Oil Spills Response in Burrard Inlet, Port Metro Vancouver (includes Kinder Morgan TMPL Westridge crude oil + bitumen tankers export terminal) - OpEd from Kevin Gardner - Pres. & GM, Western Canada Marine Response Corp. (WCMRC is contracted by petroleum industry, Transport Canada, CCG + Environ CAN + DFO to provide oil + other pollutants spill response BC Coast-wide) quote: Western Canada Marine Response Corporation (WCMRC) began operations in 1976 as an industry co-op under the name Burrard Clean. At the time, our duty was to provide spill response within Port Metro Vancouver’s waters. We are now responsible for spills along the entire B.C. coastline. We currently have large warehouses in Burnaby, Duncan and Prince Rupert and equipment caches all along the coast, concentrated where shipping traffic is heaviest. Response organizations in Canada are regulated by Transport Canada and funded by the shipping and oil industries. Response times, capacity and planning standards were enshrined in law in amendments made to the Canada Shipping Act in 1995. As a Transport Canada certified response organization we need to demonstrate our ability to respond to spills on a regular basis to maintain our certification. Annually Transport Canada audits WCMRC equipment, reviews training commitments and attends both Oil Handling Facility and WCMRC exercises. Another significant concern is the behaviour of diluted bitumen in water — does it sink or float? Bitumen from Alberta’s oil sands is too thick to flow through pipelines, so it is thinned with a light petroleum product called diluent. The resulting product is known as diluted bitumen (dilbit) and because it weighs less than water it floats and is recoverable using oil skimmers. The concern is that if dilbit is allowed to weather and mix with sediment its ability to float can become compromised. Learning exactly when and in what conditions this may happen is crucial to our spill response planning. If either the proposed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion or the Northern Gateway Project moves ahead, we will clearly need to become a much, much larger organization. This growth will occur with the support of both industry and communities. As we grow and develop enhanced planning standards for the inlet, we will be looking for more input from the communities that are impacted by commercial activities in Burrard Inlet. We are currently undertaking a mapping update program for our Geographic Response Plans. We plan to map the entire coast, including Burrard Inlet. As part of our municipal engagement process on this project, we will connect with emergency planners and First Nations to seek their assistance in identifying environmental, cultural and economic sensitivities in the inlet. This feedback will assist us with updating the top sensitivities and appropriate booming strategies of our existing site-specific Geographic Response Plans. unquote blogs.theprovince/2014/03/22/kevin-gardner-spill-response-in-burrard-inlet/
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 17:47:42 +0000
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