Trans Mountain has plans to start construction on its $7.4-billion pipeline expansion project this month, according to its website.
The National Energy Board (NEB) announced last week that the company had met all its pre-construction conditions for the Westridge Marine Terminal, where a new dock with three berths and a utility dock are expected to take shape.
But before any shovel hits the ground, the company still has to acquire additional permits, including ones from the Port of Vancouver and Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
With pipelines top of mind for many folks in Burnaby, the NOW sat down with Rob Steedman, the NEB’s chief environmental officer, to discuss the topic.
Steedman, a former scientist, has been with the national energy regulator for 14 years.
Is this pipeline good for the environment?
Our objective is to make sure the pipeline is in the public interest. That’s our job under the (National Energy Board) Act. We have a very detailed online filing manual that says, ‘Here’s the things we need to know about your project before we’ll go to a hearing, and before you’re all good to go, you’re going to have answers for everything – from environmental, socio-economic engagement, safety, emergency response, financial, etc.’ Through the hearing, it gets dialed in through the specific concerns along the line – the geography, the engineering, social conditions, etc.
Oral examination was not part of the NEB’s Kinder Morgan hearings. Why?
Parliament sets the rules for us; they set the law that there are time limits and that only directly affected persons could have standing. That was the new law, so those two things had to be balanced. The board hearings, various other kinds of hearings, can have a written process and it can have written questioning, so we’ve done that many, many times. That panel at that time was following to the best of its ability the intent of Parliament on the process. ... In terms of oral cross examination, clearly people want that. They like the face-to-face. For a lot of people, having their say is, ‘I want to stand up in front and I want to say my peace.’
But they didn’t get that chance...
It has to be balanced with a process that doesn’t go on for five years. That’s just the trade-off. Under the legal framework and the circumstances, different panels may make difference choices, and the Government (of Canada) is now reviewing that whole framework.
Given the severity of climate change, how is another pipeline moving in the right direction?
We kind of go back to the job the NEB’s given. A company has the right to propose infrastructure and the government needs to make a decision based on facts and science, etc. ... The government has committed to the Paris Agreement. Getting to Paris is not a straightforward thing. It requires national energy systems to change. It requires all of those things, and the details aren’t laid out yet. So when a company in a country that produces things and needs to move them has a project proposed, we have processes in place to make the best possible decision at that point.
The NEB recently announced new guidelines around the Energy East pipeline, taking climate change into consideration and focusing on both upstream and downstream emissions. Can the same be said for Kinder Morgan?
No, different processes and different times. But the government did add upstream quantification to Kinder Morgan under the interim guidelines when the new federal government was elected. That was one of the first things they did, was they said, ‘We’re going to do some extra things on any of these pipelines.’ ... It’s hard to exaggerate how much things have changed in 10 years on pipelines. From almost zero public interest to, ‘Stop the country while we figure this out.’ That is a combination of concerns about climate change, better public communication, governments making more commitments about doing a better job on climate. Everyone expects the fossil fuels to be part of the mix in some kind of managed transition, maybe an aggressively managed one, but you know, in the meantime, that’s where we’re at. We’re just in a time when it’s not easy. Civilization runs on this stuff (oil) for now.
Many folks in Burnaby are worried about a major spill in the Burrard Inlet or a major tank fire on Burnaby Mountain. Ten years ago, an excavator ruptured a pipeline supplying crude oil from the Kinder Morgan tank farm, and oil sprayed for about 25 minutes. What do you tell those people?
It’s like anything people rely on, any technology they rely on. Our focus is to make sure the design and the execution and the operation are safe. We know the systems, when they’re built and operated under the engineering standards and the conditions we require, we know they’re safe. We have 50, 60 years of evidence. Mistakes happen, and it’s all about working on cutting down human error, increasing maintenance. Maintenance is a huge part of these things. The metallurgy and the welding, everything is getting better all the time. Just like in aviation accidents, every accident, as horrific as it is, makes the system safer because you find something maybe you didn’t anticipate. ... Pipelines are a kind of technology. They’re interesting because they’re so long, and they go through so many places, and they’re underground, and occasionally they fail. It’s about preventing failure. The NEB’s focus is on the protection of people and the environment. When you do have these accidents, you can almost never predict when or where they will occur because a bunch of things had to line up for it to happen. It’s inherently unpredictable. You need to have a response system in place. We require companies to do full-scale exercises every few years.
In 2015, the Burnaby Fire Department released a report on Kinder Morgan’s tank farm, warning that the proposed expansion could put the public and environment at risk. It outlined worst-case scenarios, including earthquakes, flammable crude leaks and exploding tanks. While Kinder Morgan’s assessment has said the risk is low, why should Burnaby residents take that risk on?
That was a big topic of the hearing. The physics and the safety measures for tank farms are well understood. We are requiring the company to do state-of-the-art design around those kinds of things. It is as safe as it can be designed and built to be safe. I guess it goes back to my earlier answer. We live with technology and our job as a life-cycle regulator is to make sure society’s interests are protected. We can shut them down anytime we believe they need to be shut down, we can restrict them or we can order them to do various things. We have a constant oversight through the life cycle. We inspect them, we audit their management systems, we test their training, we make sure they’re doing what we have come to believe is necessary to provide that level of protection. Part of it is you’ve got infrastructure where urban development has occurred around it. What I think that means is the onus and obligation of the regulator is to continue to get better, and we expect the company to continue to get better and anticipate those hazards. I can’t tell people to relax. I don’t think it’s appropriate to relax, but I think it’s appropriate to be informed and work with the system that’s involved in any kind of response. You’ve got the Coast Guard, you’ve got the company, you’ve got first responders. ... It’s not just pipelines. You look around here, there’s all kinds of stuff that you need to be aware of.
People are worried about diluted bitumen (dilbit) and how it’s not recoverable should there be a spill.
There’s been a lot of misinformation about dilbit. Some of it was systematically put out to be misinformation, that dilbit sinks when it hits water. It doesn’t. Dilbit is fundamentally different than crude oil. A lot of it came from the Kalamazoo incident. ... Dilbit floats when it hits water. It’s lighter than water. It’s a mixture of heavy stuff and light stuff. The light stuff evaporates. It weathers just like crudes weather in an hourly basis. They’re basically biodegradable and they weather, they change, they thicken, and eventually, they sink. There’s no good story when you have an oil spill. You have to prevent the oil spill. If it occurs at a loading dock, you’re likely to recover all of it because it’s contained, etc. Oil spills on the open sea, they’re not recovered. Spill response timing, for any crude, is hours to days. That’s all you’ve got; beyond that you’re not going to recover.
