Daily Archives: January 29, 2014

B.C. coast, St. Lawrence Estuary most at Risk for Major Marine Oil Spill: Report

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Adapted from the Times Colonist at this link:
http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/b-c-coast-st-lawrence-estuary-most-at-risk-for-major-marine-oil-spill-report-1.806714

The Canadian Press
January 29, 2014 01:24 PM  

OTTAWA — A government-commissioned risk analysis says the coast of southern British Columbia and the Gulf of St. Lawrence are the Canadian areas most vulnerable marine oil spills and among the most likely for a major spill to occur.

The findings will add to the debate over several pipeline proposals — including two in B.C. that the report says will substantially increase marine risks.

The 256-page study, delivered this month to Transport Canada, looks at the risks associated with marine oil spills south of the 60th parallel under current shipping volumes.

race-rocks-lighthouseIt identifies the southern tip of Vancouver Island, the Cabot Strait off Newfoundland, the eastern coast of Cape Breton Island and the Gulf of St. Lawrence as the most probable areas for a major oil spill.

But the study also assesses the potential impact of four proposed pipeline projects, including the Northern Gateway Pipeline to Kitimat and Kinder Morgan’s plan to almost triple its Trans Mountain line into Vancouver.

The report says the Kinder Morgan proposal would essentially double oil traffic in an already vulnerable marine environment — with a corresponding increase in spill frequency — while the Northern Gateway marine route would turn what are currently very low, near-shore risks into very high risks.

The study found that reversing Enbridge’s Line 9 to carry Western Canadian crude to refineries in Montreal and Quebec City would actually lower marine spill risks, as it would reduce oil imports through the sensitive Gulf of St. Lawrence.

And the study found that the proposed Energy East Pipeline to St. John, N.B., would likely be a wash, reducing shipping imports but increasing oil exports to leave the overall marine risk about where it is now.

© Copyright Times Colonist

Posts on this website about the risk of oil spills on Metchosin’s shores:

Posts on the Ecological Reserves website about the threat of Oil Spills from Tanker Traffic

Posts on the Race Rocks website about the Risk from Increased Tanker Traffic

See the following posts for further information on Tanker traffic off our shores:

figure-3-overall-risks-oil- spills

 Review of Canada’s Ship-Source Oil-Spill Preparedness and response Regime: 

 

 

Application to NEB by Board of Friends of Ecological Reserves

mapandships
 Ship traffic in the Strait of Juan de Fuca

The Future for our Elephant Seal Population in the Event of Oil Spills.

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Elephant seal mother and pup born at Race Rocks Ecological reserve on January 14, 2014

Elephant seal mother and pup born at Race Rocks Ecological Reserve on January 14, 2014,  Photo by Alex Fletcher

This post has been adapted from a January 24 entry on the racerocks.ca website

British Columbians and Metchosinites in particular can take great satisfaction in the fact that an Elephant seal colony is being slowly established in British Columbia right on their doorstep, We can can still go to camera 1 on racerocks.ca to see an elephant seal pup being nursed via a webcam on an island beside Metchosin.  The reality is that the risks these animals face in the Strait of Juan de Fuca if they are to maintain a population increase are now becoming even more challenging.

Currently about 6,000 large commercial vessels transit Canadian and U.S. waters toward Vancouver or Washington ports each year. Each month about five large oil tankers ply the waters down the international border within a few kilometres of the Race Rocks Ecological Reserve.

Under the Kinder Morgan Pipeline Proposal, up to 34 tankers a month would be loaded with oil at a terminal outside Vancouver, then travel through Haro Strait and the Strait of Juan de Fuca for export to markets in Asia and the U.S.  These are tankers in excess of 200 metres in length. 

The $5.4 billion expansion project would nearly triple pipeline capacity from about 300,000 to 890,000 barrels of crude oil a day to meet customer demand. Much of that future cargo will likely be diluted bitumen from Canada’s tar  sands. If approved, the expansion is expected to be operational in late 2017. The pipeline is operated by Kinder Morgan Canada and owned by Houston-based Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP.

The potential of collision and oil spills is unparalleled, and you can’t clean oil off a two ton marine mammal very easily let alone the volumes of marine life it consumes daily for survival. It would be a miracle indeed if we still have elephant seals at Race Rocks in 2020, the 40th anniversary of the Ecological Reserve. 

G.Fletcher

References we could all consider seriously:

  • Financial Liability for Kinder Morgan – Georgia Strait Alliance,

    “Residents of the Salish Sea region—Vancouver, Victoria, the Gulf Islands and Washington State—could see a four-fold increase in the number of oil tankers traveling from the Port of Metro Vancouver through Juan de Fuca Strait, if Kinder Morgan is permitted to build a new pipeline to carry oil from the tar sands to markets in Asia. Such a dramatic increase signals exponentially higher risk of oil spills and raises many questions about what is at risk, how the oil is “cleaned up”, and who pays for oil spill response. “

  • The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Marine Mammals by the marine mammal Commission, an independent commission of the US government
  • Effects of Oil Spills on Marine and Coastal Wildlife–“Oil spills can impact wildlife directly through three primary pathways: —ingestion – when animals swallow oil particles directly or consume prey items that have been exposed to oil .—–absorption – when animals come into direct contact with oil inhalation – when animals breathe volatile organics released from oil or from “dispersants” applied by response teams in an effort to increase the rate of degradation of the oil in seawater. ——inhalation – when animals breathe volatile organics released from oil or from “dispersants” applied by response teams in an effort to increase the rate of degradation of the oil in seawater”
  • Effects of Oil Pollution on Marine WIldlife ”  Seals are very vulnerable to oil pollution because they spend much of their time on or near the surface of the water. They need to surface to breathe, and regularly haul out onto beaches. During the course of an oil pollution incident, they are at risk both when surfacing and when hauling out.”
  • Marine mammals and the Exxon Valdez Auteur : LOUGHLIN Thomas R. “This recently published book is a unique longitudinal study of the demise of an ecosystem due to a single acute environmental perturbation.”

Posts on this and other  local websites about the effects of Oilspills.

Mergansers out in full force today.

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In the Christmas Bird Count this year, one of the marine birds noted in particularly high numbers was the Common  Merganser, Mergus merganser, with a count of 258 along the Metchosin/Sooke shores.

I noted today( rainy and overcast)  that there were 32 Common Mergansers ( 6 males and  26 females down on the north end of Taylor Beach . Often when we see them there throughout the winter, they are in smaller groups and are continually diving for food. Today the pattern was quite different as they were all in  courtship mood.  The males have a distinctive forward bow, then an upward stretch of their necks  and then a quick scurry on the surface around  a female. These are probably one of the most colourful seabirds on our coast and well worth looking for in protected bays and inlets during the winter. (Pedder Bay also often has a dozen or so) .

Of course these birds as other over-wintering seabirds in our water are very vulnerable to oil spills. If the Kinder-Morgan Pipeline goes through, The current risk from a maximum of  5 oil tankers going through the southern entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca each day, is bad enough, but when one contemplates the added risk of accidents from 34 tankers (each over 200 metres in length) plying our waters  by 2015, the future for overwintering birds like this is rather dismal.

Other articles about this concern: