http://www.keysnet.com/2013/03/21/485987/bahamian-government-clears-way.html

How short-sighted that the Bahamian Minister of the Environment doesn’t see the clean energy potential of alternatives such as solar power. Instead, he is pursuing fossil fuel development in the pristine waters of the Bahamas that provide fisheries, tourism, and quality of life to all. The Bahamas is home to some of the healthiest corals in the Western Hemisphere. ……DV

By DAVID GOODHUE
dgoodhue@keysreporter.com
Posted – Thursday, March 21, 2013 08:18 PM EDT

The Bahamian government is allowing an oil company to conduct exploratory offshore drilling ahead of a referendum giving its citizens a say in the country’s future energy development.

The drilling would likely begin by early 2014 and be conducted by the Bahamas Petroleum Co. The operation would be near where Russian oil company Zarubezhneft is now drilling in Cuban waters in the Old Bahamas Channel south of the Andros Islands, which is next to Cuba’s exclusive economic zone with the Bahamas.

This would place another drilling operation less than 200 miles from Florida’s coast, which has at least one South Florida official concerned.

U.S. Rep. Joe Garcia, a Democrat whose district runs from Kendall to Key West, said Thursday that he fears what would happen to Florida’s coast in the event of a spill in the Bahamas

“I am very concerned to learn that off shore oil drilling will take place in our front yard and in the middle of the Gulfstream,” he said in a statement e-mailed to The Reporter. “If the Bahamas insist on moving forward with this process, I hope we can share safety standards and best practices that we have learned over the years.”

Kenred Dorsett, the Bahamas’ minister of environment and housing, said the decision to move forward with drilling before the referendum is held makes sense because there is no point in holding the ballot initiative if the Bahamas does not have economically viable offshore oil fields.

“More particularly, we are not going to ask the electorate to vote on whether they want to develop an oil industry if there is no oil to begin with,” Dorsett said in a statement last week. “Thus, we need to find out first, through exploration drilling, whether we do indeed have oil in commercially viable quantities. If we don’t, then obviously it would be completely pointless, and a shameful waste of public funds, to have a referendum on the matter.”

Dorsett said a national oil industry could help the Bahamas stem the rise of its national debt, and said there is growing support among the population to at least find out how much oil there is in Bahamian waters.

“At a time when our national debt burden is becoming increasingly difficult to bear, the Bahamian people are understandably asking whether we should not be focusing more closely on the question of whether oil exists in the Bahamas in commercially viable quantities,” Dorsett said. “If it does, it would likely mean substantially greater revenues for our country. Indeed, the discovery of oil in the Bahamas would almost certainly prove to be economically transformative for our nation for many generations to come.”

He added that Russia looking for oil about 60 miles away “dictates that we hasten our own decision-making process as it pertains to oil exploration and environmental regulation here in the Bahamas.”

BPC executives praised the government’s decision.

The “announcement paves the way for an assessment of the potential of oil resources on the Bahamian side of the border,” Simon Potter, BPC’s chief executive officer, said in a statement.

The BPC is seeking a partner company to help look for the oil.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the Bahamas hold up to 4.3 billion barrels of oil.

Bahamian Prime Minister Perry Christie’s Progressive Liberal Party is facing criticism from political opponents for changing his position on oil drilling. According to the Bahamian newspaper The Tribune, Dorsett just four months ago said no drilling would happen before the referendum, which isn’t expected to be held before 2015.

Dorsett, in his statement last week, promised that the nation’s regulations governing offshore oil exploration would mirror those enforced by countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, Norway, Australia and Trinidad and Tobago.

He also recognized that offshore oil operations pose a threat to the multi-island nation’s beaches and marine life — a major draw to the country’s tourism-dependent economy.

The Russian drilling operation in Cuba — and the proposed operation in the Bahamas — is in 1,000 to 2,000 feet and is considered shallow-water drilling. By contrast, the 2010 BP/DeepWater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico happened at more than 5,000 feet below the ocean surface.

A failed deepwater drilling operation in the Florida Straits — about 70 miles from Key West — was even deeper. Several international oil companies, starting in early 2012, leased a Chinese-built, Italian-owned semi-submersible rig to drill the depths between the Keys and Cuba.

The operation worried both U.S. environmentalists and opponents of Cuba’s communist Castro regime. But in the end, none of the companies found enough oil to indicate the area is fertile for future energy exploration.

