U.S. Not Prepared for Tar Sands Oil Spills, National Study Finds

U.S. Not Prepared for Tar Sands Oil Spills, National Study Finds

By Codi Kozacek, Circle of Blue, 10 December, 2015 

 

Report urges new regulations, research, and technology to respond to spills of diluted bitumen.

Oil gathers in a sheen near the banks of the Kalamazoo River more than a week after a spill 

of crude oil, including tar sands oil, from Enbridge Inc.’s Line 6B pipeline in 2010. It was the 

largest inland oil spill in U.S. history. Photo courtesy Sam LaSusa

Spills of heavy crude oil from western Canada’s tar sands are more difficult to clean up than other types of conventional oil, particularly if the spill occurs in water, a new study by a high-level committee of experts found. Moreover, current regulations governing emergency response plans for oil spills in the United States are inadequate to address spills of tar sands oil.

The study by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine confirmed what scientists, emergency responders, and conservationists knew anecdotally from a major oil spill that contaminated Michigan’s Kalamazoo River in 2010 and another spill in Mayflower, Arkansas in 2013. Tar sands crude, called diluted bitumen, becomes denser and stickier than other types of oil after it spills from a pipeline, sinking to the bottom of rivers, lakes, and estuaries and coating vegetation instead of floating on top of the water.

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“[Diluted bitumen] weathers to a denser material, and it’s stickier, and that’s a problem. It’s a distinct problem that makes it different from other crude.”

–Diane McKnight, Chair 
Committee on the Effects of Diluted Bitumen on the Environment

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“The long-term risk associated with the weathered bitumen is the potential for that [oil] becoming submerged and sinking into water bodies where it gets into the sediments,” Diane McKnight, chair of the committee that produced the study and a professor of engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, told Circle of Blue. “And then those sediments can become resuspended and move further downstream and have consequences not only at the ecosystem level but also in terms of water supply.”

“It weathers to a denser material, and it’s stickier, and that’s a problem. It’s a distinct problem that makes it different from other crude.” McKnight added. Weathering is what happens after oil is spilled and exposed to sunlight, water, and other elements. In order to flow through pipelines, tar sands crude oil is mixed with lighter oils, which evaporate during the weathering process. In a matter of days, what is left of the diluted bitumen can sink.

The study’s findings come amid an expansion in unconventional fuels development and transport in North America. Over the past decade, Canada became the world’s fifth largest crude oil producer by developing the Alberta tar sands. U.S. imports of Canadian crude, much of it from tar sands, increased 58 percent over the past decade, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Though oil prices are at a seven-year low, and market turbulence is expected to persist for several more years, tar sands developers are working to double the current tar sands oil production — around 2.2 million barrels per day — by 2030. Pipelines to transport all of the new oil are expanding too, producing a greater risk of spills.

Whether tar sands producers achieve that level of oil supply is not assured. Public pressure is mounting in Canada and the United States to rein in tar sands development due to considerable environmental damage and heavy carbon emissions. U.S. President Barack Obama last month scrapped the Keystone XL pipeline, an 800,000-barrel-per-day project to move crude oil from Canada’s tar sands to Gulf of Mexico refineries. An international movement to divest from fossil fuels and a legally binding global deal to cut carbon emissions –if it is signed in Paris– could curb demand for tar sands oil.                                    continued below

‘Keep It in the Ground’ Win: Utah Oil and Gas Auction Halted

‘Keep It in the Ground’ Win: Utah Oil and Gas Auction Halted

November 18, 2015     Roger Straw   Benicia Independent 

Repost from the Center For Biological Diversity 
[ sign their petition .  – RS]

 

BLM postpones Utah auction to ‘accommodate’ climate activists

By Phil Taylor, E and E News, November 17, 2015

 

The Bureau of Land Management late last night announced it is postponing today’s scheduled oil and gas lease sale in Salt Lake City to appease activists who are fighting to keep those minerals in the ground.

BLM had planned to lease up to 37,580 acres scattered around the center of the Beehive State for future oil and gas development, but the agency said it needed more time to “better accommodate the high level of public interest in attending the sale.”

It marks the first time that the “Keep it in the Ground” climate movement — which seeks to end the sale of federally owned oil, gas and coal — has disrupted a BLM lease auction.

