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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The Pacific coast of North America is becoming more acidic as human-produced carbon dioxide emissions dissolve into the water and communities from B.C. to California must take action now to offset changes that are already affecting West Coast marine life, say leading ocean scientists.   The panel of 20 scientists from B.C., California, Oregon and Washington have spent three years studying changes in ocean chemistry along the West Coast and a report released Monday says regional strategies are urgently needed to combat changes that are coming and, where possible, reduce the impacts.   “Ocean acidification is a global problem that is having a disproportionate impact on productive West Coast ecosystems,” Francis Chan, an Oregon State University marine ecologist, said. Chan is the co-chair of the West Coast Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia Science panel.   “There has been an attitude that there is not much we can do about this locally, but that just isn’t true. A lot of the solutions will come locally and through coordinated regional efforts,” he said.

Some mitigation measure could be low-tech, such as using kelp beds and eel grass to remove carbon dioxide from seawater and each area should develop new benchmarks, monitoring stations and rules to protect vulnerable areas, says the report. 

“We want to grow the number of tools in our tool box. Right now there are not a lot of tools,” Chan said in an interview with DeSmog Canada.   Ocean acidification and the twin demon of hypoxia — low-oxygen water — came to public consciousness on the West Coast about 10 years ago, when the oyster industry in Washington and Oregon, and several years later in B.C, found that seawater was so acidic that it dissolved the shells of baby oysters.   One strategy, used in Oregon, was to measure ocean chemistry throughout the day and it was found that, if hatcheries took in seawater during the afternoon, when CO2 levels were lower, juvenile oysters could survive.   More such studies of specific areas are needed and scientific buoys and gliders should help inform policy makers about the best place to focus their adaptation and mitigation strategies, the report says.   “We’re just starting to see the impacts now and we need to accelerate what we know about how increasingly acidified water will impact our ecosystem,” panel member Waldo Wakefield, a research biologist with NOAA Fisheries, said.   It is estimated that 30 to 40 per cent of carbon dioxide from human activity dissolves into oceans, rivers and lakes, forming carbonic acid. Over the last 250 years, ocean acidity on surface water has increased by 30 per cent and it’s expected to increase by up to 150 per cent by the end of the century.   The West Coast is a hotspot for acidification because of coastal upwelling, which brings nutrient-rich, low oxygen and high carbon dioxide water from deep in the water column to the surface. That can trigger phytoplankton blooms that die and sink to the bottom, producing more carbon dioxide and further lowering the oxygen.   Now, with politicians and scientists working together on the problem, there is hope that more steps can be taken to lessen the impact, Chan said.   “We can breed more resilient oysters that can do better in the ocean that we are expecting,” he said, pointing out that a varied gene pool and different ages of fish are needed so the right genes can be passed on to the next generation.   Panel member Jack Barth, associate dean at Oregon State University’s College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, wants all West Coast residents to educate themselves about the effect emissions are having on the ocean.   “People are just dumbfounded when they find out that we are doing this,” he said.   Municipalities and watershed groups need to figure out the most vulnerable areas and then they can avoid adding more stressors such as organic runoff from the land, Barth said in an interview.   That could mean revamping regulations, he said.   The panel included Tom Pedersen from the University of Victoria, former executive director of the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, and Debbie Ianson from Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sidney.   The B.C. input was vital as the province is doing interesting work on ocean acidification in areas such as the Salish Sea, Barth said.   “And they’re doing good work with measurements and modelling. They are taking it very seriously,” he said.   For more information go to http://westcoastoah.org.

Image: Mark Smith/Flickr

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