The Editor,
In the March 3 issue of The Tri-City News, Kinder Morgan placed an ad (page 27) that attempts to reassure your readers with regard to safety concerns involving oil tankers in our waters. While the ad mentions specific measures for reducing the possibility of a marine oil spill, such as using double-hulled tankers, the language becomes vague when addressing oil spill response — such as access to the services of the Western Canada Marine Response Corporation and money invested in more “people,” “response bases” and “equipment.”
What is conspicuously absent from the ad is the explicit reassurance that, in the event of a marine oil spill, the emergency plans will ensure the effective containment and disposal of diluted bitumen, and that effective cleanup materials are available to perform that task.
In fact, Kinder Morgan has gone to great lengths to avoid broaching that issue. In 2015, the company obtained a National Energy Board ruling that permitted it to keep the full details of its emergency plans secret. I believe lack of public transparency prevented the exposure of a key legal vulnerability in the Kinder Morgan emergency plans as it cannot be ensured that, in the event of a marine oil spill, effective measures for the containment and disposal of diluted bitumen are achievable, nor that cleanup materials are available that can adequately perform that task.
According to a federal government report, diluted bitumen sinks in salt water when battered by waves and mixed with sediment. In addition, a major study of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that spill response is highly problematic when dealing with submerged or sunken oil.
As the approval of the emergency plans requires the provision of effective oil spill cleanup measures and there is no evidence that such measures exist, I believe the federal government was grossly negligent in approving the Kinder Morgan expansion proposal and its highly questionable emergency plans for the required cleanup of a marine spill of diluted bitumen. The provincial government was also at fault as it provided its own approval of those plans. That transgression alone, beyond various other concerns to be raised in legal challenges, amounts to a dereliction of duty to safeguard our west coast marine environment.
John Sbragia, Burnaby
