Tag: oil spill

US Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Admin cites Enbridge for violations in Kalamazoo spill, wants $3.7 million fine

Updated with Enbridge statement

The United States Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration today cited Enbridge for a series of violations in connection with the pipeline rupture and bitumen spill at Mashall, Michigan,  in 2010 and is proposing the company be fined a record $3.7 million.

A letter issued today, July 2, 2012, from the PMHSA  to Richard Adams, Vice President, U.S. Operations, Enbridge Energy Limited Partnership, lists a series of alleged failures by Enbridge.

The letter says the investigation began on July 26, 2010, the day after the Enbridge Energy Limited Partnership’s 30-inch diameter Line 6B pipeline ruptured near Marshall, Michigan on July 25, spilling 20,000 barrels of crude and contaminating 38 miles of the Kalamazoo River.

That investigation, the letter says, turned up numerous violations of US regulations including, safety rules, faulty risk analysis, failure to follow proper operation and management procedures and problems with reporting and operator qualification requirements.

The PHMSA alleges that Enbridge violated 24 regulations for pipeline safety and procedures, with civil penalties ranging from $41,200 to $1,000,000 for a total of $3.7 million.

None of the allegations have been proven and Enbridge is free to contest the filings and allegations and ask for a hearing.

In a news release, Enbridge responded:

Enbridge appreciates the hard work and due diligence that PHMSA has put into this investigation,” said Stephen J. Wuori, President, Liquids Pipelines, Enbridge Inc. “Safety has always been core to our operations. Enbridge completed a detailed internal investigation of this incident in the fall of 2010 and has made numerous enhancements to the processes and procedures in our control center since the Line 6B accident, including the training provided to pipeline operators, and has made significant changes in this critical component of our operations. Incident prevention, detection and response have also been enhanced. We will carefully examine the NOPV to determine whether any further adjustments are appropriate.

The letter says the investigation began on July 26, 2010, the day after the Enbridge Enbridge Energy Limited Partnership’s 30-inch diameter Line 6B pipeline ruptured near Marshall, Michigan on July 25, spilling 20,000 barrels of crude and contaminating 38 miles of the Kalamazoo River.

That investigation, the letter says, turned up numerous violations of US regulations including, safety rules, faulty risk analysis, failure to follow proper operation and management procedures and problems with reporting and operator qualification requirements.

The letter also outlines what happened during the spill, as seen through the eyes of PHMSA investigators.

According to the letter, the Enbridge pipeline failed despite a series of In-Line Inspections that the company had performed on the pipeline. Those inspections, the PHMSA investigators say found “multiple corrosion and crack-like anomalies on the pipe joint that failed on July
25, 2010.” It is alleged that Enbridge did not conduct any field examination of the reported anomalies before the accident.

According to the PHMSA, there was actually a crack detection being performed on Line 6B on the day of the failure and the testing equipment was left in the pipeline until the after the line was restarted on September 27, 2010.

The reports says the Michigan pipeline ruptured at 17:58 EDT on July 25, 2010, approximately 0.6 miles downstream of the company’s Marshall pumping station. At the time, Enbridge’s Edmonton Control Center  (CCO) was in the process of starting a scheduled 10-hour shutdown of the pipeline.

The PHMSA report says:

as soon as the failure occurred, the CCO received multiple alarms and indications of abnormal operations on Line 6B, but the company did not execute its suspected-leak or emergency procedures. Instead, Enbridge allowed the pipeline to remain idle as part of the Scheduled Shutdown for approximately 10 hours, during which time a new shift came on duty at the CCO, which brought in a new set of controllers, supervisors, and support personnel.

At approximately 04:00, on July 26, 2010, Enbridge initiated the scheduled start-up of Line 6B … Within minutes, the CCO received multiple alarms and indications of abnormal operating conditions, which indicated that the pressure at the Marshall pumping station had not increased as expected and the imbalance between the volume of product injected into the pipeline and the volume of product being delivered from the pipeline exceeded established thresholds. Again, Enbridge did not execute its suspected leak or emergency procedures. Instead, Enbridge continued to pump crude oil into the line while the controller, supervisors, and support personnel evaluated the situation.

After an hour, the Edmonton control centre abandoned the attempted restart and shut down the pipeline. During the time Enbridge was trying to restart the pipeline, an additional 10,460 barrels of crude oil was injected into the pipeline.

The PHMSA report says that the Enbridge control room was monitoring the “lack of typical pressure and flow conditions for this pipeline configuration and alarms.” Control room supervisors contacted managers and the decision was made to restart the pipeline a second time, which began at 0720 on July 26.

Again the Enbridge control “received multiple alarms and indications of abnormal
operating conditions.”

Enbridge continued to pump oil for another 31 minutes sending 5,831 barrels of oil into the pipeline.

By this time supervisors and managers were discussing the possibility of a suspected leak but no one activated Enbridge’s spill procedures. The second restart was halted at 0751 at which time a new shift took over the control room.

Enbridge managers “discussed the two restart attempts, resulting in the Line 6B controller
conducting further investigation into the historical operating information on the line but
taking no action to deal with a spill.”

It was three hours and fifteen minutes after the shift change, at 11:18 on July 26, roughly 17 hours after the failure occurred, that the Enbridge control room received an emergency call from an employee of a local gas company, Consumers Energy, reporting oil in a creek near Marshall, Michigan.

It was at that point that Enbridge closed remotely operated valves on each side of the reported leak, isolating three miles of pipeline on either side of the rupture. It was then that Enbridge activated its emergency procedure and field personnel were sent to the scene. The field personnel confirmed the spill to the Edmonton control room at 11:43.

On July 28, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration issued “a Corrective Action Order” to Enbridge requiring the company to take action to protect the public, property, and the environment. “Amongst other things, the Corrective Action Order required a pressure reduction, verification of pipeline integrity, integration of information, and provisions for ensuring ongoing safe operation considering all risk factors.”

The letter then cites Enbridge for the following alleged violations:

Pipeline integrity management in high consequence areas

The letter says that after an integrity assessment of Line 6B, Enbridge failed to obtain, within 180 days, sufficient information about anomalous conditions presenting a potential threat to the integrity of Line 6B. Enbridge conducted a high-resolution integrity assessment of Line 6B on October 13, 2007 and received the “vendor report” on June 4, 2008. The citation says “The 180 day deadline was April 10, 2008. Enbridge did not demonstrate that the 180 day period was impracticable.”

The report says Enbridge implemented pressure restrictions on the pipeline on July 17, 2009, approximately 462 days after the deadline to have sufficient information to identify anomalous conditions. A year later, according to the PHMSA, Enbridge submitted a “Long Term Pressure Reduction Notification” to PHMSA on July 15, 2010. The date of discovery was reported by Enbridge as July 17, 2009 not June 2008.

US regulations require pipeline companies to fix “corrosion anomalies” in pipelines with 180 days. The citation says that starting back as far as 2004, Enbridge “did not schedule remediation of
corrosion anomalies involving the longitudinal weld seam of pipe joint #217720, that is the joint that eventually ruptured causing the spill. The report says Enbridge also did not remediate crack-like anomalies on the same pipe joint… that could impair the integrity of the pipeline” and “Enbridge could not demonstrate that the company attempted or scheduled any remediation of the corrosion or crack anomalies that were identified by the assessments” nor did Enbridge schedule that joint for excavation prior to the rupture.

Risk analysis

The PHMSA alleges that Enbridge failed to consider all relevant risk factors associated with the determination of the amount of product that could be released from a rupture on the pipeline. Enbridge’s risk analysis process also assumed a pipeline rupture of this magnitude would be identified by its leak detection instrumentation within five minutes, and that it would take an additional three minutes to close remotely operated valves on either side of the rupture.

Before the spill, Enbridge had estimated the worst case scenario at the that location would be a release 1,670 barrels initially with another 1938 barrels released during “drain down” for a total of3,608 barrels

The actual failure scenario demonstrates the rupture was not recognized by Enbridge, and the isolation valves were not closed, until approximately 17 hours after it occurred. An additional 16,431 barrels of product was injected into the ruptured pipeline, causing the total spill volume to greatly exceed Enbridge’s worst case discharge scenario for this location.

Evaluation

The PHMSA letter alleges that “Enbridge did not properly consider the results of corrosion and cracking assessments nor did Enbridge integrate the information from these assessments to
properly assure overall pipeline integrity.”

While the investigation revealed that while “Enbridge has a long history of performing
integrity assessments” those assessment results “were evaluated independently and not integrated in a fashion that assures pipeline integrity.”

General Requirements

The PHMSA says US regulations require that whenever an operator discovers any condition that could adversely affect the safe operation of its pipeline system, “it shall correct it within a
reasonable time,” adding that “if the condition is of such a nature that it presents
an immediate hazard to persons or property, the operator may not operate the affected part of the system until it has corrected the unsafe condition.”

