2011 Rainbow Pipeline diluted bitumen leak in Alberta (Rogu Collecti/Greenpeace)
VANCOUVER – A new federal government study has concluded that diluted bitumen — the product that would be transported by the Northern Gateway pipeline — sinks in seawater when battered by waves and mixed with sediments.
However, when free of sediments, the molasses-like crude floats even after evaporation and exposure to light.
The report also says that the commercial dispersant, Corexit 9500, used in previous clean-up efforts had a limited effect on dispersing diluted bitumen.
The study examined two blends of crude, the Access Western Blend and Cold Lake Blend, which represent the highest volume of bitumen products transported by pipeline in Canada between 2012 and 2013.
Conducting research on how the oil would behave in a marine environment was one of the 209 conditions announced by a review panel that approved the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline in December.
The pipeline, if approved by the federal government, would carry diluted bitumen from Alberta’s oil sands to tankers on the British Columbia coast.
A visualization of industrial impacts across Canada as of 2010 (Global Forest Watch)
A national study suggests that Alberta has disturbed more natural landscape than any other province.
The analysis by Global Forest Watch adds that Wild Rose Country also has two of the three areas in Canada where the rate of disturbance is the highest.
“There were at least three major hotspots, two in Alberta,” said report author Peter Lee.
The report (download here) combines government data, satellite imagery and cropland maps to look at human intrusions in the last decade into all major Canadian ecozones. Those disruptions included everything from roads to seismic lines to clearcuts to croplands.
“We took all the available credible data sets that we could find and combined them all,” said Lee. “We ended up with what we believe is the best available map of human footprint across Canada.”
Alberta leads in the amount of land disturbed at about 410,000 square kilometres. Almost two-thirds of the province — 62 per cent — has seen industrial or agricultural intrusion.
Saskatchewan, at 46 per cent, is second among the larger provinces. Quebec comes nearest in area with 347,000 square kilometres.
The Maritime provinces actually have the highest rate of disturbance. The human footprint in Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia is 94, 85 and 72 per cent respectively of each province’s total area. But those provinces are so relatively small that the actual amount of disturbed land is dwarfed by totals elsewhere.
When Lee compared the current map to one developed about 10 years ago, he found two of three areas where the rate of development was highest were in Alberta as well — one was in the oilsands region; the other along the eastern slopes of the Rockies.
The third area is in a heavily logged part of northern Quebec. New intrusion in northeastern British Columbia, where there is extensive energy development, is almost as heavy.
Lee said development in the three top zones is pushing into previously untouched land at the rate of five to 10 kilometres a year.
The report’s calculations include a 500-metre buffer zone, which corresponds to the distance animals such as woodland caribou tend to keep between themselves and development.
Duncan MacDonnell of Alberta Environment said the government has plans to set aside about 20 per cent of the remaining boreal forest, which covers the northern third of the province.
That includes about 20,000 square kilometres in the oilsands region. MacDonnell said Alberta plans to eventually combine old and new protected areas to create the largest connected boreal conservation area in North America.
Those plans haven’t been implemented and all are the subject of controversy with area aboriginals.
MacDonnell said the province is developing land-use plans for the entire province which are intended to balance pressures on the landscape.
Representatives from the federal government were not available for comment.
Lee notes his findings come at a time when Canadian and provincial policies on development are being increasingly scrutinized, whether they involve forestry, energy or agriculture. He said this sort of basic, common-sense data-gathering should be done by Ottawa.
“It’s those sort of general questions that the person in the street asks,” said Lee. “Where are all the disturbances in Canada? Where are the pristine areas?
“This is a simple monitoring analysis that should be done and could very easily be done by the feds … (but) they’re not doing it.”
The wastewater is created when some of the chemical-laced water used to fracture thick underground rocks flows back out of the wellbore. The water is tainted with chemicals, toxins and in some parts of the country — such as Pennsylvania — naturally occurring radioactive materials, such as radium. Research has shown that even wastewater that had been treated with conventional means was changing the chemistry of rivers when discharged into waterways.
In 2011, Pennsylvania barred drillers from taking the wastewater to treatment facilities, forcing them to haul the fluid waste to be disposed in underground injection wells in Ohio. This, along with a lack of freshwater in other parts of the country needed to drill new wells, has scientists and the industry looking for creative solutions.
Mining waste and fracking radiation – an unlikely marriage
The discovery by Duke University researchers would allow oil and gas drillers to combine flowback waters from the fracking process with acid drainage from mining, or any other salty water. The solids that form, which include radioactive materials, are removed and dumped at a hazardous waste landfill, and then the now cleaner water is used to drill a new well, said Avner Vengosh, the Duke professor who oversaw the project, which included scientists from Dartmouth College and the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.