The Cuban government was hoping for a major find that would turn the nation from being a net-energy importer to an exporter. Cuba relies largely on oil imports from Venezuela.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/03/obama-keystone-poll-89108.html

Politico, March 20, 2013

By Erika Martinson

Environmentalists armed with new poll numbers have a warning for President Barack Obama: Approving the Keystone XL pipeline would put him at odds with core members of his base.

The poll reveals an electorate deeply split on the Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline, which is wildly popular among Republicans and almost equally unpopular among Democrats. A small majority of people overall either support the project or don’t know what to think, according to results provided to POLITICO.

But the Center for Biological Diversity, the group that commissioned the poll, says the president should pay attention to what his most fervent supporters are saying. Sixty-eight percent of people who voted for Obama want him to reject the pipeline, the poll found.

Opposition is especially strong among Obama voters age 18 to 29, according to the survey conducted by Public Policy Polling. More than 60 percent think he would be breaking his promises if he OKs the pipeline — and 16 percent would feel betrayed.

Of course, Obama has already won his second term and will most likely never face the electorate again. But he’s also spoken of his desire to keep his base fired up during his second term.

Keystone could put a quick kibosh to that, said Jerry Karnas, the environmental group’s national field director.

“This thing is a potential mass demoralizer for a large amount of Democrats,” Karnas said.

“Keystone is bad news for America, its wildlife and the future health of our climate — and the people who put President Obama in the White House know it,” he added.

Administration officials have repeatedly said they’ll make the pipeline decision based on facts and science. The White House stressed Tuesday that Keystone isn’t even on the president’s desk.

“In line with long-standing precedent, the State Department is conducting the assessment of the project,” White House spokesman Clark Stevens said. He added that Obama will pursue his promises to confront climate change at the same time that he supports efforts to increase U.S. energy independence.

Still, the poll’s findings offer a glimpse at some of the political considerations at play as the administration weighs its stance on Keystone, an issue that pits supporters’ promises of jobs and energy independence versus fervent opposition from climate activists.

Some people proffering advice for the president say approving the pipeline would be a smart move to the middle — for instance, a January editorial in the scientific journal Nature said it would “bolster his credibility within industry and among conservatives” as he pursues strong action on climate change.

But Karnas said Obama needs to think longer term.

“His legacy is really hanging in the balance right now,” Karnas said. “He’s looking a lot more like an oil and gas president than he is a solar, wind and innovation guy.”

© 2013 POLITICO LLC.

This article originally appeared here.

Photo © Paul S. Hamilton

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/sclefkowitz/the_state_department_review_sh.html
by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz

Posted March 11, 2013
|

A deeper dive into the State Department draft environmental review shows that the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is not needed. The energy security argument for the pipeline, always dubious, has evaporated to the point where even the State Department cannot find a reason to build it. The draft also confirms that the Keystone XL is not an economic recovery plan, since it will create only 35 permanent jobs and 3,900 construction jobs. It won’t help consumers since far from bringing new oil to the US, it is meant to relieve a glut and raise oil prices. Instead the State Department found that the project will benefit oil companies by giving them access to the higher oil prices in overseas markets, making new tar sands projects more worth their while. Yet, it is Americans who carry the risks of tar sands oil spills in our rivers and aquifers and worsening climate change. What the State Department got dead wrong is their mistaken assumption that Keystone XL would not drive tar sands expansion. The review used this assumption to get out of any meaningful consideration of the climate pollution from tar sands expansion, and in this time of worsening climate change that is not acceptable. Rejection of Keystone XL is an easy and necessary choice for America. As European Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said, rejection of Keystone XL would send a strong message internationally that the US is serious about fighting climate change.

Let’s take a closer look at the draft environmental review:

Keystone XL’s 35 permanent jobs and 3,900 construction jobs are not an economic recovery plan

The State Department review once again shows how TransCanada, the American Petroleum Institute and other proponents of the pipeline have vastly overstated the number of jobs that will be created by Keystone XL. The State Department, based on TransCanada’s own numbers, shows that at the most 3,900 construction jobs will be created in building the pipeline with only 10% of the total workforce hired locally. Only 35 permanent jobs will be created by the pipeline. What is more, the State Department ignores the potentially negative impacts of pipeline spills, spills into freshwater supplies or increases in climate and other pollution on employment and the economy. Farming, ranching, and tourism are major sources of employment along the Keystone XL pipeline’s proposed route – approximately 571,000 workers are directly employed in the agricultural sector in the states along the Keystone XL corridor. Water contamination resulting from a Keystone XL spill, or the cumulative impact of spills over the lifetime of the pipeline, would have significant economic costs.