The letter says” “Enbridge failed to correct a condition that could affect the safe operation of a
pipeline within a reasonable time following discovery. Enbridge discovered the
condition as a result of …. instrumentation alarms and events that alerted
within seconds and minutes of the rupture…”

Since the alarms would have indicated conditions that could adversely affect the safe operation of the pipeline,” the PHMSA says: “The expected initial corrective action is to notify appropriate company and emergency response personnel to investigate and mitigate the effects of any unsafe conditions. This was not done until approximately 17 hours after discovery of the conditions.”

The letter says Enbridge did not follow established written procedures for responding to,
investigating, and correcting the cause of pressure outside of normal operating
limits during the shutdown and Enbridge did not notify responsible personnel in accordance with
the procedure. It says that Enbridge has not developed a specific written procedure for responding to an Invalid Pressure Alarm, but has instead developed a written procedure for required actions based on alarm severity.

For an S6-Severe Alarm, the procedures require the controller to: (1) Notify the Shift Lead; (2) Advise on site/on-call personnel; (3) Create a F ACMAN (Enbridge term for Facility Management record-keeping system used to documents abnormal operating conditions).

The PHMSA says “Enbridge failed to take any of these required actions.”

It goes on to allege that Enbridge did not follow established written procedures for responding to,
investigating, and correcting the cause of pressure in the pipeline that were outside of normal operating limits and goes on to say that Enbridge has not developed a specific written procedure for responding to a Low Suction Pressure Alarm.

As in the previous case, Enbridge’s procedures were based on “alarm severity.”

For an S4-Warning Alarm, the procedures require (1) Discretionary controller response to alarm dependent on operating conditions, (2) Notify the Shift Lead if unsure of response, (3) If multiple S4 alarms are active for a related issue, the response and severity may be raised, ( 4) FACMAN creation may be required, (5) Advise on-site/on-call personnel if required.

Again the PHMSA alleges: “ Enbridge did not take any of the above actions, or any
other actions, in response to this alarm. The fact the Marshall suction pressure
abruptly dropped to 0 psig, which was unexpected and abnormal, dictates followup
investigative actions in accordance with the procedure, in order to determine
the reason/source of the alarm.”

The report says that Enbridge did not follow established written procedures for responding to, investigating, and correcting the cause of an unintended shutdown at the Marshall Unit and Enbridge also did not notify responsible personnel in accordance with the procedure.

Emergencies

The PHMSA says Enbridge did not take necessary action to minimize the volume of hazardous
liquid released in the event of a failure or notify police during an emergency, even though that was required by Enbridge’s own emergency notification procedures, saying that the shift lead in the Edmonton control room should have initiated the procedures at 18:03, on July 25, when an alarm went off.

Enbridge policy on leak “triggers” that is “unexplained abnormal operating conditions or events that indicate a leak” requires that a number of procedure be started once a leak trigger is detected. The PHMA says neither the suspected leak or confirmed leaks procedures were executed by the Edmonton control room nor were managers, field personnel and local police notified.

Public Awareness

The PHMSA letter says that Enbridge did not evaluate the effectiveness of its public awareness program in accordance with the written procedures. The company’s plan calls on the public awareness manager to “informally assess the effectiveness of public awareness efforts” each year, but the PHMSA says “Enbridge could not demonstrate this was being performed.”

The investigation identified a number of instances where actions taken by members of the PAP target audience were not in accordance with the program message (e.g. not associating the odour with that of a possible crude oil release, not contacting Enbridge’s Emergency Number in response to the odour complaints, and entry into the spill area by untrained individuals).

The release resulted in a number of local residents being displaced, contamination of approximately 38 miles of the Kalamazoo River, and contamination of affected fish and wildlife.

Accident reporting

The PHMSA also alleges that Enbridge failed to properly report the incident to the proper authorities, in this case the US Department of Transportation. It says Enbridge failed to accurately report the time of failure and other significant facts relevant to the extent of damages associated with a pipeline rupture which occurred at 17:58, on July 25, 2010. According to the PHMSA, Enbridge incorrectly reported the time the accident was discovered as 09:45 July 26 and also reported the material had not reached the Kalamazoo River yet, and that the release was secured.

According to the letter, investigative interviews show that the Edmonton control room personnel were aware that there were abnormal conditions on the pipeline, that “the rupture had likely occurred when the pipeline was shutdown, the night before” that “the release was not secured, as oil was moving down the Kalamazoo River. The impacts to people, property, and the environment were immediately obvious when emergency response actions were initiated.” The letter says that Enbridge did not file follow up reports to augment the initial report to Department of Transportation nor did it “currently available accident information” to the DOT within 30 days.

A report filed by Enbridge on August 25, 2010, again misreported the time of the spill, now calling it “11:41 on July 26, 2010, when it had been clear within hours of discovery that the failure date and time was approximately 17:58 on July 25, 2010.” It goes on to say that Enbridge report “also did not indicate the number of general public evacuated, even though daily EPA Pollution Reports indicated the number of residences that were evacuated, and Enbridge paid for alternative lodging for these evacuees as necessary.” It also alleges that some of the technical details in that August report on pipeline pressure were inaccurate and goes on to say that some subsequent reports filed by Enbridge were inaccurate although “the correct information has been known by the operator for some time.”

One example was that a witness told investigators on December 5, 2011 indicated that Enbridge determined the total costs of damages associated with the Line 6B rupture were currently $720
million but the value reported in a report filed on February 22, 2011 report was $550 million. The PHMSA says: “It is unknown at what point the $720 million value was determined by Enbridge, but the reported value was not updated until March 6, 2012, approximately 3 months after the interview.”

Employee qualifications

The PHMSA report alleges that Enbridge allowed an “unqualified individual to perform covered tasks (operating a pipeline) without direct observation by a qualified individual.” It says a previously qualified controller, who had been off duty for an extended period of time, was operating the pipeline console, and a qualified controller was assigned to oversee the operations.

According to the investigation “the qualified pipeline controller, even though seated adjacent to the un-qualified pipeline controller, was performing other tasks, and not directing and observing line operations, as required by the written procedures.” The report says that after multiple alarms went off “the unqualified pipeline controller did not respond to the alarms in full accordance with the operator’s written procedures, and the qualified pipeline controller’s oversight of the operations was insufficient to ensure that the required actions were taken.

In its news release, Enbridge added:

Enbridge has worked closely and cooperatively with all federal and state agencies, including PHMSA and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) throughout the investigation of the Line 6B accident, and is now reviewing the NOPV in detail. Enbridge will not comment specifically on the contents of the NOPV until it completes that analysis.

On June 18, 2012, Lorraine Little, Enbridge senior manager of US public affairs, liquids operations and projects,  appeared before District of Kitimat Council. At that time, Little outlined how the company was working on clean up operations. She also said Enbridge had improved its operations and emergency response since the Michigan incident but would not go into detail, due to ongoing investigations and litigation in the United States.

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PHMSA notice of possible violation to Enbridge Energy

 

 

 

Enbridge’s multi-million dollar ad campaign collides on the web with Alberta oil spill and fears about the water supply

As the people near Sundre, Alberta deal with an oil spill of up to 175,000 litres into the Red Deer River, there have been reports on Twitter all day of Enbridge’s pro-pipeline ads appearing alongside stories on the oil spill on news sites across Canada. For most of Saturday,  I didn’t see any Enbridge ads on the news pages I checked. Ad viewing is usually tied by algorithms to the specific viewer’s interests.

Tonight, an Enbridge ad did show up on my computer screen.  An unfortunate pairing of a CP story on Ipolitics.ca  that  drinking water will be trucked into the affected communities. Alongside it the animated Enbridge ad promoting the Northern Gateway.

Enbridge ad accompanies a story on the Alberta oil spill

Water supply is a critical issue in the Enbridge debate, especially in Kitimat, BC, where the pipeline will cross the Kitimat River watershed and then follow the route of the Kitimat River to the planned terminal at the town’s waterfront. The environmental group Douglas Channel Watch says its studies show that a major rockfall or landslide could cut Kitimat’s water supply for up to four years, meaning the town would have to survive on bottled water for years.  Enbridge has said its studies and engineering will ensure the water supply is safe.

But it get’s worse.   I had written this story and went back to the original Ipolitics.ca story to double check the facts and the URL   The page had automatically refreshed and a new Enbridge ad appeared as a banner ad. In the right-hand box where the previous Enbridge had been a few moments before, there is now an advertisement  promoting the safety of fracking.

Enbridge banner ad on Alberta oil spill story

Advertisers want interested eyeballs and various cookies and tracking mechanisms mean that these days that ads appear either in a story that is tied to the industry, in this case, oil and gas, or  tied to the viewers’ web history.

In all the years I worked in television news, there were always protocols for pulling suddenly and unexpectedly inappropriate ads from a local, network or cable newscast  when there was “breaking news.”

It’s a lot harder to do that for a web ad, but it can be done. It may that with Enbridge spending millions of dollars on ads, management was reluctant to stop the campaign cold.  But ads can e pulled. The fact the ads are running on the second day of the spill raises again the question of Enbridge’s managerial competence. After all, the American Petroleum Institute, the lobby group for the American energy industry, immediately stopped all pro-drilling ads within hours of realizing that the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico was a major incident.