The metals and radium in the drilling wastewater automatically attract to sulfates — or salts, he explained.
“It’s a romance. It’s inevitable it will combine,” said Vengosh, a professor of geochemistry and water quality.
The research was primarily funded by Duke University, Vengosh said. One of the scientists had some funding from the National Science Foundation, he added.
Vengosh’s research was published in December in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, but still needs to be field tested, he said.
Finding solutions for safely dealing with contaminated water and having enough usable water to drill new wells is crucial for the oil and gas industry. It has booming in recent years due to new methods of hydraulic fracturing — or fracking — a method that uses millions of gallons of chemical-laced water to crack thick layers of underground rock so fossil fuels can flow out.
But as drilling spreads to more areas the industry has faced obstacles. In the gas-rich Marcellus shale region of Pennsylvania, wastewater disposal is problematic. In drought-prone areas, such as Texas and California, drillers face a shortage of freshwater. As a result, the industry is seeking to recycle wastewater.
Vengosh’s researchers blended fracking wastewater from the Marcellus shale with acid drainage from mines, materials collected in western Pennsylvania by the industry. The researchers had hypothesized that the salts, metals and radium would combine so they could be removed as solids, leaving behind water clean enough to be used in another fracking operation, though not quite pure enough to be potable.
After two days, they examined the chemical and radioactive levels of the 26 different mixtures they had created and found that within the first 10 hours the metals — including iron, barium and strontium — and most of the radium had combined to form a new solid. The salinity of the remaining fluid had reduced enough to be used in fracking, Vengosh said.
“I’m not sure it resolves all the problems, but it can have some improvement,” Vengosh said.
Texas facing its own water issues from fracking
Ben Shepperd, president of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association, which represents drillers in an oil-rich, desert-like area of West Texas, said maximizing water use is a top priority for the industry.
“Those of us who live, work and play near oil and gas activities place a premium on efficient water uses,” he said in an email.
But Tad Patzek, chairman and professor of the petroleum engineering department at the University of Texas in Austin, cautioned that the method could present problems in the field. The remaining water would still be jam-packed with chemicals and toxins, he noted.
“That water can get spilled,” Patzek said. “That water can get into a shallow aquifer. There are many other considerations.”
Still, freshwater and wastewater are such serious issues that Donald Van Nieuwenhuise, director of the University of Houston’s geosciences program, said researchers are seeking solutions on several fronts: by recycling flowback water, by creating ways to use less water to begin with or by using a liquid other than water to crack the rock.
Texas doesn’t have acid mine waste, an environmental threat to the Appalachian basin, to mix with the fracking fluids, but the method could be applied in the Lone Star state differently, Van Nieuwenhuise noted. The contaminated drilling water could be mixed with fluids from brine aquifers that are too salty to be used as drinking water, he said.
“This is novel. It’s a really neat idea,” he said, adding that solid waste is safer than liquid and the amount created in this process would be manageable.
OTTAWA – Never mind those international targets, the federal government appears to be having trouble meeting even its own internal operational goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
An internal PowerPoint presentation prepared by Public Works and Government Services Canada asks each federal department to ante up its emissions reductions number for the coming 2014-15 fiscal year.
And it prods departments to “please consider increasing your commitment to help bridge the current five per cent gap.”
“They’re clearly going to miss their targets,” said John McKay, the Liberal environment critic.
[quote]I can’t say I’m overly surprised by that given that they’re not serious about national targets, so why would they be serious about government targets.[/quote]
As part of a “greening government operations” exercise, the Conservatives have committed to reducing GHG emissions from federal buildings and transportation fleets by 17 per cent below 2005 levels by the year 2020.
That’s the same target the Harper government agreed to for Canada as a whole as part of the Copenhagen accord in 2009.
Canadian climate targets slipping further away
A fall report from Environment Canada shows the country is slipping further away from meeting its Copenhagen emissions goal, although the government likes to claim Canada is halfway to the target.
Similarly, when Public Works says there’s a five per cent gap in operational emissions cuts, it doesn’t mean the government’s work is 95 per cent complete.
A 2012 report by Environment Canada on the federal sustainable development strategy makes clear “the government is on track to achieve a 12 per cent decrease in emission levels relative to the base year by fiscal year 2020-2021. A projected gap of about five per cent highlights the need for additional efforts in order to achieve the 17 per cent federal target.”
In other words, the government is currently on pace to miss its self-imposed internal 17-per-cent target by five percentage points — or almost 30 per cent. And it would seem no headway has been made on that front since 2012.
Public Works says the current reductions are “more significant … than what was anticipated for the second year of implementation of the federal sustainable development strategy.”
Spokesman Pierre-Alain Bujold said in an email that the current reductions are “subject to change over time as departments analyze their data, adjust their plans and adopt new plans in order to reach the targets by 2020.”
