Pipeline spills bound to happen? The statistics say otherwise
It’s tough to find a good news pipeline story these days. The latest incident to fuel the debate on the evils of pipelines came Wednesday with a spill of 31,000 barrels of a bitumen mixture near Fort McMurray.
It’s tough to find a good news pipeline story these days.
The latest incident to fuel the debate on the evils of pipelines came with last week’s spill at Nexen’s Long Lake site. The company revealed last Wednesday that 31,000 barrels of emulsion — a mixture of bitumen, sand and briny water — had spilled into the surrounding muskeg. That’s the equivalent of two Olympic- sized swimming pools. The fact the pipe was of newer vintage didn’t help matters.
The immediate questions that came to mind last week were whether the accident was a monitoring issue — that is did Nexen conduct simulations at the site to mimic a spill and the attendant response — manufacturing- related, or a combination of both.
The answers will be forthcoming following a comprehensive investigation.
How this will impact existing pipeline applications in Canada and the U. S. is what is now top of mind for both producers seeking improved transportation access as well as the pipeline companies themselves, despite the Canadian Energy Strategy that was signed last week at the premiers conference.
It also brings back the skepticism of Premier Rachel Notley about the efficacy of Alberta’s Energy Regulator in its current form. But it needn’t be that way. Not all pipelines have issues — even those that are older and have been converted from shipping natural gas to transporting oil.
One of those examples is TransCanada’s Keystone Pipeline System that has been in service for five years. This month it records the delivery of its one- billionth barrel of Canadian and U. S. crude oil from Hardisty, Alta., to refining centres in Oklahoma, Illinois and Texas.
While there were two small, above- ground incidents involving compression stations, which resulted in every fitting being replaced throughout the system, the pipe that is in the ground, 4,347 kilometres in length, has never experienced an issue.
Even more interesting — and relevant to the Energy East application — is that 20 per cent of that system was converted from carrying natural gas to carrying oil.
And that portion of the pipeline was decades old.
To those who are concerned about Energy East, the fact 20 per cent of the Keystone system once shipped natural gas and now transports oil should offer relevant evidence that the crossover can take place without incident.
While some watching this year’s Tour de France epic cycling race might be wondering what the secret is behind yellow jersey holder Chris Froome’s success, there is nothing all that mysterious about how TransCanada has not had an incident involving the Keystone system since it was put in the ground.
“We invest more than $ 1 billion per year on safety and integrity,” said company spokesman James Millar. “We continuously monitor and test the pipe, and our goal is zero incidents.”
And as one indication of how high- tech the world of monitoring pipeline functions has become, the system has 21,000 sensors updated every five seconds, with employees able to react to anomalies when detected.
The detractors will always say pipelines are risky — and that accidents are bound to happen; it’s just a matter of time. That’s a false conclusion. It’s not in any company’s best interest — pipeline or otherwise — to invest billions of dollars in a project only to deal with failures in the system; the company wears it in the form of a hit to a share price and thus access to capital, bottom- line profits and reputation with all its stakeholders.
One need only ask Plains Midstream what that looks like.
The other aspect to remember is that despite what many would like to believe there is nothing anyone can do to eliminate risk — to anything or anyone. The challenge is minimizing it and being able to respond should something not go according to plan. That’s what internal company systems do — and that is what external regulatory bodies do in terms of setting out the rules companies need to abide by. After that, it’s a matter of oversight and compliance.
Last week, Canada’s premiers signed their names to a document outlining an energy strategy for the country — and there is hope this will lead to progress on the need to construct new pipelines for the purpose of broadening market access, not to mention supply existing refining infrastructure in Eastern Canada, which would benefit both consumers and producers.
The issue of climate change and carbon emissions was included in the strategy, which should bolster the case for pipeline infrastructure in Canada and the U. S.
The amount of oil shipped by the Keystone system would have required 3.3 million trucks or 1.7 million rail cars; when 80 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions come from the tailpipe of a car, or the fact most railway engines still use diesel fuel, that’s not an insignificant impact in terms of emissions.
And, of course, in the context of Keystone XL, the U. S. State Department’s Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for KXL stated oil transported by modes other than the pipeline would create 42 per cent more emissions.
Thus, the last thing the premiers — and, by the same token, President Barack Obama — should be doing is creating barriers to pipeline development. To do that means to force companies to find other means for transportation, which are more costly, from both the dollars sense aspect and the carbon emissions added to the atmosphere.
There’s no question that a Long Lake- type event is pause for thought, but the same holds true when an airplane crashes. People don’t stop flying. The same logic can be applied to pipeline infrastructure. With four million kilometres of pipeline crisscrossing the U. S., a pipeline incident is also the exception, not the rule, and that pipelines remain a demonstrably safe way to ship both oil and natural gas, just like flying is the statistically the safest way to travel.