(Note this site has no control over the Google ads which appear, which are even more than most ads, are tied to Google’s tracking of an individual’s viewing habits as well as the content of the story.  Major banner ads, like Enbridge’s, however, are usually booked through web ad agencies and can be pulled by clicking a mouse.)

And yes, when I checked the facts on the ad campaign, finding a story from May 30, in the Calgary Herald, the Enbridge ad was there as well.

In the story, picked up from the Vancouver Sun,  Enbridge spokesman Paul Stanway was quoted:

“You are going to see a much higher visibility for Enbridge over the next few days. In newspapers, in television and online,” said Paul Stanway, manager of Northern Gateway communications for Enbridge. “It’s become quite apparent that the debate has become a province wide issue.”

Calgary Herald web page with Enbridge ad

Note, due to those algorithms, if you click on the original pages, you may or may not see the Enbridge ads, just I didn’t see the ones earlier today that were linked to from Twitter.

Editorial: Harper wants to cut off funding for JRP intervenors. Conservatives allow hate speech, while curbing green speech.

The Conservative Party of Canada are sickening hypocrites on free speech.

Hate speech is OK. Green speech is not.

Hate speech is permitted, for it is “free speech.”  “Green speech,” on the other hand, is under constant attack from the Conservatives and their followers. While not subject to legal curbs (for now), we are seeing increasing pressure on those who advocate for the environment to shut up.

The Conservatives  today repealed sections of the human rights act concerning “hate speech” delivered by telephone and the Internet.  There was a free vote,  the Conservative MPs supported the repeal by 153 to 136.  It was a private members bill from Alberta Conservative MP Brian Storseth that repealed Section 13 of the human rights code, which covered with complaints regarding “the communication of hate messages by telephone or on the Internet.”

On the same day, in SunMedia, that Prime Minister Stephen Harper says his government will no longer fund any organization that comes before the Northern Gateway Joint Review opposing the pipeline.

According to Sunmedia story Taxpayer Funding Oil-Sands Activitists

The taxpayer tap pouring cash into the coffers of oilsands opponents could be turned off.

“If it’s the case that we’re spending on organizations that are doing things contrary to government policy, I think that is an inappropriate use of taxpayer money and we will look to eliminate it,” said Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Paris on Thursday.

Harper was responding to reports by Sun News Network that the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency has showered more than $435,000 on groups participating in the review of the Northern Gateway pipeline proposal, that would connect Alberta’s oilsands to a tanker port in northern B.C.

So there we have it, a prime minister who heads a government elected by just 30 per cent of the Canadian electorate, who now decides who can afford to come before a public quasi-judicial body, the Northern Gateway Joint Review Panel. Support the government and the bitumen sands, fine, we’ll give you taxpayers’ dollars, even if you don’t need it. Oppose the government, and you do  it on your own dime.

Transnational energy companies have millions to spend to support their views on the oils sands, whether before the JRP or in a multi-million PR campaign. A poor community that could be devastated by an oil spill off the BC Coast doesn’t count.

In the age of the web, Facebook, Twitter and other social media, all speech is hard to control, as despotic governments around the world are finding.   Hate speech on the Internet is impossible to control.  All someone has to do is  have a server in a country like the United States, where the First Amendment permits it. Green speech will continue to be free on the Internet. The difference is that Conservatives are making every effort to make green speech ineffective in the political and public spheres in Canada.

The change in the Canadian hate law means little in a practical sense. So why did the Conservatives change the law?  Like their efforts to crush “green speech,”  repealing those hate speech clauses has absolutely nothing to do with free speech. The repeal is all about ideological control, the very opposite of free speech.

Behind this vote is the fact that conservatives have made it clear over the years that they despise human rights codes. Today’s act of repeal is nothing more than part the Conservatives  wide-ranging plan to incrementally, millimetre by millimetre, (probably through other private member’s bills) to dismantle all the progress that has been made in this country over the past 70 years.

The right wing media loves to promote the far out wacko cases of people who use the human rights law process, stories the right-wing repeats again and again. There have been wackos who use other legal procedures, including the civil courts and other judicial and quasi-judicial bodies. But the conservatives and their media allies only emphasize the wacko cases before a human rights tribunal.

Of course, the majority of comfortable (and most of whom are, as far as we know, white, male and straight) conservatives are never going to have to use a human rights tribunal to redress a grievance.  They were never beaten up on the school yard, never denied a job or housing.  Most of the people who go before human rights tribunals are on the margins of society.

At the same time, we see the ongoing campaign by conservatives to demonize “green speech,” speaking out for the environment. Conservatives, in politics and the media, are trying to curb the funding of foundations that support the environment, the government routinely calls environmentalists “radicals” and even “terrorists.” Now we have Harper saying, yet again, don’t you dare oppose government policy on the bitumen sands.

The right-wing media routinely heaps their scorn and yes, even hatred, for those who believe that life on this planet is threatened. Those right wing columnists will, of course, fight to death to protect their own free speech but most won’t even put in a single sentence of objection in their columns or reports about the conservative campaign against “green speech.”

Which brings us to the man, who while claiming to be a free speech advocate, is actually now the self-appointed head of Canada’s thought police, Ezra Levant of Ethical Oil. (Ethical Oil today triumphantly tweeted Harper’s statement  @EthicalOil Taxpayers funding anti-oilsands activists #EthicalOil #Cdnpoli… fb.me/V1AS7Tg2 )

Writing in the National Post, Jonathan Kay is full of praise for Levant:

a vigorous network of right-wing bloggers, led by Ezra Levant, began publicizing the worst abuses of human-rights mandarins…. In absolute numbers, the readership of their blogs was small at first. But their existence had the critical function of building up a sense of civil society among anti-speech-code activists, who gradually pulled the mainstream media along with them. In this sense, Mr. Levant deserves to be recognized as one of the most influential activists in modern Canadian history.

Influential activist, yes.  Free speech advocate? No. It is time the media stopped calling Levant a champion of free speech. He is not. Levant is a champion of causes he himself approves of,  especially the bitumen sands.  Free speech for anyone who opposes his agenda is subject at very least to attack and ridicule.

In his columns,  Levant advocated the curbing of the free speech of the thousands of  people of British Columbia who are defending their back yard from the energy industry. Levant is, of course, free to disagree with them, but don’t you dare oppose Ezra Levant or the bitumen sands,

Levant, rather than calling for more free speech in his columns, as his personal PR spin maintains,  advocated cutting off the people who live here in northwestern  British Columbia from the hearings of the Northern Gateway Joint Review panel, by saying too many people had signed up to testify.

Writing in SunMedia on December 10, 2011, Levant let off a broadside at the thousands of ordinary Canadians living and working along the route of the Northern Gateway pipeline who signed up to comment on the project, calling on Stephen Harper to fire chair Sheila Leggett for permitting too many people to speak at the hearings

[A]s of Friday, 4,453 people had typed in their names into Leggett’s website, signing up for the right to make a presentation.

[The JRP] allows anyone in the world — literally any person, any child, any foreign citizen — to simply type their name and address and get the right to testify before her panel.

It’s as trivial as clicking “like” on a Facebook page. That’s why Leggett needs another year. If another 40,000 people click on her website, will she delay things 10 years?

Skimming through the names is like reading petitions where wiseacres sign up as “I. P. Freely” or “John A. Macdonald.” Much of it is just junk, to jam up the system.

The website allows people to write a comment. Many of them are word-for-word replicas of each other. It’s a form letter campaign, arranged by professional environmental lobbyists. And it’s working. The only question is whether Leggett is naive, incompetent or biased against the pipeline.

Some of the forms have been faxed in. They helpfully have the fax signature stamp at the top of the page, showing which foreign-funded lobby group is working to gin up names. Like the Sierra Club, which received a $909,000 contract from the U.S. Tides Foundation and their Canadian affiliate to gin up opposition to the “tar sands.”

Those foreign billionaires are getting their money’s worth — they’ve managed to delay the hearings by a year before they’ve even started.

Levant was giving a completely inaccurate account of the Joint Review process. His column which echoes the ideological blindness of most his conservative columnist colleagues, speaks of foreign influence, repeating the big lie being propagated by the Conservative party,  started largely by blogger Vivian Krause, that there is an International California Conspiracy to undermine the Canadian energy industry.

Dealing with a pipeline coming through some of the most geologically unstable country on the planet is not “trivial.”  The threat of a major oil spill on the British Columbia coast is not “trivial.”

I’ve attended, listened to the remote webcast or read the transcripts of much of the hearings. None–none– of the testimony can remotely be considered: “Much of it is just junk, to jam up the system.”

A fair estimate would say that 95 per cent of people who registered to comment live along the pipeline route or the BC coast. At least a dozen or more letters of comment are posted on the JRP site every day, which means thousands since Levant wrote the diatribe,  and it is clear that they are written by individuals with valid concerns, and none in recent months are form letters. (I check them, I doubt if Levant does)

In that column, Levant goes on about JRP chair Sheila Leggett:

She’s Stephen Harper’s bureaucrat, but she’s taking direction from foreign meddlers. For “whatever time it takes.”