We can do better. As a result of our clean energy industry’s rapid growth and effective state and federal policies, clean energy projects and programs currently in progress are creating thousands of jobs in communities across the country without the risk. And many more shovel ready projects could be brought online if our policymakers are willing to send clear market signals and level the playing field for clean energy options to move forward.

Keystone XL’s path to export means less economic and energy security for the US, not more

The draft environmental review concedes that Keystone XL tar sands is mostly destined for export, confirming what we already know: that this is not a pipeline for US economic or energy security, but a project to spur tar sands expansion, raise oil prices and help the oil industry. The review acknowledges the trend of increasing exports from the Gulf Coast refineries. The State Department found that Gulf Coast refineries now export more than they supply to domestic markets and that the “increased volume of refined products is being exported by refiners as they respond to lower domestic gasoline demand and continued higher demand and prices in overseas markets.” This coincides with earlier documentation of the export goals of the tar sands industry for Keystone XL: that this pipeline is a way for the oil industry to access higher oil prices in overseas markets. And it also coincides with industry commentators, including a recent forecast that unrefined Canadian crudes may be exported from the US Gulf Coast soon.

Why this rush to export tar sands? It is commonly acknowledged by the oil industry and financial analysts that tar sands expansion is currently stalled due to the low prices for this very expensive to extract fuel. Without avenues for overseas export, the tar sands market is primarily the US Midwest and Rockies and Canada where there is currently a glut that has depressed oil prices. The draft environmental review acknowledges the glut and the impact that it has in lowering oil prices. What the oil industry wants is higher oil prices for its expensive to extract tar sands. Hardly a recipe for US economic security.

The draft review misses the mark on how Keystone XL will drive tar sands expansion

Contrary to the draft review findings, evidence shows that the Keystone XL pipeline will drive expansion of the tar sands. Industry analysts have repeatedly pointed this out, with most recently a statement from tar sands pipeline company Enbridge CEO that “if we can’t attract world prices, then we will ultimately curb energy development” in the tar sands. Pipelines to bring tar sands to deepwater ports are stalled. So, the State Department focused on rail as an alternative with a number of erroneous assumptions detailed in this blog by my colleague Anthony Swift. Once you accept that the Keystone XL pipeline will drive tar sands expansion, it means that the environmental and health impacts of that expansion need to be taken into account. This is a critical missing piece in the draft environmental review that the State Department needs to go back and correct.

Tar sands and tar sands pipelines are a threat to environment and health

The draft review takes a look at some of the impacts of tar sands and tar sands pipelines and inexplicably underestimates the very real damage from these impacts every time, while completely ignoring the damage in many situations. Here is a quick run-down:

