Committee report to address oil shipments

Experts hailed pipeline safety at meetings

Less than two months after a runaway train loaded with crude oil smashed into the centre of Lac Megantic, Que., the Senate energy committee is ready to release its report on safe hydrocarbon transport.

The report, to be made public Thursday, will discuss best practices for moving products such as diluent, bitumen and crude oil across the country.

“We anticipate and we hope that government will accept some of our recommendations which I believe — and I think most people will see — are very, very specific and very powerful,” said deputy committee chair Grant Mitchell.

“We think this is a timely report and, certainly in the context of the pipeline debate and Lac Megantic, it will probably have a heightened profile in the interest it receives,” Mitchell said. “It will be of great interest to industry, to regulators and to the government.”

The committee started studying pipeline, rail and tanker industry safety regulations in November 2012. Over the last nine months, senators met with dozens of industry regulators, spill response people and government officials who discussed the current hydrocarbon transport safety regime.

The last meeting with witnesses was in June, just days before the Lac Megantic disaster. Committee members — who had been on a handful of “fact-finding” visits to sites in Alberta, Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia — did not tour Lac Megantic after 47 people were killed in one of the worst rail disasters in Canadian history. Mitchell would not confirm whether the disaster affected the committee’s report, simply saying that “Lac Megantic is certainly consistent with the kind of issues that we were studying.”

The majority of experts who addressed the committee spoke specifically about pipelines, which were repeatedly touted as the safest way to shuttle oil and gas across the country.

“As far as bulk transportation over long distance, pipelines are clearly the winner. They are more economical by several factors and they are safer by several factors,” said National Energy Board engineer Iain Colquhoun when he testified before committee in December.

Also in February, Don Wishart, projects adviser with TransCanada, told the committee that pipelines transport 97 per cent of the oil and natural gas that moves across the country today and that this form of transportation gets safer every year. He said Canada’s federally regulated pipelines saw only five accidents in 2011 compared to a five-year average of nine. This was in spite of an increase in amount of pipeline being used.

There is currently 73,000 kilometres of federally regulated pipeline in the country. This pipeline — which crosses international or provincial borders — is overseen by the National Energy Board of Canada. Pipeline that does not cross borders is overseen by provincial regulatory boards. These boards order inspections of pipelines and can order unsafe pipelines to be shut down.

In general, experts said upkeep and safety of pipelines is good, but sometimes problems arise that are outside the industry’s control.

For example, some witnesses recommended that measures be put in place to make sure landscapers, construction crews and anyone else putting a spade in the ground know where pipelines are before they dig. Such legislation was passed in Ontario last year, making it mandatory for these diggers to call the Ontario One Call system, which provides information on utilities buried in specified areas.

“We are very concerned about the level of risk that is rising, particularly as cities grow, and also as cities and towns enter into a renewal of their own infrastructure, such as water systems and the like,” said Brenda Kenny, president and chief executive of the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association.

The report will presumably make recommendations about what methods should be utilized for future transportation of fossil fuels in Canada and suggest legislation that will make hydrocarbon transport by all methods safer.

The Senate report was initially scheduled for release in June, but Mitchell said timelines were pushed back so his committee could focus on government legislation in advance of summer recess. Senators chose to continue working on the report over the summer because they suspected Parliament would be prorogued in the fall — something Prime Minister Stephen Harper confirmed this week during his northern tour.