What a fool. No court would permit such a gong show. And Leggett has court-like powers.

Last month, when Barack Obama delayed the Keystone XL pipeline from the oilsands to the U.S., Harper was appalled.

But Leggett was appointed by Harper. And she just pulled an Obama on our own country.

Leggett must be fired. Her job is not to listen to everyone in the world with an Internet connection. It’s to make the best decision in Canada’s interest.

Her Oprah-style hearings are unacceptable, and Harper should make that clear by sacking her.

Leggett was not fired. In fact, over the past six months, she has had a difficult time confining testimony to the narrow rules of evidence that do not permit someone to actually say they oppose the pipeline.  An intervenor had to testify “from personal knowledge” or if First Nations “from traditional knowledge.” So no hearings came close to being “a gong show.”

There hasn’t been a single “foreign meddler” testify in the past six months (although some intervenors, including the energy companies themselves, use experts from outside Canada).

In a later column, on January 7, 2012, the weekend before the hearings began here in Kitimat, Levant again toed the conservative party line in Pipeline review hearings allowing foreign input is ridiculous — we don’t need another country’s permission. It’s all Canada, Levant again repeated his big lie.

Those who testified at the Kitamaat Village hearings in the following days were from the Haisla Nation as well as Douglas Channel Watch and the Kitimat Valley Naturalists (both groups consist of mainly retired Kitimat residents).  There wasn’t a foreign billionaire in sight. Same with the hearings in the days and weeks that followed, First Nations, fishers, hunters, guides, birders, and yes environmental groups. (How dare those BC NIMBYs get in the way of an Alberta pipeline and its manifest destiny?)

In today’s SunMedia article, Environment Canada cautioned:

A spokesman for Environment Minister Peter Kent tells QMI Agency while that funding is often legally required, Kent wants to make sure “common sense prevails” in how it’s awarded.

With its majority, it is likely the Conservatives will change the rules, just as they are by abolishing DFO fisheries protection for salmon spawning streams. Again bottom line, if you support the government and you are rich, you can testify.  If you are poor, even if you are “directly affected,” tough luck.

The sad fact is that Levant has won, for now, his fight against free speech in BC, probably without knowing it.

More and more people are dropping out of the Joint Review Panel process, hearings scheduled for days now last just a day or an afternoon. That’s because given the position of Stephen Harper, Joe Oliver and Peter Kent, that the pipeline is going ahead no matter what, many of these people  who signed up to comment now see no reason to testify for 10 minutes on a subject that is a foregone conclusion. Here in the northwest, where long distance travel is concerned, it takes time and money to make the effort of participate. Why testify, if the government is going to ignore the concerns of the people who live here?

No wonder Ethical Oil sent out the celebratory tweet this afternoon.

The Conservatives have won a major in battle in their war on free speech in this country by making it not worth their while for many ordinary citizens, those who don’t have deep pockets for research and lawyers, to speak on the Northern Gateway Pipeline, at least before the Joint Review Panel. Now Harper government wants to cut off funds for the poorer intervenors.  If that happens, more opponents will drop out of the proceedings.

Kay, in his attack on the hate law calls it a  “system of administrative law that potentially made de facto criminals out of anyone with politically incorrect views about women, gays, or racial and religious minority groups.”

The National Post’s conservative friends (in its own newsroom and both in and out of Parliament)  are now looking for ways to make “defacto criminals out of anyone with the politically incorrect” view that the Northern Gateway Pipeline is not a new version of the “national dream.” After all,  Stephen Harper’s statement today means “that doing things contrary to government policy” is now politically incorrect.

Of course, if the pipeline breaches along the Kitimat River and the town is without a drinking water system for up to four years (in the worst case scenario), it will be Kitimat’s nightmare, not Canada’s. (In Don Mills, columnists will still be able to drink Toronto’s water or, perhaps, run to the corner store for a Perrier.)  If a bitumen tanker hits the rocky coast and sinks in the deep  cold-water fjords, it will largely be BC’s nightmare, and the BC taxpayers’ nightmare, not Edmonton’s or Toronto’s. If a pipeline buried under nine metres of west coast snow in a remote valley has a small–undetectable by computer– breach  in the darkest days of January and  the ongoing oil leak isn’t discovered for weeks or months, by that time it might also be “politically incorrect” for anyone Canada to object. (Of course, people in the region will object and strongly).

The fact is that these small c and large C conservative campaigns  against hate laws in terms of “free speech” are nothing more than the rankest hypocrisy. What most (not all) conservatives want is free speech for their ideas and only those ideas, especially if they want to shout their own hatred of certain groups from the rooftops or on the world wide web, while at the same time, many conservatives have been trying to shut down anyone with opposing views.

To a conservative, the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion that still drives too many numbers of gay teenagers to suicide, is always protected free speech, no matter the body count.

On the hand, to the same conservatives, free speech in Canada doesn’t include protecting the environment of the only planet we live on, especially if a small portion of the funding that speech comes from California. In conservative Canada, free speech belongs to American (that is foreign) oil billionaires like the Koch brothers. To conservatives, free speech does not apply to local BC groups, coalitions of often left-wing environmentalists and  often conservative anglers and hunters, trying to protect wild salmon.

Where’s George Orwell when we need him? In the Canada of Stephen Harper, the National Post and Sunmedia,  homophobic hatred is protected, preserving the planet is not protected.  In Canada in 2012 (or I should I say 1984+), the only acceptable political speech is support for the bitumen sands and the pipeline projects.

And you wonder why the public has such contempt for majority of politicians and most of the media?

Related links:

Editorial: Just asking: why didn’t anyone object to the Americans at the NEB LNG hearings in Kitimat?

Joint Review media analysis Part one: Calgary Herald columnist advocates curbing free speech on the Northern Gateway Pipeline hearings

(Deborah Yedlin of the Calgary Herald was another columnist who advocated limiting the number of people appearing before the Joint Review Panel. Perhaps this is another case of free speech for Albertans, but not people in BC?)

 

From Pro Publica: North Dakota’s Oil Boom Brings Damage Along With Prosperity

Northwest Coast Energy News is republishing this story  on spills and other waste from the North Dakota shale oil and gas boom from the U.S. investigative site Pro Publica. Of most interest to readers here in northwest BC is ProPublica’s map of the spills in North Dakota, which is linked to in the story but not part of the republication package. You can find the map at this link or in the body of the story. That spill map, of course, could be a model for anyone tracking similar events in British Columbia.

North Dakota’s Oil Boom Brings Damage Along With Prosperity
by Nicholas Kusnetz, Special to ProPublica June 7, 2012

Oil drilling has sparked a frenzied prosperity in Jeff Keller’s formerly quiet corner of western North Dakota in recent years, bringing an infusion of jobs and reviving moribund local businesses.

But Keller, a natural resource manager for the Army Corps of Engineers, has seen a more ominous effect of the boom, too: Oil companies are spilling and dumping drilling waste onto the region’s land and into its waterways with increasing regularity.

Hydraulic fracturing 2014 the controversial process behind the spread of natural gas drilling 2014 is enabling oil companies to reach previously inaccessible reserves in North Dakota, triggering a turnaround not only in the state’s fortunes, but also in domestic energy production. North Dakota now ranks second behind only Texas in oil output nationwide.

The downside is waste 2014 lots of it. Companies produce millions of gallons of salty, chemical-infused wastewater, known as brine, as part of drilling and fracking each well. Drillers are supposed to inject this material thousands of feet underground into disposal wells, but some of it isn’t making it that far.

According to data obtained by ProPublica, oil companies in North Dakota reported more than 1,000 accidental releases of oil, drilling wastewater or other fluids in 2011, about as many as in the previous two years combined. Many more illicit releases went unreported, state regulators acknowledge, when companies dumped truckloads of toxic fluid along the road or drained waste pits illegally.

State officials say most of the releases are small. But in several cases, spills turned out to be far larger than initially thought, totaling millions of gallons. Releases of brine, which is often laced with carcinogenic chemicals and heavy metals, have wiped out aquatic life in streams and wetlands and sterilized farmland. The effects on land can last for years, or even decades.

Compounding such problems, state regulators have often been unable 2014 or unwilling 2014 to compel energy companies to clean up their mess, our reporting showed.

Under North Dakota regulations, the agencies that oversee drilling and water safety can sanction companies that dump or spill waste, but they seldom do: They have issued fewer than 50 disciplinary actions for all types of drilling violations, including spills, over the past three years.

Keller has filed several complaints with the state during this time span after observing trucks dumping wastewater and spotting evidence of a spill in a field near his home. He was rebuffed or ignored every time, he said.

“There’s no enforcement,” said Keller, 50, an avid outdoorsman who has spent his career managing Lake Sakakawea, a reservoir created by damming the Missouri River. “None.”

