A quartet of environmental organizations has escalated the attack on Alberta’s oil sands with the publication of a report urging American regulators to implement better safety standards to protect U.S. pipelines from raw tar sands oil. Tar Sands Pipeline Safety Risks released today by Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Pipeline Safety Trust National Wildlife Federation and the Sierra Club claims that diluted bitumen (known in industry circles as DilBit) is hard on pipelines and can lead to more leaks than conventional oil.
The report claims that because DilBit is significantly more acidic and corrosive than standard oil and requires increased heat and pressure to move through pipelines it may result in more pipeline leaks like the one that polluted the Kalamazoo River in Michigan recently. They authors claim this means TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline which will take DilBit and tar sands crude to the Gulf Coast if it is approved by the U.S. State Department could be a greater hazard to landscapes rivers and aquifers along its route.
“As Canada delivers a greater and greater percentage of our oil their corrosive products will take a greater and greater toll on our pipelines—and that creates a huge safety risk we are not prepared for yet” said Susan Casey-Lefkowitz director of NRDC’s International Program and one of three co-authors. “We need new safety standards in the United States that ensure our protection from raw tar sands oil in our pipelines. Planned tar sands pipelines such as the Keystone XL project from Montana to Texas should be put on hold until their risks are understood and addressed.”
The NRDC report claims that the pipeline system in Alberta has experienced 16 times more safety incidences due to internal corrosion than the U.S. pipeline system which leads the authors to conclude that it is a “strong indicator” of the corrosive nature of raw tar sands oil.
Alberta’s Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) was quick to denounce the report as “misleading” and “factually inaccurate.” An ERCB press release claimed that an analysis of pipeline failure statistics in Alberta “has not identified any significant differences in failure frequency between pipelines handling conventional crude versus pipelines carrying crude bitumen crude oil or synthetic crude oil.”
NRDC in turn dismissed the ERCB’s counter-claims as inaccurate and stood by the report’s conclusions. “The ERCB comments refer to an earlier version of this information” wrote report co-authors Casey-Lefkowitz and Anthony Swift in a follow-up blog post. “We hope that after they review the information in the report issued today we can continue a dialogue with ERCB based on the report’s findings.”
In other oil sands pipeline news the five nations of the Yinka Dene Alliance turned down a lucrative offer from Enbridge aimed at garnering Aboriginal support for the Northern Gateway Pipeline Project which would carry oil sands products from Fort McMurray to Kitimat on B.C.’s West Coast. "We won’t trade the safety of our rivers lands and fish that are our lifeblood” said Chief Jackie Thomas of Saik’uz. “Enbridge knows it can’t guarantee there will be no oil spills into our rivers. Their promises and their money are no good to us.”
This decision is a huge thorn in Enbridge’s side because the traditional territories of these First Nations cover about one quarter of the pipeline route. They also claimed that half the pipeline and tanker route traverses the traditional territory of native peoples who oppose the project.