BLM said it intends to reschedule the sale in the “near future.”

“As a public agency, we understand the importance of transparency,” said BLM spokeswoman Megan Crandall. “Given the large interest, we chose to postpone the sale and will be working to find the best way to accommodate the public and those who wish to attend and participate in the auction when it is held.”

It was the third consecutive BLM lease sale to be confronted by climate protesters who believe the burning of federally owned fossil fuels will undermine the nation’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Roughly 50 people gathered last week outside BLM’s Colorado headquarters in Lakewood to protest the agency’s sale of 90,000 acres in the Pawnee National Grassland, according to the Western Energy Alliance.

BLM moved forward with that auction, selling 106 parcels covering 83,534 acres for $5 million.
Protesters also demonstrated outside a Nov. 3 lease sale in Wyoming.

Crandall said there was not enough room in BLM’s downtown Salt Lake City auction room to accommodate members of the public who wanted to attend. The room is about 28 feet wide by 60 feet long and also has to accommodate up to 30 bidders and reporters, she said.

BLM planned to live-stream the auction, but many activists insisted on attending in person, she said.
The “Keep it in the Ground” campaign is backed by some major environmental groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council and is buoyed in Congress by legislation from Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) that would end new leasing and renewals of nonproducing federal leases for oil, coal and gas.      -continued below-

Oil Industry Turns to Pacific NW Oil Train Terminals in Wake of KXL Rejection

Oil Industry Turns to Pacific Northwest Oil Train Terminals in Wake of Keystone Rejection

New report shows controversial facilities would boost oil extraction and climate-warming pollution.

Last week, President Obama rejected the Keystone XL pipeline, a strong stand for climate protection. Yet a new report shows that the oil industry will now turn to massive oil-by-rail terminals proposed in the Pacific Northwest as a second-best alternative to Keystone. In fact, in the absence of new pipelines serving the Canadian oil sands fields, the fiercely debated Northwest rail terminals would be the sole driver of new extraction there.

That’s according to a new Sightline-commissioned analysis by independent research group Oil Change International (OCI). Taken together, the proposed Northwest oil-by-rail terminals would be the climate pollution equivalent of adding more than 28 million cars to the road.

 

Tracking Emissions

The climate impact of the proposed crude-by-rail terminals in the Pacific Northwest.

The Pacific Northwest states of Oregon and Washington are facing a quadrupling of their crude-by-rail terminal capacity to over a million barrels a day. Sightline Institute commissioned this report from Oil Change International (OCI) to examine the impact that expansion would have on climate change.

In Tracking Emissions: The Climate Impacts of the Proposed Crude-by-Rail Terminals in the Pacific Northwest, OCI deploys the oil industry’s own forecasting and modeling tools together with a detailed examination of the Northwest facilities’ configurations. Key findings in the report concern:

• Propping up Canadian tar sands: In the absence of new pipelines, Northwest rail terminals would be the sole driver of new growth in Canadian tar sands oil.
• Multiplying oil extraction and climate pollution: Oil train facilities in the Northwest could unlock as much as 382,000 barrels per day of new tar sands production that would otherwise not be extracted. The resulting greenhouse gas pollution from extra tar sands production could be as much as 106 million metric tons per year of carbon dioxide—the equivalent of doubling the total greenhouse gas pollution of Washington state.
• Feeding the Bakken beast: Northwest oil train terminals could also lead to more oil drilling in the Bakken formation, as much as 114,000 barrels per day beyond what would be produced without the terminals. The resulting greenhouse gas pollution from this extra production could be as much as 30 million tons per year of carbon dioxide—the equivalent of doubling the number of cars on the road in Oregon and Washington.

Download: Tracking Emissions, Sightline Institute, Nov 2015

 Contact:          Eric de Place, eric@sightline.org, 206-447-1880 x105

 

2nd train derails in Wisconsin in 2 days, spills crude oil

2nd train derails in Wisconsin in 2 days, spills crude oil

 November 08, 2015 Associated Press

WATERTOWN, Wis. –  A Canadian Pacific Railway train carrying crude oil derailed Sunday and prompted some evacuations in Wisconsin, the second day in a row a freight train derailed in the state.
The eastbound CP train derailed about 2 p.m. in Watertown, in the southeastern part of the state. The railroad said at least 10 cars derailed, and some were leaking.....