State officials say they rely on companies to clean up spills voluntarily, and that in most cases, they do. Mark Bohrer, who oversees spill reports for the Department of Mineral Resources, the agency that regulates drilling, said the number of spills is acceptable given the pace of drilling and that he sees little risk of long-term damage.

Kris Roberts, who responds to spills for the Health Department, which protects state waters, agreed, but acknowledged that the state does not have the manpower to prevent or respond to illegal dumping.

“It’s happening often enough that we see it as a significant problem,” he said. “What’s the solution? Catching them. What’s the problem? Catching them.”

Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, a lobbying group, said the industry is doing what it can to minimize spills and their impacts.

“You’re going to have spills when you have more activity,” he said. “I would think North Dakotans would say the industry is doing a good job.”

In response to rising environmental concerns related to drilling waste, North Dakota’s legislature passed a handful of new regulations this year, including a rule that bars storing wastewater in open pits.

Still, advocates for landowners say they have seen little will, at either the state or federal level, to impose limits that could slow the pace of drilling.

The Obama administration is facilitating drilling projects on federal land in western North Dakota by expediting environmental reviews. North Dakota’s Gov. Jack Dalrymple has urged energy companies to see his administration as a “faithful and long-term partner.”

“North Dakota’s political leadership is still in the mold where a lot of our oil and gas policy reflects a strong desire to have another oil boom,” said Mark Trechock, who headed the Dakota Resource Council, a landowner group that has pushed for stronger oversight, until his retirement this year. “Well, we got it now.”

Reaching ‘the Crazy Point’

Keller’s office in Williston is as good a spot as any to see the impacts of the oil boom.

The tiny prefab shack 2014 cluttered with mounted fish, piles of antlers and a wolf pelt Keller bought in Alaska 2014 is wedged between a levee that holds back Missouri River floodwaters and a new oil well, topped by a blazing gas flare. Just beyond the oil well sits an intersection where Keller estimates he saw an accident a week during one stretch last year due to increased traffic from drilling.

Keller describes the changes to his hometown in a voice just short of a yell, as if he’s competing with nearby engine noise. Local grocery stores can barely keep shelves stocked and the town movie theater is so crowded it seats people in the aisle, he said. The cost of housing has skyrocketed, with some apartments fetching rents similar to those in New York City.

“With the way it is now,” Keller said, “you’re getting to the crazy point.”

Oil companies are drilling upwards of 200 wells each month in northwestern North Dakota, an area roughly twice the size of New Jersey.

North Dakota is pumping more than 575,000 barrels of oil a day now, more than double what the state produced two years ago. Expanded drilling in the state has helped overall U.S. oil production grow for the first time in a quarter century, stoking hopes for greater energy independence.

It has also reinvigorated North Dakota’s once-stagnant economy. Unemployment sits at 3 percent. The activity has reversed a population decline that began in the mid-1980s, when the last oil boom went bust.

The growth has come at a cost, however. At a conference on oil field infrastructure in October, one executive noted that McKenzie County, which sits in the heart of the oil patch and had a population of 6,360 people in 2010, required nearly $200 million in road repairs.

The number of spill reports, which generally come from the oil companies themselves, nearly doubled from 2010 to 2011. Energy companies report their spills to the Department of Mineral Resources, which shares them with the Health Department. The two agencies work together to investigate incidents.

In December, a stack of reports a quarter-inch thick piled up on Kris Roberts’ desk. He received 34 new cases in the first week of that month alone.

“Is it a big issue?” he said. “Yes, it is.”

The Health Department has added three staffers to handle the influx and the Department of Mineral Resources is increasing its workforce by 30 percent, but Roberts acknowledges they can’t investigate every report.

Even with the new hires, the Department of Mineral Resources still has fewer field inspectors than agencies in other drilling states. Oklahoma, for example, which has comparable drilling activity, has 58 inspectors to North Dakota’s 19.

Of the 1,073 releases reported last year, about 60 percent involved oil and one-third spread brine. In about two-thirds of the cases, material was not contained to the accident site and leaked into the ground or waterways.

But the official data gives only a partial picture, Roberts said, missing an unknown number of unreported incidents.

“One, five, 10, 100? If it didn’t get reported, how do you count them?” he said.

He said truckers often dump their wastewater rather than wait in line at injection wells. The Department of Mineral Resources asks companies how much brine their wells produce and how much they dispose of as waste, but its inspectors don’t audit those numbers. Short of catching someone in the act, there’s no way to stop illegal dumping.

The state also has no real estimate for how much fluid spills out accidentally from tanks, pipes, trucks and other equipment. Companies are supposed to report spill volumes, but officials acknowledge the numbers are often inexact or flat-out wrong. In 40 cases last year, the company responsible didn’t know how much had spilled so it simply listed the volume of fluid as zero.

In one case last July, workers for Petro Harvester, a small, Texas-based oil company, noticed a swath of dead vegetation in a field near one of the company’s saltwater disposal lines. The company reported the spill the next day, estimating that 12,600 gallons of brine had leaked.

When state and county officials came to assess the damage, however, they found evidence of a much larger accident. The leak, which had gone undetected for days or weeks, had sterilized about 24 acres of land. Officials later estimated the spill to be at least 2 million gallons of brine, Roberts said, which would make it the largest ever in the state.

Yet state records still put the volume at 12,600 gallons and Roberts sees no reason to change it.

“It’s almost like rubbing salt in a raw wound,” Roberts said, criticizing efforts to tabulate a number as “bean counting.” Changing a report would not change reality, nor would it help anyone, he added. “If we try to go back and revisit the past over and over and over again, what’s it going to do? Nothing good.”

In a written statement, Petro Harvester said tests showed the spill had not contaminated groundwater and that it would continue monitoring the site for signs of damage. State records show the company hired a contractor to cover the land with 40 truckloads of a chemical that leaches salt from the soil.

Nearly a year later, however, even weeds won’t grow in the area, said Darwin Peterson, who farms the land. While Petro Harvester has promised to compensate him for lost crops, Peterson said he hasn’t heard from the company in months and he doesn’t expect the land to be usable for years. “It’s pretty devastating,” he said.

Little Enforcement

The Department of Mineral Resources and the Health Department have the authority to sanction companies that spill or dump fluids, but they rarely do.

The Department of Mineral Resources has issued just 45 enforcement actions over the last three years. Spokeswoman Alison Ritter could not say how many of those were for spills or releases, as opposed to other drilling violations, or how many resulted in fines.

The Health Department has taken just one action against an oil company in the past three years, citing Continental Resources for oil and brine spills that turned two streams into temporary toxic dumps. The department initially fined Continental $328,500, plus about $14,000 for agency costs. Ultimately, however, the state settled and Continental paid just $35,000 in fines.

The agency has not yet penalized Petro Harvester for the July spill, thought it has issued a notice of violation and could impose a fine in the future, Roberts said, one of several spill-related enforcement actions the agency is considering.

Derrick Braaten, a Bismarck lawyer whose firm represents dozens of farmers and landowner groups, said his clients often get little support from regulators when oil companies damage their property.

State officials step in in the largest cases, he said, but let smaller ones slide. Landowners can sue, but most prefer to take whatever drillers offer rather than taking their chances in court.

“The oil company will say, that’s worth $400 an acre, so here’s $400 for ruining that acre,” Braaten said.

Daryl Peterson, a client of Braaten’s who is not related to Darwin Peterson, said a series of drilling waste releases stretching back 15 years have rendered several acres unusable of the 2,000 or so he farms. The state has not compelled the companies that caused the damage to repair it, he said. Peterson hasn’t wanted to spend the hundreds of thousands of dollars it would take to haul out the dirt and replace it, so the land lies fallow.

“I pay taxes on that land,” he said.

At least 15 North Dakota residents, frustrated with state officials’ inaction, have taken drilling-related complaints to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the last two years, records show.

Last September, for example, a rancher near Williston told the EPA that Brigham Oil and Gas had plowed through the side of a waste pit, sending fluid into the pond his cattle drink from and a nearby creek. When the rancher called Brigham to complain, he said, an employee told him this was “the way they do business.”

A spokeswoman for Statoil, which acquired Brigham, said the company stores only fresh water in open pits, not wastewater, and that “we can’t remember ever having responded in such a manner” to a report about a spill.

Federal officials can offer little relief.

Congress has largely delegated oversight of oil field spills to the states. EPA spokesman Richard Mylott said the agency investigates complaints about releases on federal lands, but refers complaints involving private property to state regulators.

The EPA handed the complaint about Brigham to an official with North Dakota’s Health Department, who said he had already spoken to the company.

“They said this was an isolated occurrence, this is not how they handle frac water and it would not happen again,” the official wrote to the EPA. “As far as we are concerned, this complaint is closed.”

Salting the Earth

Six years ago, a four-inch saltwater pipeline ruptured just outside Linda Monson’s property line, leaking about a million gallons of salty wastewater.