The State Department acknowledges that the climate impacts of tar sands are higher than conventional oil, but does not take them into account: The draft environmental review acknowledges that tar sands oil has higher lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil. After reviewing existing literature, the State Department found up to a 19% increase in well to wheels greenhouse gas emissions from the weighted-average mix of tar sands crudes expected to be transported in Keystone XL relative to the reference crudes in the near term. Canadian think tank Pembina Institute estimates tar sands climate pollution even higher with full life cycle tar sands emissions reaching up to 37% higher than a conventional oil baseline. And these estimates do not even tell the whole story as they do not yet take into account emissions from burning the tar sands byproduct of petcoke or the land use change greenhouse gas emissions from tar sands extraction from under Boreal forests and peatlands.
The State Department recognizes the unique risks of tar sands oil spills, but minimizes the impacts on US lands and waters: The draft environmental review does acknowledge the unique risks associated with diluted bitumen tar sands spills – as well as the fact that spill responders have yet to develop methods to address those risks. However, it does not adequately consider the demonstrated higher risk of pipeline failure due to external corrosion in high pressure tar sands pipelines or the safety problems that have plagued TransCanada’s earlier pipelines. Keystone XL would cross more than 1000 water bodies, including 50 perennial rivers or streams, and several aquifers, including the Ogallala. It also comes within a mile of approximately 2500 water wells.
The State Department does not address the concerns of Nebraska landowners. The new, proposed route in Nebraska still crosses the Ogallala Aquifer, Niobrara River, Platte River and over 200 bodies of water in Nebraska as well as countless private family wells without adequate analysis of the kind of damage a tar sands oil spill would have on farms and waters. Nebraskans have let the State Department know their concerns.
The draft review fails to show proper consultation with Tribal Governments. The State Department has repeatedly failed to fulfill its federal trust responsibility for government-to-government consultation with Indian tribes on the natural and cultural resource impacts of the Keystone XL pipeline.
The draft review does not adequately consider environmental justice and refinery pollution issues. Low income and minority communities will be disproportionately impacted by Keystone XL and the draft environmental review failed to assess these impacts. The review concludes that tar sands oil will displace oil already being refined and therefore will not have increased pollution impacts in refinery communities. However, tar sands refining in the Gulf is likely to have additional and new impacts especially on public health. The State department has a duty to quantify air pollution from refining and analyze the health impacts on the low-income minority communities that are burdened by this significant health threat. In addition, the draft fails to address the oil spill impacts to low-income minority communities through which the proposed pipeline would run.
The State Department not only ignores the climate impacts of tar sands expansion, but also other environmental and health impacts in Canada. In erroneously concluding that Keystone XL will not have a major contribution to tar sands expansion, the State Department then neglects to consider the harm that tar sands extraction does to local community health and traditional way of life and to land, waters, wildlife and air. The draft review did include a summary of recent study finding toxic PAH loading in regional aquatic ecosystems. But it then failed to mention many other concerns including: the low-flow risks in the Athabasca River to due climate change and increased river water withdrawals for tar sands mines; the long-term toxicity risks from massive mining waste tailing ponds; the inadequate reclamation liability management; the risk that caribou will go extinct in the region as a result of rapid tar sands expansion; the inadequate environmental monitoring system; and the recent weakening in federal environmental laws and the permitting regime for pipelines and tar sands projects.

The draft review underestimates the climate and health impacts of tar sands byproduct petcoke

Another area where the State Department falls seriously short is in its assessment of a byproduct of tar sands refining – petcoke. Although the draft review discussed petcoke and referred to the new reports on petcoke climate pollution by Oil Change International and the Carnegie Endowment, it then neglected to take the additional carbon emissions from burning petcoke into account. The draft review got it wrong on several counts. It assumed that most of the petcoke was being stockpiled and not burnt when recent evidence shows that petcoke stockpiles are going down. The State Department argues that heavy oil refining capacity on the Gulf Coast, and the associated petcoke production, will not rise as a result of Keystone XL. This ignores that fact that massive expansions have already taken place (Total, Motiva) in anticipation of Keystone XL’s arrival. It also overlooks the fact that these refineries are exporting over half of their production and are therefore not constrained by shrinking US demand for petroleum products. Given that these refineries now primarily serve a growing world market, it cannot be ruled out that bringing additional heavy oil supplies to the area may send market signals for future heavy oil capacity expansions. The State Department’s analysis continues to assume that petcoke displaces coal ignoring the fact that the increasing supply of cheap petcoke, which sells for 25% less than coal, is making power generation cheaper and dirtier.

It also neglected to consider the health impacts of petcoke. Just recently, citizens raised concerns about black dust blowing off a mountain of petcoke on the Detroit riverbank near the Marathon tar sands refinery in a graphic illustration of a problem with processing tar sands in the US that went unaddressed by the State Department.

There is still time and opportunity to get it right

The draft environmental review is just a first step in a process of assessing the environmental impacts of Keystone XL and whether the project is in the national interest. We now have a public comment period starting and the Administration will be hearing from a concerned public about this project. With so many errors and omissions, the State Department needs to go back to the drawing board and get this analysis right. The US public deserves an honest assessment of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

You can take action and let President Obama know that this review needs to go back to the drawing board at www.stoptar.org.

