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Enbridge to improve risk assessment on proposed Northern Gateway pipeline
Jul 1, 2011, Vancouver Sun (Read article on originating site site)
Alberta-based Enbridge acknowledged Thursday it needs to improve its risk assessment of potential accidents along the route of a controversial proposed pipeline that would deliver crude oil to the west coast of British Columbia. A company spokesman made the comments in response to a new analysis to be submitted Friday to a government review panel that raises questions about potential impacts of the Northern Gateway project.
“There are major sources of uncertainty that are not adequately acknowledged and/or incorporated into the analysis,” said the review, prepared by Stella Swanson, a Calgarybased aquatic biologist.
The review analyzed the company’s public submissions to the government panel that is assessing the environmental impacts of the $5.5-billion Northern Gateway project. The pipeline would link Edmonton with Kitimat, B.C., and is estimated to deliver up to $2.6 billion in tax revenues and create thousands of jobs in the process.
But it has also provoked a strong opposition from environmental groups concerned about impacts related to the project and expansion of oilsands production as well as first nations groups and the Union of British Columbia Municipalities, which have argued that the risks outweigh the benefits.
The report was commissioned by the Dogwood Initiative, a conservation group based in British Columbia that received about $10,000 in funding from the government review panel as part of the assessment process.
“There are no evaluations of the effectiveness of prevention and mitigation measures in the context of the actual environment of the pipeline and marine terminal,” said the review by Swanson, whose son also works for the Dogwood Initiative in B.C. “There are no commitments by the proponent to research and development of prevention and mitigation measures. Monitoring programs are described in an extremely cursory manner and there is no description of how monitoring data will be used to feed back into operations and further mitigation.”
Swanson has done extensive work throughout her career in assessing risks for departments and agencies in federal and provincial governments as well as industry stakeholders such as Syncrude.
Despite her link to a member of the conservation group, a spokesman for Enbridge, Paul Stanway, said that Swanson is a respected scientist with a distinguished career who was raising legitimate questions about the pipeline.
But he said that Enbridge would be updating its research to assess the concerns she raised about its risk management in the coming months, “well in advance of public hearings” about the project.
“You have to regard this [assessment by Enbridge] as a work in progress,” said Stanway. “These are reasonable questions and we will be providing answers.”
In an interview, Swanson said her report also reflects important lessons learned in following recent accidents such as the BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico as well as a leak last July on a U.S. Enbridge pipeline that resulted in more than three million litres of crude oil spilling into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan.
“Those were low probability, high consequence events,” said Swanson. “But the problem is they happen, and that means you have to be prepared and also prior to any pipeline being constructed, decision makers need to know, up front, what they’re signing off on.”
She said that in the absence of an adequate risk management plan, an accident on the Northern Gateway project could do serious damage to wildlife, vegetation and ecosystems around the terminal in Kitimat.
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