As it cascaded down a hill and into Charbonneau Creek, which cuts through Monson’s pasture, the spill deposited metals and carcinogenic hydrocarbons in the soil. The toxic brew wiped out the creek’s fish, turtles and other life, reaching 15 miles downstream.

After suing Zenergy Inc., the oil company that owns the line, Monson reached a settlement that restricts what she can say about the incident.

“When this first happened, it pretty much consumed my life,” Monson said. “Now I don’t even want to think about it.”

The company has paid a $70,000 fine and committed to cleaning the site, but the case shows how difficult the cleanup can be. When brine leaks into the ground, the sodium binds to the soil, displacing other minerals and inhibiting plants’ ability to absorb nutrients and water. Short of replacing the soil, the best option is to try to speed the natural flushing of the system, which can take decades.

Zenergy has tried both. According to a Department of Mineral Resources report, the company has spent more than $3 million hauling away dirt and pumping out contaminated groundwater 2014 nearly 31 million gallons as of December 2010, the most recent data available.

But more than a dozen acres of Monson’s pasture remain fenced off and out of use. The cattle no longer drink from the creek, which was their main water source. Zenergy dug a well to replace it.

Shallow groundwater in the area remains thousands of times saltier than it should be and continues to leak into the stream and through the ground, contaminating new areas.

There’s little understanding of what long-term impacts hundreds of such releases could be having on western North Dakota’s land and water, said Micah Reuber.

Until last year, Reuber was the environmental contaminant specialist in North Dakota for the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees wetlands and waterways.

Reuber quit after growing increasingly frustrated with the inadequate resources devoted to the position. Responding to oil field spills was supposed to be a small part of his job, but it came to consume all of his time.

“It didn’t seem like we were keeping pace with it at all,” he said. “It got to be demoralizing.”

Reuber said no agency, federal or state, has the money or staff to study the effects of drilling waste releases in North Dakota. The closest thing is a small ongoing federal study across the border in Montana, where scientists are investigating how decades of oil production have affected the underground water supply for the city of Poplar.

Joanna Thamke, a groundwater specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Montana, started mapping contamination from drilling 20 years ago. She estimated it had spread through about 12 square miles of the aquifer, which is the only source of drinking water in the area. Over the years, brine had leaked through old well bores, buried waste pits and aging tanks and pipes.

In the Poplar study and others, Thamke has found that plumes of contaminated groundwater can take decades to dissipate and sometimes move to new areas.

“What we found is the plumes, after two decades, have not gone away,” she said. “They’ve spread out.”

Poplar’s water supply is currently safe to drink, but the EPA has said it will become too salty as the contamination spreads. In March, the agency ordered three oil companies to treat the water or to find another source.

North Dakota officials are quick to point out that oversight and regulations are stronger today than they were when drilling began in the area in the 1950s. One significant difference is that waste pits, where oil companies store and dispose of the rock and debris produced during drilling, are now lined with plastic to prevent leaching into the ground.

New rules, effective April 1, require drillers in North Dakota to divert liquid waste to tanks instead of pits. Until now, drillers could store the liquid in pits for up to a year before pumping it out in order to bury the solids on site. The rule would prevent a repeat of the spring of 2011, when record snowmelt and flooding caused dozens of pits to overflow their banks.

But Reuber worries that the industry and regulators are repeating past mistakes. Not long before he left the Fish and Wildlife Service, he found a set of old slides showing waste pits and spills from decades ago.

“They looked almost exactly like photos I had taken,” he said. “There’s a spill into a creek bottom in the Badlands and it was sitting there with no one cleaning it up and containing it. And yeah, I got a photo like that, too.”

Keller has grown so dispirited by the changes brought by the boom that he is considering retiring after 30 years with the Army Corps and moving away from Williston. He runs a side business in scrap metal that would supplement his pension.

Still, determined to protect the area, he keeps alerting regulators whenever he spots evidence that oil companies have dumped or spilled waste.

Last July, when he saw signs of a spill near his home, Keller notified the Health Department and sent pictures showing a trail of dead grass to an acquaintance at the EPA regional office in Denver. The brown swath led from a well site into a creek.

If the spills continued, he warned the EPA in an email, they could “kill off the entire watershed.”

EPA officials said they spoke with Keller, but did not follow up on the incident beyond that. The state never responded, Keller said. The site remained untested and was never cleaned up.

“There was no restoration work whatsoever,” Keller said.

 

US National Transportation Safety Board releases photos, documents on Enbridge Kalamzoo oil spill

NTSB staff examine ruptured pipe
US National Transportation Safety Board staff examine a ruptured pipe from the Enbridge oil spill in August, 2010. The photo was released by the NTSB May 21, 2012. (NTSB)

The United States National Transportation Safety Board today released more than 5,000 pages relating to its investigation of the 2010 of the Marshall, Michigan, Enbridge pipeline rupture and oil spill.

The NTSB release says it is adding the documents to the “public docket” on the case.

About 11:17 a.m. EDT on July 26, 2010, Enbridge Energy Partners was notified of a leak on a 30-inch diameter crude oil pipeline (Line 6B) in Marshall, Michigan. The pipeline had ruptured 17 hours earlier and spilled about a million gallons of crude oil into the immediate area resulting in extensive environmental damage to Talmadge Creek and the Kalamazoo River.

Fifty-eight photographs and 170 documents totaling more than 5000 pages are in the docket. The information being released is factual in nature and does not provide any analysis.

Additional material may be added to the docket as it becomes available. Analysis of the accident, along with conclusions and its probable cause, will be determined at a later date.

This is a document release only; no interviews will be conducted.

Documents are available at this link

More than 800,000 gallons of heavy bitumen crude spilled from the pipeine near Marshall in Calhoun County, Michigan. NTSB spokesman Peter Knudson said Monday the NTSB expects to reach a conclusion on the spill sometime this summer.

On May 10, Enbridge announced it would spend $1.6 billion to upgrade and replace portions of the pipeline through Michigan and Indiana. The broken pipeline, however, would be decontaminated and “abandoned in place.”

Editorial: It’s time for the District of Kitimat to play hardball on Gateway

EDITORIAL

Who speaks for Kitimat?

Someone has to speak for Kitimat on the Northern Gateway project.

The District of Kitimat Council no longer has a choice. It’s time to play hardball with Ottawa and Enbridge on the Northern Gateway Pipeline.

You can’t negotiate from a position of weakness.

The game of pipelines changed forever in recent weeks, when the Conservative government introduced Bill C-38, the Budget Implementation Act.

Bill C-38, which passed Second Reading on May 14, 2012 is an affront to basic democratic principles, a 425 page omnibus monster that will not permit the kind of careful consideration of major changes in Canadian society that what was once normal in a free and democratic society. The omnibus bill not only concerns the federal budget but also repeals the environmental assessment process and guts fisheries protection for the smaller spawning streams where salmon are born. By giving the federal cabinet the power to overrule the National Energy Board, the decision on the pipeline rests with just one man, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who has made no secret that he intends to push the project through no matter how fierce the opposition to the project.

This week has seen devastating cutbacks along the west coast, to environmental monitoring and pollution control, to Coast Guard protection.  It is now clear that protection of the environment  along the BC coast and the lives of the mariners who sail those waters are of little importance to Ottawa, and of no importance to the war room types counting votes in Alberta and suburban ridings outside Toronto and Vancouver.

The District of Kitimat Council has voted to wait to make a decision until after the report of the Joint Review Panel, when “all information” is available.

The news this week that the Joint Review Panel decided to bypass Kitimat, that the town that is to be the terminal of the proposed pipeline is irrelevant to the process, shows more than any other move what the JRP thinks of Kitimat. Not much.

The Joint Review Panel has lost all credibility. Even if the JRP does produce a fair and honest report with valid recommendations for conditions and restrictions, it is highly unlikely that those recommendations will be fully implemented, because the final decision will be made in the Prime Minster’s Office and that decision will be build, baby, build.

Media reports in recent months have shown that Enbridge has easy access to the senior levels of the Conservative government and Enbridge lobbying preceded the changes to the Fisheries Act in Bill C-38.  Enbridge  walks the halls of power in Ottawa. Kitimat, on the other hand, counts for little, as the JRP schedule clearly shows.

So, for example, even if the Joint Review Panel recommends strict conditions on the pipeline to insure the safety of Kitimat’s water supply, and if Enbridge doesn’t like those conditions, there is no guarantee that Harper and the cabinet will implement those recommendations. That would leave the District of Kitimat holding the water barrel for several years.

(One of the many reasons, it seems, that the JRP wants to have all the northwest hearings is in Prince Rupert is so the high-priced energy lawyers from Calgary can have comfortable accommodation. So, if any protests from the District and the Haisla Nation are successful and there actually are final hearings in Kitimat,  perhaps the District could arrange for the lawyers to camp in Radley Park, so they can actually grasp the realities of living in Kitimat by the Kitimat River.)

The District of Kitimat Council has a duty to make sure that this region is protected.

So what does this mean?

