What's The Real Story

What's The Real Story

Steve Mertl
Day by day Brew
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An aerial view exhibits the spill of emulsion mendacity on the floor on a feeder pipeline hall near the Nexen Energy's Lengthy Lake oilsands facility south of Fort McMurray, Alberta in this handout photo supplied by Nexen Energy on July 21, 2015. Nexen, a subsidiary of China's CNOOC Ltd, found final week that the double-layer pipeline, built in 2014 south of Fort McMurray in Alberta, had leaked greater than 31,500 barrels of emulsion - a mix of bitumen, water and sand - onto an space of about 16,000 square meters. REUTERS/Nexen Power/Handout by way of Reuters CONSIDERATION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS OFFERED BY A THIRD SOCIAL GATHERING. REUTERS IS UNABLE TO INDEPENDENTLY VERIFY THE AUTHENTICITY, CONTENT MATERIAL, LOCATION OR DATE OF THIS PICTURE. THIS PICTURE IS DISTRIBUTED EXACTLY AS OBTAINED BY REUTERS, AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS. NO SALES. NO ARCHIVES. FOR EDITORIAL USE SOLELY. NOT FOR SALE FOR ADVERTISING AND MARKETING OR ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS.
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The recent spill of diluted oil sands bitumen after a pipeline break in northern Alberta has largely fallen off the information radar in most of Canada.
It's in all probability not shocking, given the remote location at Nexen Energy's production website near Fort McMurray. If five million litres (about 30,000 Imperial barrels) of emulsion made up of bitumen, water and sand had created a small lake close to, say, Calgary, it will be front-web page information.
Nonetheless, those who follow such issues have taken word. The double-walled production pipeline was solely about a year outdated and supposedly had the latest leak-detection expertise. Each apparently failed; it was a Nexen employee who happened to be in the space who noticed the spill.
The embattled vitality business can sick afford another black mark. It is already powerful enough to sell Canadians on the idea of extra pipelines to pump large quantities of bitumen diluted with solvents (generally known as diluent) by means of pipelines headed west to the B.C. coast, east via central Canada and south to the U.S.
Environmentalists and local weather-change activists lobbying to stop the multi-billion-dollar projects have pointed to current large-scale spills such because the Nexen incident as a purpose to quash them. Proponents, including Alberta's newly-elected NDP Premier Rachel Notley, say while spills are unwelcome, pipelines are nonetheless the most secure strategy to transfer giant volumes of oil, compared with rail tank cars (bear in mind Lac-Megantic?) or even vans.
If you happen to take the local weather-change crowd out of the equation - they oppose any new pipelines as a result of they foster increased carbon emissions - then pipeline safety becomes the primary level of rivalry.
Simply how secure are Canada's pipelines and the way prepared are their house owners to reply if there is a serious spill?
The Canadian Power Pipeline Association (CEPA) , which represents the key pipeline transmission firms, refused a request from Yahoo Canada to speak about security.
However interviews with the two federal companies charged with regulating interprovincial transmission pipelines and investigating incidents (the provinces regulate inside networks) suggest the specter of spills, giant and small, can by no means be fully eliminated.
A U.S. pipeline professional also said we should not place our faith in warning techniques touted in functions for brand spanking new initiatives such because the Northern Gateway line from Alberta to the West Coast and the Energy East challenge that would re-goal an present line to move bitumen to the East Coast.
In line with statistics posted by the Transportation Security Board (TSB), there are greater than 21,600 kilometres federally-regulated oil pipelines in all, plus almost fifty six,000 km of pure gasoline strains. They moved about 1.4 billion barrels of oil and 5.four trillion cubic ft of fuel final year.
The TSB recorded 5 pipeline accidents under federal jurisdiction final year, down from eleven in 2013 and below the 5-yr average of 10, despite an increase in pipeline exercise. The accident charge primarily based on the quantity of product moved dropped considerably. Over the last decade, simply over a quarter of the accidents occurred on the transmission strains, whereas nearly half occurred at compressor stations and the remaining in different places, akin to gathering lines.
Most accidents spilled only some barrels of oil
Both larger accidents final 12 months concerned pure gasoline traces, not oil. In the final decade there were 14 accidents, the bulk involving just a few barrels of oil, the TSB data shows.
The variety of accidents and incidents is pretty much steady over the past 10 years,” Manuel Kotchounian, the TSB's performing supervisor of pipelines, stated in an interview.
Pipeline incident reports, which seize other problems not necessarily including the discharge of oil or gas, numbered 133 last year, up from 118 in 2013. The rise was partly attributable to regulation modifications that defined the security zone surrounding the pipeline. When it came to grease spills, 75 per cent had been a cubic metre (roughly six barrels) or less.
Thus far this yr, federally regulated strains recorded one accident, resulting in a fire or explosion, and 15 incidents (all now referred to as occurrences) in all, with no uncontained releases. The TSB's desk doesn't escape oil and fuel separately.
The story is a little bit completely different in Alberta, which has 415,000 kilometres of pipelines below the Alberta Power Regulator's jurisdiction. There have been 5 pipeline breaks leading to main spills since 2011, not counting the most recent Nexen one.
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Greenpeace climate and energy campaigner Mike Hudema said the province has averaged two spills a day for the final 37 years, which is certainly atrocious by anybody's requirements despite the fact that industry does try to spin that quantity every once in a while.”
Hudema, based in Edmonton, faults in part an insanely low” rate of inspections of strains in the province's getting older pipeline infrastructure, saying to examine every line in Alberta at least as soon as would take a century.
However can we extrapolate Alberta's alleged issues to federally-regulated interprovincial transmission strains? There's cause for concern, Hudema argues, as a result of the national carriers use a lot the same technology.
An American with more than 30 years in the pipeline sector as a designer, operator and advisor additionally shares in the skepticism about industry safety claims.
The Nexen accident and its delayed discovery weren't a surprise, Richard Kuprewicz, president of Accufacts Inc. of Redmond, Wash., mentioned in an interview.
The general public thinks it is like a balloon: If it breaks or leaks, it bursts, so all people should see that,” he said. In fairness to the industry, it is much more difficult problem to establish releases.”
Oil discharges are caused by anything from pinhole leaks to large stress-related pipe fractures, all of which are although to pinpoint.
Even the ruptures can be very difficult to establish,” said Kuprewicz.
No nation has good pipeline regulation, says expert
Kuprewicz has made submissions at National Energy Board pipeline applications, including TransCanada PipeLines Ltd.'s Vitality East undertaking, which uses a mixture of new and re-purposed pipe to maneuver bitumen diluent east.
No nation has an ideal regulatory system, he mentioned. Each has strengths and weaknesses. For Kuprewicz, Canada's weak point is its overuse” of threat-management approaches to make selections on pipeline design, siting and operation. The engineering danger evaluation approach used in this nation to validate the integrity of a line and predict the time it will take before it fails is flawed, he believes. They typically miss time to failure by many years, he mentioned.
My opinion would be too many corporations are misapplying the engineering assessments and going nicely beyond what the technology can do,” he said.