And for those who want to take a deeper look themselves, here is where to find some of the information referred to above in the Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (DSEIS):

Jobs: Section 4.10 Socioeconomics: http://keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov/documents/organization/205612.pdf
Petcoke: Section 1.4 Market Analysis: http://keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov/documents/organization/205654.pdf and Section 4.15 Cumulative Effects Assessment, pages 4.15-94 to 100: http://keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov/documents/organization/205618.pdf
Export: Market Analysis, pp 1.4 – 1.15: http://keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov/documents/organization/205654.pdf
Prices: Market Analysis, pp 1.4.7 – 1.4.8 and appendix C: http://keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov/documents/organization/205654.pdf
Rail: Market Analysis: Increases in Rail Capacity, section 1.4.6.2 http://keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov/documents/organization/205654.pdf
Climate: Appendix W: http://keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov/documents/organization/205563.pdf
Tribal: Tribal Consultation Section 1.6-1 http://keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov/documents/organization/205652.pdf and Appendix E Record of Consultation http://keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov/documents/organization/205589.pdf
Pipeline safety: Potential Releases section 4.13 http://keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov/documents/organization/205621.pdf
Impacts in Canada: 4.15.4.3 Environmental effects of oil sands development in Alberta (SEIS pp. 4.15-111) http://keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov/documents/organization/205618.pdf

http://act.credoaction.com/r/?r=13093920&id=56087-2107199-7h0W83x&t=6

Please sign onto these comments. Thx DeeVon

March 15, 2013

This is our last chance to officially weigh in on the State Department’s latest sham review of Keystone XL. We need to go huge in urging President Obama to reject Keystone XL.
Sign the petition ►

Dear Friend,

On Friday, the State Department launched a 45-day official public comment period on the Obama administration’s latest sham review of the Keystone XL Pipeline.

The clock is now ticking on what will likely be our last chance to officially weigh in on the “game over for the climate” Obama Tar Sands pipeline, before the president makes his decision later this year.

We need a response that will make clear to the Obama administration that Americans oppose the Keystone XL pipeline. That’s why we’ve set a goal of collecting 200,000 public comments against Keystone XL, the most public comments we’ve ever delivered during a single official comment period on an environmental issue.

Tell President Obama: Reject Keystone XL. Submit your public comment now.

The recently released Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement that is the subject of these comments ignored the pipeline’s significant risk for toxic spills, ignored its catastrophic impacts on our climate,1 and ignored the clear consensus among financial analysts and oil executives who agree Keystone XL will make the difference in tar sands development.2

This assessment was simply a vehicle for the White House to see if we would be silent in the face of its misguided and cynical reasoning: that we should let the bankers and the oil companies profit while the planet inevitably burns. That Canadian tar sands are going to get burned anyway, so while the government’s chief climate scientist’s assertion that Keystone XL will spell ‘game over’ for the climate may be true,3 it is is essentially irrelevant.

This is coward’s logic. And we will not be silent in the face of it.

Tell President Obama: Reject Keystone XL. Submit your public comment now.

To be honest, it’s not clear if any amount of pressure through official channels will be enough to get the administration to change course. After yet another fatally flawed review of Keystone XL, and perhaps more shockingly, the revelation last week that the State Department is once again farming out its analysis to oil industry contractors paid by the likes of TransCanada,4 ExxonMobil and Koch Industries5, our faith in the Obama administration to listen to either science or the public is diminishing.

That’s why we have escalated our tactics by launching the Pledge of Resistance to Keystone XL where more than 51,000 people have already committed to engage in civil disobedience if President Obama takes the next step toward approval of Keystone XL.

But we have to do everything in our power to stop this thing. And that means going as big as we can during this official comment period, to convince President Obama to reject Keystone XL; so we do not need to escalate our tactics against it, and so we have a better shot at preserving a livable planet. Please submit a public comment urging President Obama to reject Keystone XL, and ask your friends to do the same:
http://act.credoaction.com/r/?r=13093920&id=56087-2107199-7h0W83x&t=6

Thanks for fighting Keystone XL.