“Armed neutrality”

It is now too late for the District Council to take a position for or against the pipeline. It no longer matters whether Mayor and Councillors support the pipeline, are sitting on the fence or oppose the pipeline. Bill C-38 has made the decision for the Council.

Council must assume that Stephen Harper will impose the pipeline on Kitimat and will impose conditions that could be determinable to the District in favour of Alberta and Enbridge.

From now on Council must unify and work to protect the District from Stephen Harper. The Council must make sure that the District is an aggressive force at any negotiating table or court battle.

That means Council should retain its position of neutrality, leaving opposition to the pipeline to others like Douglas Channel Watch. Given the growing witch hunt against the environmental movement, an official position of neutrality is negotiating from a position of strength and protects the District from any accusation that “radicals” are distorting the District’s position.

In international affairs, countries like Switzerland and Sweden are neutral, robustly neutral. Both Switzerland and Sweden practice what is called “armed neutrality.”

“Armed neutrality” means that Kitimat Council can no longer continue its current wishy-washy neutrality, arguing over the nuances of words in letters to the Joint Review Panel and Enbridge. To protect Kitimat, Council must adopt its own policy of “armed neutrality,” an aggressive stance that represents the entire community, both opponents and supporters of the pipeline.

So what now?

Professional advice

The announcement this week that Shell is planning to build a liquified natural gas facility in Kitimat, in combination with the KMLNG and BC LNG projects plus Enbridge, means it is vital for the District to have independent, professional advice on energy issues.

The District must immediately start paying much closer attention to the all the relevant documents that are filed with the Joint Review Panel. The District Council and staff must have their own independent advisers rather than juggling the views of Douglas Channel Watch and Enbridge and hoping for the best. That means hiring more professionals to supplement current staff that will understand the technicalities of both the Enbridge pipeline and the LNG projects; staff who can advise the senior administration and Council about how to proceed where the issues of the pipeline construction, terminal construction and management of the terminal come under municipal jurisdiction or could adversely affect the municipality.

That takes money, even though money is tight, Council must budget for that staff. When it comes to negotiating factors within the responsibility of the municipality, Kitimat must be at the table at full strength.

All the way to the Supreme Court

It is now certain that after Stephen Harper orders the pipeline to go ahead, disputes over the Northern Gateway Pipeline will end up in the courts. Lawyers are already talking about the constitutional necessity to consult First Nations, that pushing the pipeline across aboriginal traditional territory will violate Rights and Title.

First Nations across British Columbia are already represented by some of the best lawyers in Canada.

Vancouver is already looking at what powers a municipality has to make sure that city is fully protected in case of a catastrophic tanker accident from the Kinder Morgan pipeline and project.

Yes, the District is wary because of the long and bitter fight over power allocation, but that is in the past. Again Bill C-38 gives the District no choice but to prepare for new legal battles, probably all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

The District of Kitimat must immediately budget for, seek out, retain and instruct a law firm that  can advise the District on its rights and responsibilities now and in the future once the Harper government imposes the pipeline on Kitimat. As we have seen from the Joint Review and other National Energy Board hearings, the energy industry hires the best lawyers money can buy.

If Kitimat has to face those lawyers, the District can’t act like a Junior B team facing the NHL All-Stars. That law firm should be able to advise Kitimat on the constitutional issues involved and what powers a municipality has to protect the community from unwanted and unwarranted aspects of pipeline and tanker development. That law firm must also be able to participate in hardball business negotiations.

Seeking Alliances

The District must build better bridges with the Haisla Nation and find where there is common ground in the Kitimat region as Stephen Harper imposes the pipeline on the northwest. They may be arguments before the courts or with Enbridge where both the Haisla and the District of Kitimat are allies in a fight.

Stephen Harper and his government are prepared to impose the pipeline, terminals and tanker traffic on northwestern British Columbia, again no matter what local municipalities and regions say. All the environmental and Coast Guard safeguards that might have brought acceptance of the Enbridge project are being cut to the bone. That means Kitimat must also forge alliances with those municipalities and regions, again to make sure that local rights and responsibilities are fully protected once the government decides to impose the pipeline on the northwest.

It is highly likely that the constitutional consultation and Rights and Title cases on the pipeline will end up at the Supreme Court of Canada. If there are other cases, perhaps raised by Vancouver or other Lower Mainland or northern communities or even the Province of British Columbia, it may be that the Supreme Court, as it has with some cases in the past, could consolidate all the pipeline cases into one. That means Kitimat will need to be a participant in any case on the pipeline before the Supreme Court.

Unless District of Kitimat Council starts playing hardball, Stephen Harper will drive a bulldozer down bank of the Kitimat River to Douglas Channel, ignoring the council standing and watching from the hill looking over the pipeline trench. 

Enbridge to spend $1.6 billion to upgrade Michigan pipeline, old line will be “abandoned in place”

Enbridge announced Thursday, May 10, 2012, it plans to spend $1.6 billion to upgrade and replace its pipeline through Michigan and Indiana, including the site of the leak in to the Kalamazoo River in July 2010. What Enbridge calls the “6B pipeline” broke open near Marshall, Michigan and spilled more than 840,000 gallons of bitumen sands oil into Talmadge Creek and the Kalamazoo River.

That doesn’t mean, however, that the broken and now disused pipeline will be demolished. Enbridge says that pipeline will be “abandoned in place,” meaning it will be deactivated, purged of any remaining oil and then filled with an “inert gas,” a move that is permitted under United States pipeline safety regulations.

In a fact sheet, Enbridge says it plans to replace approximately 75 miles of its 30-inch diameter “Line 6B pipeline.” The 75 miles to be replaced with new pipe consists of about 10 miles in Indiana and 65 in Michigan, with replacement pipe to be either 30 or 36-inch diameter pipe in Indiana and southwestern Michigan and 30-inch pipe in the eastern Michigan segment.

Enbridge map of pipeline 6B
A map, released by Enbridge, showing its plans for upgrading and replacing the 6B pipeline in Michigan and Indiana.

Enbridge says the new pipeline will closely follow the route of the old one.

Completion of this project, scheduled for late 2012, should result in fewer integrity digs and repairs along the replacement segments in the future, resulting in fewer disturbances to landowners and local communities.

For this project, we plan to remove the oil from the pipe segments being replaced and fill them with nitrogen before abandoning in place, as prescribed in regulations. In most cases, the new pipe segments will be installed adjacent to those segments being replaced.

Enbride says the “The Line 6B Maintenance and Rehabilitation Project” is part of the company’s “pipeline integrity maintenance program” that includes:

  • Using high-quality steel and anti-corrosion coatings when constructing our pipelines.
  • Installing cathodic protection (a low-level electrical charge) to inhibit corrosion of underground pipelines. Pressure testing of new and existing pipelines with
    water.
  • Periodically inspecting the inside of the pipeline with sophisticated tools called “smart pigs” to locate
  • pipe abnormalities so they can be corrected.
  • Conducting preventive maintenance programs.
  • Continually monitoring pipeline operations from Enbridge’s control center, which has remote shut-down capabilities and can monitor pressures and conditions when the pipeline is flowing.
  • Completing regular ground and aerial inspections of the right-of-way.
  • Providing public awareness safety information to emergency responders, local public officials, excavators and those who live and work along our pipelines.

Enbridge says the aim of the project is to restore the capacity of the pipeline to meet increasing
demand driven by current and planned refinery upgrades and expansions in Michigan, Ohio
and eastern Canada.

Enbridge plans to complete the Indiana segment of the replacement pipeline by 2012. As for the Michigan pipeline, the company says four segments will be completed in 2012 and the last 160 miles will be completed in late 2012 or early 2013.

All of Enbridge’s plans are subject to U.S. Federal and state approvals.

As for the spill in the Kalamazoo River, the Kalamazoo Gazette, in covering the Enbridge announcement reported today

Although one section of small section of the Kalamazoo River that had been closed following the Enbridge spill in 2010 reopened last month – just three of the 40 miles affected – environmental officials have said significant amounts of oil still remain submerged in the river bed, although they say it is not dangerous to human health. State and federal agencies are slated to open more parts of the river in coming months pending investigation.

 

Related Links:
WOOD-TV Enbridge plans new $1.6 bil pipeline Oil pipeline will not be demolished

NPR Michigan Radio Enbridge wants to replace 200 miles of aging pipeline in Michigan

Documents 

Enbridge Handout Line 6B Phase 2  (pdf)

Enbridge Handout Line 6B Replacement Project  (pdf)

A map released by Enbridge showing its central Canada and US pipelines

 

More oil leaking from sunken WWII US transport near Hartley Bay, Gitga’at warn

Oil slick in Grenville Channel (Gitga`at First Nation Guardians)
Oil slick in Grenville Channel (Gitga`at First Nation Guardians)

The Gitga’at First Nation at Hartley Bay report that a large oil slick  has been spotted in Grenville Channel near Hartley Bay.  It is believed that the oil is coming from the  USAT Brigadier General M.G. Zalinski, a U.S. army transport ship that sank in 1946 with 700 tonnes of bunker fuel on board.

