” he said.

Behaviour of Diluted Bitumen Needs More Research

An area pinpointed as needing more research is spill behaviour of diluted bitumen, the tar diluted with condensate that flows from the Alberta oilsands to the B.C. coast.

“It is not a product that is the same every day,” said Lee.

“Depending on the chemistry, some sinks and some floats even under the same conditions. There are a lot of complex interactions and we need that kind of data to make decisions,” he said.

The report acknowledges that heavy oils and dilbit present problems as they do not easily evaporate or dissolve in water.

“Thus their potential damage to the environment, waterfowl and fur-bearing animals is greater. Clean-up of heavy oils and bitumen is extremely difficult for both marine and inland spills because of their specific gravity, viscosity flash point properties and high asphaltene content,” the report states.

Weather and wave action will also affect the behaviour of the oil.

“Every oil spill is different,” Lee said.

The report points out that more research is needed to look at the effect of oil spills on sensitive ecosystems such as Arctic waters and wetlands and the effectiveness of spill response in remote areas.

“Investigations of oil spill effects in Arctic Canada must include collaboration with indigenous peoples to ensure that traditional knowledge is incorporated into our overall understanding of the risks of oil spills in northern locations,” it says.

Sociological factors should also be part of the equation because of public concerns over returning beaches or rivers to their pre-spill state.

Spills should be used as an opportunity to gain information for the national database and that means funding and teams of researchers should be in place and ready to go before the spill occurs, said Lee, who is also advocating for conducting research through small controlled spills.

With Canada producing more than 3.7 million barrels of oil every day, there is always the risk of a spill and the panel suggests the focus should be on prevention of large spills and rapid and effective response to smaller ones.

The questions that need to be asked are whether the risks are acceptable and whether they can be handled and to make those decisions accurate scientific data is needed, Lee said.

The RSC expert panel report was commissioned by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association.

Image: Western Canada Marine Response Corporation

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The mayors of Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster, City of North Vancouver, Victoria, Squamish and Bowen Island have declared their “non-confidence” in the National Energy Board’s (NEB) review of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline and are calling on the federal government to put the current process on hold until a full public hearing process is re-instated.

“It has become apparent that the NEB process does not constitute a ‘public hearing’ and is completely inadequate to assess the health and safety risks of a proposed pipeline through major metropolitan areas, and the potential risks of shipping bitumen oil to Burnaby and through Burrard Inlet, the Salish Sea, and along the coastline of British Columbia,” the mayors write in their declaration.

The mayors also call upon the Government of British Columbia to re-assert its role in environmental assessment and to establish a provincial process, including public hearings, to assess the Trans Mountain proposal.

If built, the Trans Mountain pipeline system would transport more than 890,000 barrels a day of primarily diluted bitumen from the Alberta oilsands to B.C.’s west coast. Most of this heavy oil is destined for Westridge dock in Burnaby, where it would be loaded onto 400 oil tankers per year — a six-fold increase from current oil tanker traffic.

“The current hearing process does not allow for consideration of some of the most damaging aspects of the proposal — the inadequacy of emergency plans; the potential for marine oil spills; the effects of the project on climate change, and the threat it poses to our local economy,” says Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson. “We want to demonstrate to our residents and businesses that we are taking the potential risks seriously, and we want to work together with other municipalities in the region to protect our economy, our environment and our people.”

The mayors say the elimination of oral cross-examination from the hearing process has rendered the process inadequate. Without oral cross-examination, the municipalities have been forced to submit their questions in writing and wait on written responses back from Kinder Morgan. 

“The proponent has failed to answer the majority of questions submitted by municipalities and other intervenors,” the mayors write in their declaration. “Because of the inadequacies inherent to the review process, hundreds of questions critical to public safety and environmental impacts remain unanswered.”

The declaration continues: “We have serious concerns that the current NEB panel is neither independent from the oil industry proponents nor ready or able to assess the ‘public interest’ of British Columbians. It is no longer a credible process from either a scientific evidentiary basis, nor from a public policy and public interest perspective.”

 “We know that our concerns are shared by communities throughout the province,” says Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan. “This flawed hearing process disallows review of aspects of the proposal that could cause the most significant damage. It is critical for this project — and for all projects that can harm communities and the environment — that we have federal review processes that are rigorous and transparent.”

"The City of Victoria is concerned about the impact of increased tanker traffic on our ecology and our economy,” says Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps. “We're happy to stand with other municipalities to request a fair and rigorous process to ensure that both are safeguarded for the long term.”

Resolutions calling National Energy Board's review process of Kinder Morgan’s proposal inadequate have already been passed by the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (September 2014) and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (March 2015).

The province of British Columbia has also taken issue with the NEB process, particularly with regard to its failure to compel Kinder Morgan to release its oil spill response plans in B.C. — while the company releases those very same plans across the border in Washington State.

Photo: Mark Klotz via Flickr

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“Once the oil started to sink, it made things a lot more difficult on our recovery.”

Those were the words of Greg Powell of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during his presentation on March 10th at the National Academy of Sciences conference on the Effects of Diluted Bitumen on the Environment. Powell was one of the people involved in the response and clean up of the Kalamazoo River tar sands dilbit spill in 2010 where an Enbridge pipeline cracked and spilled approximately one million gallons of diluted bitumen into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan.

Powell presented a disturbing account of what happened at Kalamazoo with pictures showing a river with “bank to bank” oil and contamination for almost 40 miles. This damage took over four years and more than a billion dollars to clean up. And Powell explained the main reason was that diluted bitumen isn’t like other oil.