Elijah Zarlin, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets
Sign the petition ►

1. “Another flawed environmental review on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline,” NRDC, 3/1/13
2. “Keystone Pipeline Decision May Influence Oil-Sands Development,” Bloomberg,3/7/13
3. “Game over for the climate,” James Hansen, New York Times, 5/9/12
4. “‘State Department’ Keystone XL Report Actually Written By TransCanada Contractor ,” Grist, 3/6/13
5. “Critical Part of Keystone Report Done by Firms with Deep Oil Industry Ties,” Inside Climate, 3/6/13

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=gateway-pipeline-poses-unknown-environmental-threat

Large cracks remain in the science assessing Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Pipeline Project
By Anne Casselman

WATER WAY: The Northern Gateway pipeline would traverse north-central Albert and British Columbia and cross 996 watercourses, of which 669 are fish-bearing, including the Nechako River pictured here.
Image: Andrew S. Wright/WWF-Canada

As controversy continues around the Keystone XL Pipeline that would snake through the U.S., a similar drama plays out north of the border. Canadian officials are deciding whether to green-light a pipeline that would carry a semiliquid hydrocarbon mix for 1,172 kilometers from Alberta’s tar sands over the Canadian Rockies to the Pacific coast of British Columbia. Near its proposed terminus, the proposal has met with public outcry and fierce opposition from the Coastal First Nations, a coalition of indigenous tribes.

Calgary, Alberta-based energy company Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline would cross over 1,000 fish-bearing streams and bring 255 oil supertankers each year to the coastline, making the issue highly contentious in Canada’s famously outdoor-loving province. Of 1,161 British Columbians to give oral statements as part of the pipeline’s federal review process, only two were in favor of the project.

What’s more, the pipeline would be carrying an oil product that no one knows much about: diluted bitumen, or dilbit. University and government scientists emphasize an urgent need to fill the knowledge gaps surrounding what diluted bitumen is made of, how it reacts in the environment when spilled, and what its long-term biological effects are.

Answers to those questions are prerequisites to assessing the ecological risks posed by the eight such pipeline projects in Canada alone and to planning for an effective spill-response when things go wrong. “I think it’s fair to say, there’s been some purposeful denial that the bitumen is really something different,” says Steve Hamilton, an aquatic ecologist at Michigan State University who worked with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Enbridge in 2010 to remediate a diluted bitumen spill in Michigan-work that is still ongoing. “The science has not informed this cleanup very well. There’s a pressing need for research.”

Bitumen is a thick hydrocarbon, the “tar” in Alberta’s tar sands, the third largest deposit of hydrocarbons in the world. To flow through a pipeline, the tarlike bitumen is diluted with gas condensates or synthetic oils known as diluents. This mixture of bitumen and diluent is called diluted bitumen, or dilbit for short, but its precise formulation varies widely and is not publicly released.

Finding out what exactly is included under the umbrella term dilbit is an important first step in understanding this unconventional form of oil. “It’s not cast in stone exactly what dilbit is,” says Kenneth Lee, head of Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s (DFO) Center for Offshore Oil and Gas Energy Research in Nova Scotia. “The fate and behavior of the product-the character of the product when it’s spilled in the water-will depend on what the final formulation is,” Lee says. Next comes figuring out how dilbit behaves when it is spilled. “We have to understand the physical behavior of the oil before we can design the optimal cleanup technologies,” he adds.

The chronic, long-term effects of bitumen on an ecosystem present a similar blank, although the Michigan spill will provide some information. “In trying to identify research needs, one of the things that’s obvious is the lack of toxicity data,” says Peter Hodson, a fish toxicologist at Queens University in Ontario. “Neither dilbit nor gas condensates have been tested, and so far I’ve not been able to find any literature on the environmental impacts of those two products.”

Spilled dilbit
The past mishap provides some clues about what might happen. On Sunday, July 25, 2010, one of Enbridge’s pipelines in the U.S. sprung a leak near Marshall, Mich. By the time the spill was contained some three days later, some 20,000 barrels of diluted bitumen had leaked from the pipe and entered a tributary of the Kalamazoo River. At the time the river was in a flood stage, which slowed the oil’s transport downstream. Even then the oil contaminated a 65-kilometer-long stretch of river, overtopped several dams and deposited itself onto the vegetation in the flood plain. The contaminated flora had to be stripped away and taken to landfills, after detergents and water sprays wouldn’t budge the stuff. Ditto with surface soils; once spilled, the dilbit became heavier and thicker as the diluting component of the mix evaporated into the air. “When it loses the diluent it turns back to its original tarry nature and it sticks to things. It’s next to impossible to get off,” Michigan State’s Hamilton says.

Then there was the oil that became submerged in river sediments. “One of the big questions when we’re talking about dilbit is, does it float or does it sink?” DFO’s Lee says. “If you talk to Enbridge or some of the people in industry, they say, ‘well, it floats.’ You look at what happened in the Kalamazoo river, and it sank.”

