Who pays bill for an oil spill?

Dear editor: Re: “What could go wrong with the Kinder Morgan pipeline” by Reg Volk (Courier, May 9).

As a retired teacher, Volk did his research and presented a clear picture of some of the problems. I took this as a homework assignment and did my own research.

According to the Kinder Morgan website, there have been more than 82 spills from this pipeline and the associated terminals. Some of these spills took more than one year to clean up and a few spills were more than 1,000 barrels. One barrel of oil would result in oil, one inch thick over a 2,800 square foot area.

In Canada, liability and compensation for ship-source oil spill pollution are governed by the Canada Shipping Act and the Marine Liability Act and are based on a polluter-pays principle. If oil is released from a vessel, regardless of the circumstances, the ship owner is always responsible for paying for an oil spill cleanup up to the ship’s limits of liability. Since Kinder Morgan does not own the tankers, it would not be responsible to report any non-tendered ship spill nor pay for the clean up.

So what happens to ship-source spills?

The federal, provincial and municipal governments are presently suing the owners of the ship Marathassa three years after an oil spill in English Bay, which costs more than $3-million to clean up. The ship’s owners have allegedly failed to pay. This spill was only 18 barrels of oil.

Transport Canada says the new Oceans Protection Plan will strengthen the response system by allowing for unlimited compensation from the federal fund. This means you and me would not pay the polluter nor its agents. It also should be noted that the $1.5 billion allocated for this plan is over 10 years and covers 151,000 miles (243,000 km) of saltwater coastline or $1,000 per mile of coast. David Perron West Kelowna