.... "CP takes this incident extremely seriously," the railroad said in a news release. The company did not say how much oil spilled.

Federal investigators and hazardous material specialists are on their way to the scene, the Federal Railroad Administration said in a tweet.

Residents of about 35 homes were asked to evacuate around 4 p.m., said Donna Haugom, director of the Jefferson County Office of Emergency Management.....  more here

Kalamazoo oil spill clean-up

Risky Shale Oil-by-Rail Expands Despite Lack of Spill Response Preparedness

By Justin Mikulka • Sunday, November 1, 2015    DeSmogBlog

The worst onshore oil spill in United States history was the Kalamazoo River tar sands pipeline spill in 2010 with estimates of one million gallons of oil spilled. In comparison, the oil-by-rail accident in Lac-Megantic, Quebec was 50% bigger.

With the oil-by-rail industry proposing large expansions to West Coast destinations, it is understandable that some local communities are worried about the risks of a spill causing major environmental damage and threatening human health.

While the fiery explosions get the most attention when it comes to oil train accidents, the trains also have resulted in some of the largest oil spills in North America. And that oil is usually ending up in waterways.

In Lac-Megantic, 1.5 million gallons of oil spilled with some of it ending up in the nearby lake and river. In Aliceville, Alabama it was 750,000 gallons that ended up in wetlands. In Mount Carbon, W.Va. it was approximately 400,000 gallons on the banks of the Kanawha River. In Gogama, Ontario ruptured rail tank cars ended up in the water. Just like in Lynchburg, Virginia. And the spill in Galenas, Illinois was noted to pose “imminent and substantial danger” to the Mississippi River.

People trained as first responders to marine oil spills are very clear that the speed of the response is critical for minimizing damage. On the website for the Marine Spill Response Corporation it clearly states, “During an oil spill, time is of the essence!”

Of course, the volatile nature of the Bakken crude oil means that the current recommended approach to dealing with a Bakken oil train that has derailed and is leaking and on fire is to evacuate everyone within a half-mile radius and then let the train burn — sometimes for days.

Meanwhile in January of 2014 the National Transportation Safety Board put out a safety recommendation about the current state of oil response planning for the rail industry that stated:

“oil spill response planning requirements for rail transportation of oil/petroleum products are practically nonexistent compared with other modes of transportation.”

Large oil spills resulting in dangerous fires and explosions that make quick response impossible — and yet response plans are still practically non-existent. It would seem like a recipe for disaster.

But there is a bit of hope on the horizon. The current Transportation bill approved by the House of Representatives includes requirements for actual spill response planning for oil-by-rail transportation.

Of course, since this involves the rail industry, the bill will allow the rail companies to keep the plans secret, so really there isn’t much hope at all.

This secrecy might not be as much of an issue if recent industry oil spill response plans hadn’t proven such a joke.

BP’s response plan for the Gulf of Mexico prior to the Deepwater Horizon disaster included advice on how to deal with walruses. And a link the company provided for “primary equipment providers for BP in the Gulf of Mexico Region [for] rapid deployment of spill response resources on a 24 hour, 7 days a week basis” was actually a link to a Japanese home shopping website.

It is no wonder the oil industry wants to keep its spill response plans secret, as they don’t hold up well to scrutiny. And apparently the government agencies responsible for reviewing them aren’t spending much time on the details.

 

Who Would Pay For a Worst-Case Oil-by-Rail Disaster? Not the Rail Industry

In another recent win for the rail companies, a court in Washington ruled that companies planning to build and expand oil-by-rail facilities “do not need to prove they have the financial resources to cover a worst-case scenario accident before receiving state permits.”

With this industry-friendly regulatory environment, it isn’t surprising that there is strong opposition to several new oil-by-rail facilities planned for the West Coast.

The Port of Grays Harbor in Washington is one planned location for facilities that could bring in up to fourteen unit trains of crude oil a week. The public comment period for that project is currently open and many community members are calling for a full environmental impact assessment for the projects. That’s something that wasn’t required for many existing oil-by-rail facilities on both the East and West coasts as they were approved without the public’s knowledge and regulators approved the projects without thoroughly reviewing potential environmental impacts.