The physical and chemical properties of oil products change as they are exposed to the open environment in a process known as weathering. Typically oils float, Lee says, but evidence from the Kalamazoo spill, and results of early lab tests, suggest that as dilbit interacts with fine particles suspended in the water column, like the sediments found in river water, it sinks. “Dilbit in its initial form for a period of days to weeks is not an unusual product,” says Jeff Green, a consultant to Enbridge’s Northern Gateway and technical coordinator for its environmental assessment. “If it does take on heavy sediment loads and weathers, it can sink, and so it can become a nonfloating hydrocarbon.”

Knowing whether dilbit sinks or floats and under what environmental conditions remains a key step to planning an effective spill response. If dilbit sinks, what clean up strategies and technologies exist to recover it from the river bottom or ocean floor? In the Kalamazoo dilbit spill, Enbridge stirred up the river bottom to loosen and recover the oil.

Lee points out that this approach was not effective in conditions colder than 4.4 degrees Celsius, which could pose a problem in colder northern river systems. “In my mind, this is an unproven technique,” Hamilton says. The results of EPA-commissioned experiments testing its effectiveness last summer have yet to come in.

No one knows what fraction of the 3.1 million liters of spilled dilbit in Michigan became what has since been termed “submerged oil,” but it was enough to contaminate hundreds of acres of river sediment. Three years and nearly $800 million dollars of cleanup efforts later, Enbridge and the EPA still have more work to do. As a last resort, they will likely dredge the river bottom and dispose of the contaminated sediment in landfills this summer. “We’ve basically had to destroy the environment to recover the submerged oil,” Hamilton says.

The ecosystem has bounced back quite well, however. Along the river, fish, aquatic insects, birds or mammals appear healthy, Hamilton reports. “You have to remember that $800,000 and thousands of workers stripped every visible patch of oil off the landscape. So if it were in an environment where you couldn’t do that, then it wouldn’t be bouncing back like it is now,” he notes. “I can’t imagine what sort of environment that might be but it could be anywhere along the proposed route of the [Northern Gateway] Pipeline where you’ve got rugged terrain or rivers or steep gradients, or it could be in the port where it goes into deep bays. It would be next to impossible to clean up.”

And, even after this costly lesson, he points out that no one knows what causes the oil to sink, nor does anyone know its ecological cost, toxicity, environmental persistence or whether there are things that can be done to accelerate its biodegradation. “I believe that the world would have been better off if we had done some more focused directed research during the last couple years to ask these questions and get some answers,” Hamilton says.

Gateway to disaster?
In 2011 Canadian oil production reached 2.9 million barrels a day and by 2020 that number is expected to reach 4.2 million. Enbridge’s Northern Gateway alone would transport 525,000 barrels of dilbit daily, in addition to 193,000 barrels of imported condensate that would flow through a second pipe alongside leading back to the tar sands in Alberta.

“If we look at the historical record, it’s clear that Canada has never had a system of pipelines that are leakproof or spill-proof,” says Sean Kheraj, a historian at York University in Toronto. Kheraj points to the telling statistic that in 2010 Alberta’s pipeline network alone spilled 3.4 million liters of liquid hydrocarbon product (which is the fancy name for oil and gas products). “We can anticipate historically that there will likely be spills along any new pipeline network, whether it’s Keystone XL or Northern Gateway.”

In testimony to the Joint Review Panel assessing Northern Gateway back in September 2012 in Edmonton, Enbridge spill expert and economist Jack Ruitenbeek reported that the probability of a tanker, pipeline rupture or terminal spill-of any size, large or small-across the pipeline’s 50-year lifetime was 93 percent. The National Energy Board and Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency’s Joint Review Panel that is currently assessing the environmental effects of Northern Gateway will reach their decision on the pipeline by the end of 2013.

But if the proposed pipeline spills in British Columbia, aquatic ecosystems along its path will be most at risk. “Once you get over the [Continental] Divide virtually every stream that would be crossed turns into a salmon-bearing stream. There are no streams that are of trivial significance from an ecosystem context,” says Mark Boyce, a fisheries and wildlife biologist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. “At the end, at the far reaches of these pipelines are the most pristine marine environments on the planet, and to go mucking that up is just outrageous.”

Special thanks to Richard Charter