If the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion goes through, the company plans to invest $100 million in marine oil spill response plans, which include opening five new bases in B.C., 100 new staff and cutting spill response times in half.
“As part of the expansion, there’s a commitment to have an enhancement of (Western Canada Marine Response Corporation)’s existing resources,” said Kinder Morgan’s Mike Davies. “It would result in doubling of planning standards for response capacity.”
Western Canada Marine Response Corporation is responsible for marine oil spill cleanup in B.C., and the Kinder Morgan plan would increase the company’s staff from roughly 50 to 150.
“We think it’s fantastic. The proposal by Trans Mountain will only benefit the entire shipping community in terms of the response,” said Michael Lowry, spokesperson for the corporation.
WCMRC’s main base is in Burnaby. The Kinder Morgan plan includes five new bases, some of which will be operating 24 hours. The locations have not been finalized yet, but WCMRC is considering areas near Deltaport, Nanaimo, Sidney, Sooke and Ucluelet.
Staffing and equipping those bases requires roughly $100 million and 100 new employees for WCMRC, which currently has about 50 fulltime staff.
“That’s going to be a significant increase in our capacity,” Lowry said.
For spills in the Vancouver port, initial response times would be reduced from six hours to two. The next step involves bringing in extra vessels and equipment to handle a spill up to 20,000 tonnes, and the response time for that would go from 72 hours to 36. Spills outside Vancouver’s port would have a six-hour response time along the southern shipping route, which runs underneath the lower portion of Vancouver Island.
WCMRC is now required to handle a cleanup for 10,000 tonnes of oil within 10 days, according to Transport Canada regulations, although the cleanup company can actually handle up to 26,000 tonnes, but that’s for the entire West Coast of B.C.
With the Kinder Morgan expansion, the volume would increase to 20,000 tonnes for the southern shipping route.
An Aframax tanker, which is the type typically filling up at Westridge, can carry up to 120,000 tonnes of crude, but they can only be filled to 80 to 90 per cent capacity, depending on the tides.
WCMRC has agreed to bolster response plans for Kinder Morgan as long as its existing customers don’t have to pay. That’s why Kinder Morgan is charging its tanker customers an extra, temporary fee to cover the capital investment needed to boost response capacity.
Kinder Morgan has applied to the National Energy Board to twin the Trans Mountain pipeline and expand the Burnaby Mountain tank farm and the Westridge Marine Terminal, where tankers fill up with crude. If the expansion is approved, the resulting tanker traffic would increase from five vessels per month to 34.
