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‘Sink-or-swim’ debate rages on Canadian government report on what would happen if diluted bitumen spilled in ocean fails to resolve feud over dangers of exports Gary Park For Petroleum News
The debate over what happens to diluted bitumen, dilbit, from the Alberta oil sands when it spills in ocean water was unresolved by a Canadian government technical report.
The confusion spawned by those findings do nothing to help or hinder plans by Enbridge and Kinder Morgan to open export routes to Asia through their Northern Gateway and Trans Mountain pipeline projects to Pacific Coast tanker ports.
And the report has done nothing to deter a coalition of three environmental organizations from taking their fight against Northern Gateway to the Federal Court of Canada.
Karen Campbell, a staff lawyer for Ecojustice, which is representing the three groups, said December’s joint report by the National Energy Board and Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency recommending federal government approval of Northern Gateway subject to 209 conditions was based on insufficient evidence and failed to comply with a legislated requirement of the environmental review process.
The conditions ordered research on how dilbit would behave in a marine environment.
She said the review panel “did not have enough evidence to support its conclusions that the Northern Gateway pipeline would not have significant adverse effects on certain aspects of the environment.”
Enbridge responded that the review process was the “most thorough and comprehensive proceeding in Canadian history,” overriding any need to delay a federal government decision pending the court challenge.
Campbell said the action would not have been filed “if we didn’t think we had a fighting chance.”
Duration of exposure a factor Separately, the collaborative dilbit report by branches of Environment Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Natural Resources Canada said the question of whether dilbit spilled in a marine environment would float or sink depended on the duration of the exposure to a number of natural processes.
The basic conclusion was that dilbit, like conventional crude, would float on salt water and sink in waves when mixed with fine sediments.
The study found that a commercial chemical dispersant, Corexit 9500, had quite limited effectiveness in dispersing dilbit.
The bitumen displayed some of the same behaviors as conventional petroleum products (such as fuel oils and conventional crudes), but also presented significant differences, notably for the rate and extend of evaporation.
The 88-page report, still regarded as an interim finding, determined that dilbit can sink if it mixes with sediments in the water and is pounded by waves.
In 2010 about 843,000 gallons of dilbit spilled from an Enbridge pipeline in the Kalamazoo River in Michigan — the largest onshore spill in North American history.
Much of that crude was sopped up, but 15 to 20 percent mixed with sediment and sank to the river bottom.
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