Dilbit is a mixture of two distinct materials. One is the heavy tar-like bitumen that is the result of tar sands mining. The other is the highly flammable natural gas condensate that is mixed into the bitumen to lower the mixture’s viscosity and allow the diluted bitumen to be pumped through a pipeline or transported in a rail tanker car.

Throughout the two-day meeting, multiple presenters explained that the natural gas condensate/diluent starts evaporating as soon as there is a dilbit spill. This produces serious air quality issues due to the high levels of benzene involved. EPA's Powell had a slide on that: 

Additionally, as has been shown with two recent dilbit-by-rail accidents, the natural gas condensate can also easily catch fire and cause explosions.

Once the diluent has fully volatilized or burned off, what is left is bitumen, which is what took years to clean up in Kalamazoo after it sank in the river. 

And in Kalamazoo it wasn’t just that the bitumen sank, but the way it adhered to plants and surfaces and didn’t come off.

“We had to remove all of the vegetation along the stream bank because that oil would not come off,” Powell explained. He later said that they would, “Pressure wash rocks with it directly on the rocks and we couldn’t break that oil loose once it adhered to the rock.”  At one point he stated, “it was like roofing tar.”

In one of Powell’s summary slides he made several observations about the spill noting that the focus of the cleanup “switched to submerged oil about a month after the release” and that the bitumen sank “within 2 weeks of the spill.” 

What made Powell’s description of the behavior of the oil in the Kalamazoo spill particularly noteworthy was that it contradicted claims made in a presentation by the American Petroleum Institute (API) during Day 1 of the meeting. Peter Lidiak of the API said results from a new API-funded study about dilbit will be released in the near future but based on the preliminary findings, dilbit floats and doesn’t sink. 

An interesting part of that study is that it lasted for 13 days. Dilbit doesn’t sink right away. Since it is a mixture of bitumen and volatile diluents like natural gas condensate, it doesn’t sink until the lighter natural gas condensate evaporates, leaving the heavier bitumen behind.

A 2013 study funded by Endbridge — the company that owned the pipeline that spilled dilbit into the Kalamazoo River — also concluded that dilbit didn’t sink. That study also only lasted 13 days. Powell had noted that the bitumen sank, “within two weeks of the spill.”

In much the same manner the API has claimed Bakken Shale oil isn’t different from other oils, citing studies funded by the oil industry, the industry is taking the same approach now with dilbit. Which make senses because the efforts with the Bakken oil have been very successful.

As reported recently by Reuters, the directive to have nothing in the new oil-by-rail regulations to require oil companies to remove the explosive natural gas liquids from Bakken oil prior to shipment, came from the White House. Meanwhile, two more Bakken oil trains have recently crashed and exploded.

Regardless of the industry-funded studies claiming dilbit is not going to sink, it is unlikely anyone who has seen the Kalamazoo River accident will believe them. Greg Powell’s presentation even contained a slide titled, “How To Sink Dilbit In A River” explaining how the bitumen ended up under water. 

The sole public commenter at the NAS meeting was Jane Kleeb of Bold Nebraska, a grassroots group fighting eminent domain and the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline and working to hold the corporations accountable for spill response and safety.

Kleeb explained to DeSmogBlog that Bold Nebraska has asked that all pipeline companies be required to have proper Material Safety Data Sheets available to local first responders detailing what is moving through the pipelines. The group also asked for the companies to provide proper equipment for first responders in the event of a dilbit spill in rural Nebraska.

Bold Nebraska had little success with either request.

“TransCanada has constantly pushed back on us saying we are alarmist and extremists and that it is not necessary,” Kleeb told DeSmogBlog.

During the conference it was noted that one of the problems with the Kalamazoo spill response was that initially Enbridge provided the wrong MSDS to the first responders.

Kleeb told DeSmogBlog she was pleased with one result from the meeting. “I was very relieved to know that the EPA and the Coast Guard both acknowledge the fact that yes, dilbit or tars sands or oil sands or however you are going to call it, does sink and that it is a problem.”

However, she maintains a healthy skepticism and expressed concern about the current study due to an earlier NAS study about the effects of dilbit on pipelines that was so popular with the industry it is touted on the Enbridge website.

“I fear the NAS study could just be a repeat of the first one,” said Kleeb.

While recent rail accidents with dilbit have resulted in reported spills of one million liters of dilbit as well as ruptured tanker cars ending up in a river, the conversation about dilbit in the environment at the meeting was dominated by the Kalamazoo event.

At one point, the EPA’s Powell was describing the spill response as it played out, and he recounted how someone called him to explain what seemed like good news.

“Get up here at 12 miles down the river, the oil disappears.” 

We now know that it didn’t disappear and Powell explained what really happened. “Well it didn’t disappear, it just took on a new form once the condensate volatilized off,” he said.

The natural gas condensate volatilized off and the bitumen sank — which it does in the real world — but apparently does not in American Petroleum Institute and Enbridge-funded studies.

At the end of the two-day meeting, Commander Joseph Loring was asked what he would want to know first and foremost as a first responder to a dilbit spill. In his response, Loring referred to a dilbit spill as a “ticking time bomb” and summed up the one most important piece of information he would want to have.

“How long is it going to float?” Loring said. “That is the ultimate, I want to know how long I have.”  

Image credit: U.S. EPA

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