The potential environmental damage of a catastrophic oil train accident exceeds the worst pipeline spill ever, and yet the oil-by-rail industry continues to expand without any response plans in place. In other words, business as usual.

In April, DeSmog reported on the testimony of Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) during a hearing on regulation of the pipeline and rail industries. She has fought for improved pipeline safety since 2010 when a pipeline explosion in her district killed eight people and burned down a neighborhood. In her testimony, she stated that “the system is fundamentally broken.”

And so the oil-by-rail industry will continue to expand with a broken regulatory system and non-existent spill response preparation. And the regulators have predicted that they expect an average of ten derailments per year for the next twenty years.

Odds are the Kalamazoo River oil spill won’t hold the record for largest spill for much longer.

Pacific Northwest to See One Million Barrels of Crude Oil Per Day, 100 Oil Trains Per Week

Sightline Institute adds up oil-by-rail plans for Salish Sea, Grays Harbor, Columbia River.

SEATTLE // The Pacific Northwest stands to see over one million barrels of crude oil per day and more than 100 loaded oil trains per week roll through the region, according to a report released this morning by Sightline Institute.

The report details the 15 refineries and port terminals across Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia that are already operating or in planning or construction stages. All of them are located along the shorelines of the Northwest’s most important waterbodies, including Puget Sound, Grays Harbor, and the Columbia River, where a spill could prove disastrous to wildlife and local jobs

Initially designed to transport and handle light shale oil from the Bakken oil formation in North Dakota, the infrastructure notably could also be used to export heavy Canadian oil. Bakken oil is especially flammable, even after degasification efforts to reduce flammability. Even heavy Canadian crude, previously thought to be safer in transit, has been involved in several fiery derailments in 2015.

Residents and first responders across the Northwest have expressed serious concerns about oil and rail companies’ lack of forthrightness in informing them of oil shipments. This week, they are joining with groups across the country in the Stop Oil Trains Week of Action.

Eric de Place, policy director of Sightline Institute, notes, “I’ve compiled these numbers for three years running, and the plans have only grown in scale. The oil industry plans to flood the Northwest and a few other regions with unprecedented volumes of crude oil bound for distant markets.”

Find the full report on Sightline Institute’s website at sightline.org/OilTrains or read more about it here.

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Sightline Institute is an independent think tank providing leading original analysis of energy, economic, and environmental policy in the Pacific Northwest.

Alberta Fire Threat Grows as It Moves Near Oil Sites

 

Smoke rises from a wildfire east of Slave Lake, Alberta May 25

Alberta Fire Threat Grows as It Moves Near Oil Sites

by Robert Tuttle    Bloomberg Business   May 27, 2015

Northern Alberta firefighters are battling a wildfire that has moved within 5 kilometers of Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.’s oil sands operations.

The Cold Lake Air Weapons Range blaze is spreading in the direction of oil and natural gas operations and threatens plants run by Canadian Natural and Cenovus Energy Inc., Scott Long, an executive director at the Alberta Emergency Management Agency, said in a news conference Wednesday. Firefighters put in containment and protection guards to keep it from getting closer, he said.

Wildfires have prompted the shutdown of 230,000 barrels a day of oil-sands output, about 10 percent of Canada’s production. Heavy Western Canadian Select crude’s discount to U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate narrowed for a second day, shrinking 75 cents to $8.75 a barrel on Wednesday, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Cenovus shut its 135,000-barrel-a-day Foster Creek operations, located near Cold Lake, on Saturday. Canadian Natural’s 80,000 barrel a day Primrose facility remained down Wednesday after shutting over the weekend, spokeswoman Julie Woo said in an e-mail. Production from the company’s Kirby South operations was reduced by 18,000 barrels a day.

The Cold Lake fire that started Saturday expanded to cover 17,500 hectares (43,000 acres), Alberta’s Environment and Sustainable Resource Development agency said on its website. Another fire near the town of Chard grew to 1,400 hectares and burned in an area with “numerous pipelines and well sites.”....    more here

A Song of Oil, Ice and Fire

Shell could be drilling in the Arctic in less than 5 weeks. It’s a choice between our natural world and an oil slick. Which will you choose? 

Watch and share this video to expose Shell’s risky Arctic drilling plans.