A news release from the Gitga’at says the oil spill is between  between two and five miles (four to eight kilometres) long and 200 feet wide (70 metres) inside the Grenville Channel.

A Canadian Coast Guard vessel from Prince Rupert is expected in the area sometime this afternoon.

The Gitga’at are sending their own Guardians to take samples and have chartered a plane to take aerial photos of the spill, the release says.

“If this spill is as big as the pilots are reporting, then we’re looking at serious environmental impacts, including threats to our traditional shellfish harvesting areas,” says Arnold Clifton, Chief Councillor of the Gitga’at Nation. “We need an immediate and full clean-up response from the federal government ASAP.”

The USAT Brigadier General M.G. Zalinski was carrying Bunker C when it sank. The First Nation says the Canadian government has been saying it would remove the oil and munitions from the ship since 2006, but with no results.

“Right now we’re focused on getting a handle on the size of the spill and the clean-up that’s required,” says Clifton. “But this incident definitely raises questions about the federal government’s ability to guard against oil spills and to honour its clean-up obligations. As a result, our nation has serious concerns about any proposal to have tankers travel through our coastal waters, including the Enbridge proposal.”

The spill is just the latest in a series of spills of bunker oil and diesel coming from the Zalinski and the BC Ferry Queen of the North, which sank in 2006. Despite government assurances of clean-up, both wreckages continue to leak fuel, fouling the marine environment, and heightening the fear of future oil spills.

The Gitga’at depend on the ocean for 40 per cent of their traditional diet.

According to Wikipedia, the Zalinksi was enroute from Seattle to Whittier Island, Alaska, when it struck rocks at Pitt Island on Grenville Channel 0n September 26 1946, 55 miles (88 kilometres)  south of Prince Rupert. The ship sank within twenty minutes, while her crew of 48 were rescued by the tug Sally N and the passenger steamer SS Catala. According to a report in The Vancouver Sun on  September 30, 1946, at the time of her sinking she was transporting a cargo of at least twelve 500-pound (230 kg) bombs, large amounts of .30 and .50 caliber ammunition, at least 700 tonnes of bunker oil, and truck axles with army type tires.

Oil was first spotted leaking in Grenville Channel in 2003 and the wreck of the Zalinski was identified later that year by a remotely operated undersea vessel.

Hartley Bay is the entrance to Douglas Channel where tankers will go to Kitimat for the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline and three liquified natural gas projects.

 

 

 

 

BC NDP formally opposes Northern Gateway in letter to Joint Review Panel

The British Columbia New Democratic Party has written to the Northern Gateway Joint Review panel formally opposing the controversial pipeline project, while at the same time supporting the Kitimat LNG projects, as long as there are strong environmental controls on those projects.

Adrian Dix
NDP leader Adrian Dix (BC NDP)

A long letter from NDP leader Adrian Dix to the panel concludes by saying

as the Official Opposition, we have carefully weighed the risks and benefits of the NGP to British Columbia, and to Canada. After much consideration and consultation, we have come to the conclusion that the risks of this project far outweigh its benefits. We believe that the NGP will cause significant adverse economic and environmental effects and is not in the public interest. Therefore the NGP should not be permitted to proceed.

The letter also calls on the federal government to legislate a permanent ban on tankers for the west coast. The letter goes over the history of the Exxon Valdez spill

Eight of 11 cargo tanks were punctured, releasing about 258,000 barrels of crude oil, most of which was lost in the first eight hours. There were widespread ecological and economic impacts….To this day, vital shore habitats remain contaminated, the herring fishery has been closed for 15 seasons since the spill, and herring are not considered recovered. The clean-up costs alone are estimated at $3.7 billion…Wildlife and natural resource damages range from $8.5 billion to as high as $127 billion…. Related to the economic hardship felt by families and communities, a wave of social problems followed – alcoholism, high divorce rates and even suicides swept through the Sound’s small towns….

We simply cannot let this happen in British Columbia: the risk is just too great. Therefore, we are calling on the federal government to legislate a permanent moratorium on oil tankers and oil drilling activity on B.C.’s north coast to ensure the ecological integrity and economic and social vitality of the lands and waters of this unique region.

The letter also takes Premeir Christy Clark to task for not taking a stand on the Northern Gateway Issue

The Government of British Columbia agreed to the Joint Review Panel (JRP) process, limiting its ability to give voice to B.C.’s interests. In addition, the Province did not seek government participant status and has failed to exercise its intervenor status to fully represent the interests of British Columbians.

We note that other government agencies including an Alberta municipality, the Province of Alberta and Alberta’s Transportation Ministry, as well as the federal Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, Department of Justice, Environment Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Natural Resources Canada and Transport Canada have registered as government participants in the JRP.

We also note that the Union of British Columbia Municipalities, and a number of local
governments have passed motions opposing the NGP. These include: the Village of Queen Charlotte, Sandspit, Masset, Port Clements, Prince Rupert, Terrace and Smithers.

As the Official Opposition, we take our responsibility to represent and to protect the interests of British Columbia and British Columbians seriously. We have listened to the concerns and diverse perspectives of constituents throughout the province and we have met with stakeholders and experts about the NGP.

The letter also expresses concern about the fairness of the Joint Review Process

Four New Democrat MLAs are actively participating in the JRP, as intervenors or as presenters. Three of these MLAs represent constituencies that will be directly impacted if the NGP proceeds. The fourth MLA is our environment critic. All of them, like the thousands of other British Columbians who are participating in the JRP, are doing so in good faith.

We are very troubled by statements of the Prime Minister and Minister of Natural Resources that have caused several commentators and JRP participants to question the objectivity of the process and ask if its outcome is predetermined.

Dix is quick to point out that the New Democrats are not against sustainable economic development.

The importance of sustainable economic development International trade and responsible resource extraction are essential to B.C. and Canada’s economy.

International trade creates good-paying jobs and vital communities. To this end, we are committed to building on our tradition of further developing trade relations with China and other Asia Pacific markets to build a strong B.C. economy.

Further, we have been clear about our support for the Kitimat liquefied natural gas project while emphasizing it comes with the serious responsibility to ensure strong environmental protections. We acknowledge that all resource development and extraction has inherent risks.

Other points in the NDP letter were:

  • The tanker traffic to ship Alberta oil to Asian markets will require lifting of the current tanker moratorium and the Tanker Exclusion Zone, and will put the British Columbia coastline at serious risk of devastating environmental and economic damage from potential oil spills;The NGP will traverse remote and highly valued areas of B.C., and will cross almost 800 streams. The risk of spills from the proposed pipeline will put these valuable
    environments and species, such as salmon, at risk;The impact of an oil leak or spill would be most severely felt by First Nation
    communities. As has been affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada, First Nations must be consulted effectively and be respected on a government-to-government level;• The greenhouse gas emissions generated by NGP-related oil sands development will
    contribute to the economic, social, and environmental costs of climate change;
    The NGP provides few long-term and sustainable economic benefits for British
    Columbia, while shipping raw bitumen forgoes important value-added economic
    development opportunities involving upgrading and refining the oil in Canada;• The NGP is forecast to increase Canadian oil prices for Canadian consumers.

 NDP BC news release 

BC NDP caucus letter to Joint Review Panel (pdf)

NDP BC backgrounder on the Northern Gateway  (pdf)

Hundreds protest in Victoria to stop the Northern Gateway pipeline and to protect “Mother Earth”

Anti-Enbridge protest in Victoria, April 12, 2012
Hundreds of protesters march down Douglas Street in Victoria, BC, Sunday, April 12, 2012. The Day of Action Against the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, also had a larger aim, organizers said, to protect Mother Earth. (Robin Rowland/Northwest Coast Energy News)

About a thousand people gathered in front of the British Columbia legislature on Sunday, April 12, 2012, for the Day of Action Against the Northern Gateway pipeline. But unlike protests, marches and gatherings here in the northwest of British Columbia, which are often tightly focused on the controversial pipeline and the associated tanker traffic and the potential dangers to northwestern BC, the protests in Victoria had a wider focus.  Speakers on the steps of the legislature spoke, not only of stopping the pipeline and protecting the coast against tanker spills, but also of protecting “Mother Earth” and the wider BC environment.

The speeches on the steps of the legislature began with a group of children from the Oak and Orca Bioregional School in Victoria, who spoke of their fears for the future of the planet.

Lisa MerCure, who spent years searching for First Nations roots, only to discover her Cree family lives in Fort Chipewyan in Northeastern Alberta  and are suffering from cancer. She spoke of the dangers from the bitumen sands development, from the tailing ponds and the effluent in the Athabaska River.

Other First Nations speakers spoke of the dangers to the rivers and coast of northern BC.

The recent announcement that Kinder Morgan would greatly increase the capacity of its pipeline from Alberta to the Vancouver area added new impetus to the protest.

After the rally at the legislature, the protesters marched along Douglas Street to Centennial Park for an afternoon of workshops.

Slideshow  “Our Coast Our Decision” Signs of Protest

 

Protest sign Our Coast Our Decision