Iain Colquhoun, the NEB's chief engineer, rejects Kuprewicz's view.
We're accountable to the folks of Canada for the protection of pipelines, so we are usually risk-averse,” he instructed Yahoo Canada.
We are inclined to look very skeptically at risk assessments given to us and make sure the assumptions which might be made are conservative assumptions, reasonable and conservative assumptions.”
Canada's regulatory philosophy is little totally different from different places the place Colquhoun has worked, together with Britain, Texas and Southeast Asia, he stated.
The fundamental methodologies which might be used with all of those jurisdictions may be very similar,” he said. I might say there is no shortcomings in our approach. We're not less than as good as any of the rest.
We've not seen something within the failure rates that lead us to consider that we're in any method worse than some other jurisdiction.”
Leak detection has been fingered as one other villain in pipeline breaks, notoriously within the four.5-million-litre spill close to Little Buffalo, Alta., in 2011 and three-million-litre spill into Michigan's Kalamazoo River that gave Calgary-based Enbridge Vitality a a black eye.
It went seventeen and a half hours earlier than any person isolated the rattling thing and initiated an oil spill response,” Kuprewicz identified.
The core expertise used to warn pipeline control rooms about leaks dates again a long time Hudema famous. It relies on common inspections through so-referred to as sensible pigs” which are run by the pipeline and on mass balancing, where controllers monitor how much product leaves the road in contrast with how much was put in.
Leak-sensing equipment not that dependable
Analysis of 10 years of U.S. spill information from the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Supplies Safety Administration between 2002 and 2012 confirmed distant sensors detected leaks only 5 per cent of the time, based on a Bloomberg Enterprise information report.
Kuprewicz said the conclusion is a bit of harsh: The figure is extra like eighty per cent detection failure.
It is a very high percentage, that's the point,” he mentioned. Whether it is 95 or eighty, it's a large quantity.”
He and Hudema agree the candidates for brand spanking new traces reminiscent of Energy East and Northern Gateway (Enbridge) oversell leak-detection as a security web.
I do not necessarily suppose they're mendacity to folks or deceiving individuals, however they're overstating their capabilities in order to sell the venture,” Kuprewicz said.
The TSB's Kotchounian can't recall the agency identifying leak detection as a selected downside in any latest investigations.
Colquhoun of the NEB does not imagine remote leak sensing has been oversold, though it is puzzling the Nexen leak was missed.
That should have been picked up very easily with what we call mass balancing, in different phrases, the quantity that comes out must be the amount that goes in,” he mentioned.
Pipeline operators augment remote leak detection with air patrols and workers literally strolling the line.
It's unrealistic to count on a hundred per cent pipeline reliability or good leak detection, Kuprewicz said. The technology continues to evolve, including recent developments in exterior leak detection, including the usage of sonar and aerial surveillance that do not depend on figuring out what is going on on contained in the pipe.
In hyper-sensitive areas, the place oil could be a very terrible thing because you'll by no means be able to clean it up, they've tried those in area purposes, actually in operating lines,” he stated.
Colquhoun mentioned detecting major pipeline ruptures should not the largest drawback.
It's the small leaks that may happen over a time period. That's where the larger challenge is,” he said. The methodologies for locating those is creating but there's nonetheless a bit of work to be finished.
On a brand new pipeline you wouldn't expect that to occur. However an previous line, where you are coping with ongoing upkeep, there's a risk you may get these very small leaks.”
If you cannot rely on leak detection, it makes corporations' spill response even more necessary, mentioned Kuprewicz.
However perceive that spill response is after the actual fact; the genie's out of the bottle,” he stated.
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