Pipelines touted as safest way to ship oil,

Senate committee report on hydrocarbon transport to be released Thursday

Less than two months after a runaway train loaded with crude oil smashed into the centre of Lac-Mégantic, 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-Mégantic, 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-Mégantic 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-Mégantic 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-Mégantic 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.

“The consensus is that pipelines are the safest way to move crude oil long distances; better than rail,” echoed John Foran, director of oil, gas policy and regulatory affairs at Natural Resources Canada. He addressed the committee in February.

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.