Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Rough Waters Ahead for Harper's Supertanker Armada?

 There's a glimmer of hope that, finally, somebody may torpedo Stephen Harper's fetish to run an armada of supertankers through British Columbia's coastal waters.  That "somebody" would be the Americans whose Alaskan and Washington State marine environments could be hard hit by a bitumen supertanker disaster.

While we await a report from the U.S. Coast Guard, a 153-page report from the  emergency response division of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is raising a lot of questions.

The study examined the different ways to transport Alberta's bitumen, a molasses-like crude oil, over U.S. land and water. Those included rail, the proposed Kinder-Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline to Vancouver, the Keystone XL line to Texas from Alberta, and Northern Gateway.

"Most oilsands products are transported to market via existing and proposed pipelines; however, a sharp increase in the use of rail and marine transport can be expected while new pipelines are constructed to match the increased production of oilsands products," the report says.
 
It was written by six experts at the University of Washington and supervised by Prof. Robert Pavia of the university's School of Marine and Environmental Affairs.

"While there are many arguments about the level of risk, no one believes the risk is zero," Pavia told The Canadian Press, adding that he was speaking personally. "In my mind it's not a question of whether a spill will occur, but how well-prepared we are for a spill once it does occur."

"Little research is currently available regarding the behaviour of oilsands products spilled into water, and how they weather in the environment," the report says.

"Most tests have been conducted in the laboratory, so predicting the actual behaviour of oilsands products for a range of spills is difficult." The risks associated with carrying oilsands products over water "are not well-defined."

"Current capabilities to detect and recover oil when it sinks or is suspended in the water column are poor."

In case you can't guess, Enbridge has already dismissed the NOAA report as all wet.  The pipeline operator wishes to assure Canadians and, especially, British Columbians that we can trust them as have so many other states and municipalities - to their peril.



 
 

4 comments:

  1. .. can't wait to hear the greasy spew from Bay St Joe .. Ethical Oliver, the Harper Party Oil Harpy on this file. To be blunt, I'm not sure who's worse.. Joe or Ezra Levant.. one smirks constantly.. and both need to be turned off/shut off.. as their brand of pompous bullshite truly is disturbing.

    Bottom line though.. these two toxic fools are proud to spew the Harper talking economic toxic Rapture vision. Tankers - Good, China Royalties - Good, Environment - Bad, Concerned Citizens - Very Bad

    The whole pack of deceitful ethic less scum couldn't care a whit whether a coastline, vast ecologies, species, freshwater, democracy, truth.. just get trampled by their dim murderous economic action nonsense.. out of control obstruction, secrecy and manipulation.. or Chinese control of our resources and processes

    Fascism & ego mixes with idiocy, corporatism, evangelical dogma, incompetence and smug entitlement within this foul government that just may have been elected via massive electoral fraud and manipulation..

    Canada's issue today is not about who will win an election in 2015.. but whether Canada will understand what exactly happened in the previous election, 2011 .. and whether we have taken appropriate steps to isolate and cure the infection..

    Political parties & a government spawned by such parties ARE NOT bigger than the country and citizens they have been trusted to SERVE .. Unfortunately.. the pricks doing whatever they want currently.. seem to have missed this concept completely.

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  2. "Canada's issue today is not about who will win an election in 2015.. but whether Canada will understand what exactly happened in the previous election, 2011 .. and whether we have taken appropriate steps to isolate and cure the infection."

    Oh, of course we have, Sal. Just look for yourself - we've got Margaret Trudeau's boy and Tommy the Beard Mulcair on the job. Fear not my son.

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  3. ohhh salamander I love your terminology for joe. I just called him the resource weasel, but your terms of endearment are wayyyy better.
    but yes him and ezra pontificate alot about the benefits and ooze poetic about the economic illusions. But if one dare speak out, they are ecoterrorists. I hate joe just a bit more though. Ezra is a clown but joe is a tad too prominent on the CBC news spreading his oily lies. I think I despise him more than harper/

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