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Enbridge swarmed by protesters
Gary Park For Petroleum News
Although barred from entering the main hearing room, hundreds of protesters occupied the surrounding area when Enbridge’s Northern Gateway project started its regulatory appearances in Vancouver Jan. 14 after a similar reception at the provincial capital in Victoria.
Activists representing various environmental and aboriginal causes made enough noise to be heard inside the hotel where a joint review panel of the National Energy Board was entering the final weeks of its hearings.
A separate viewing site was set up in a nearby hotel to live-stream the hearings and 330 individuals registered to make oral statements to the panel, but that was unacceptable to the protesters who have labeled the hearings undemocratic.
Suresh Fernando, one of the protest organizers, told reporters the panel will hear comments only on issues relating to the Enbridge application and not to the oil sands (the source of the 525,000 barrels per day of crude bitumen Northern Gateway is designed to export).
“They’re constraining the dialogue,” she said.
Concern over spill risks First Nations, environmentalists and some northern British Columbia communities are challenging the project because of the risks posed by spills from pipelines and tankers, rejecting Enbridge’s claim that the project can be built and operated safely.
In a submission to the panel, Gerald Graham, of Victoria-based Worldocean Consulting, said that based on Enbridge’s own research there is an 8.7 percent to 14.1 percent chance of at least one tanker spill of more than 31,500 barrels over a 50-year period.
“The consequences of a major spill along B.C.’s northern coast could be catastrophic and irreversible,” he wrote.
“Couple this potentially disastrous outcome with a one-in-seven chance of one or more major spills occurring and the overall threat level posed by Northern Gateway becomes unacceptably high,” he said.
Graham noted that tanker owners and not Enbridge would be responsible for any oil-spill cleanup operations and associated cost, while Enbridge had not adequately explained how it would clean up after a bitumen spill.
A spokesman for Enbridge countered that more than 1,500 tankers carrying petroleum products safely used the deepwater port at Kitimat from 1982 to 2009.
He said Enbridge is committed to vetting tankers through a third-party agency before they enter the port, along with escort tugs and tethered tugs and to a radar system to augment an automatic identification system being installed along coastal routes, plus an emergency response capacity that “exceeds Canadian requirements.”
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