Kinder Morgan passed a fake oil spill drill with flying colours apart from a few areas needing improvement.
Kinder Morgan held the review on Oct. 29 under the watchful eyes of the NEB, which posted the results online last week – a first for the national regulator.
The drill scenario was that oil leaked around the Westridge Marine Terminal on Burrard Inlet, where tankers fill up with crude. The company then set up an incident command post, and multiple agencies – including the Coast Guard and Port Metro Vancouver – were involved in the drill.
Kinder Morgan met the regulatory requirements in the vast majority of areas under review, like setting up an incident command post and getting oil spill equipment deployed in a timely fashion.
There were, however, a couple of areas the NEB flagged for improvement. There were issues around monitoring hydrogen sulfide fumes, as personnel had differing assumptions about whether the poisonous gas would be in the spilled crude.
“That’s a coordination matter that the company is going to have to sort out,” said NEB spokesperson Darin Barter. Barter said the differing assumptions were about whether the gas was part of the drill or not.
The NEB also noted reports to unified command in the early stages of the fake spill weren’t detailed enough, and there wasn’t enough time to debrief and share new learning once the exercise was over. Kinder Morgan was also lacking in an incident action plan, which Barter explained was only for the drill and wouldn’t be used in a real-life spill.
The City of Burnaby and the local fire department were invited to participate, but both declined.
“It was decided that unless there was an open dialogue between the parties, it wouldn’t be productive,” said deputy fire chief Chris Bowcock, when asked why the department wouldn’t attend. Bowcock also said the exercise was a marine drill and had nothing to do with the tank farm on Burnaby Mountain, which has been a point of contention with local firefighters.