It’s not the only troubling progress report that’s come to light on Canada’s efforts to reduce emissions.
Canada’s carbon footprint to climb sharply after 2020
The government quietly submitted two reports last month to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that show Canada’s emissions will spike sharply upward after 2020, driven largely by expansion of the oil sands.
Emissions between 2020 and 2030 are predicted to climb by 81 million tonnes, taking Canada 11 per cent above 2005 levels — notwithstanding hopes that a new round of international climate negotiations in 2016 are supposed to find further global reductions from the 2005 base year.
“Under all scenarios over the forecast period, emissions are expected to grow the fastest in oil sands extraction and upgrading,” says the Canadian report to the U.N.
McKay, the Liberal critic, says if the government can’t get its own emissions under control, it can’t push other sectors of the economy, noting the federal government accounts for almost 15 per cent of Canada’s GDP. Said the Liberal MP:
[quote]If you don’t get leadership out of the federal government in getting their own house in order, how can you actually reasonably expect the rest of the citizens of Canada to be serious about greenhouse gases?[/quote]
McKay acknowledged not nearly enough was done under the previous Liberal governments to reduce Canadian emissions as per the 1997 Kyoto protocol.
“But after a while the blame exercise gets a little tired, especially since you’ve had six or seven years to get your main emitter under control, which is the oil and gas industry.”
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a year-end interview that long-delayed regulations on the oil and gas sector will be announced “over the next couple of years.”
Yet another derailment for CN, this time involving coal, near Vancouver.
BURNABY, B.C. – A CN Rail spokeswoman has confirmed heavy rainfall led to a train derailment in the Vancouver area Saturday.
Emily Hamer says the increased amount of rain caused a beaver dam to wash out, spilling large amounts of water onto the tracks and causing a train in Burnaby to jump the tracks.
She says seven cars went off the rails — three of them were lying on their sides while four remained upright.
Coal was spilt into a nearby creek that feeds into Burnaby Lake, but Hamer could not say how much.
The train is owned by CP Rail, but the tracks and the crew are from CN Rail.
Hamer says CN Rail is taking the lead in the cleanup and that the tracks should be operational by Sunday afternoon.
An earlier CNRL leak in Cold Lake, Alberta (Chester Dawson / Wall Street Journal)
COLD LAKE, Alta. – The Alberta Energy Regulator is investigating another leak from a Canadian Natural Resources (TSX:CNQ) bitumen well near Cold Lake.
The regulator says 27,000 litres of crude bitumen were released underground on Jan. 3 at the company’s troubled Primrose field.
But agency spokesman Darin Barter said the leak has been stopped.
“There was no release to surface,” Barter said Friday. “There’s no aquifers that have been impacted by this incident.”
Barter said the release has been definitively attributed to a failed well casing, setting this leak apart from an earlier one in the same field last summer that also remains under investigation.
In that leak, more than a million litres of bitumen has so far seeped to the surface. The spill continues, although cold weather has slowed the amount to almost nothing.
CNRL has said the earlier leak was also due to a well failure.
“We don’t necessarily share that view of the incident,” said Barter.
The regulator is investigating whether the bitumen escaped through cracks in the rock above the deposit and was driven to the surface by high-pressure steam pumped underground to soften it before being extracted. The company has been ordered to reduce the pressure of the steam it uses.
The first leak remains the subject of a $40-million cleanup effort from CNRL.
Barter said there’s no indication when the regulator’s report on that leak will be complete.
There were also bitumen leaks at the Primrose field in 2009. The regulator concluded those leaks were at least partially caused by high volumes and high pressures of steam.
Mike Hudema with Greenpeace Canada said it is “incredible” that CNRL is still allowed to continue its operations. Said Hudema in a press release:
[quote]If the Alberta government is serious about protecting Alberta’s environment, it has to pull CNRL’s approval for their Cold Lake operations. How many more spills will it take before we see real action?[/quote]
Construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, circa 1976
by Becky Bohrer, The Associated Press
JUNEAU, Alaska – Gov. Sean Parnell on Friday announced a new way forward on a long-hoped-for natural gas pipeline that includes scrapping the terms of a 2007 law he says no longer works well for the situation.
In a major policy speech in Anchorage, Parnell said the state and Canadian pipeline builder TransCanada Corp. have agreed to terminate their involvement under the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act. He made clear, however, that TransCanada would remain a partner in the project, just under new terms.
[quote]The proposed line would run from the North Slope to south-central Alaska and could cost from $45 billion to more than $65 billion.[/quote]
Parnell said he would seek legislative approval for the state to participate in a new commercial agreement with TransCanada; the North Slope’s three major players, Exxon Mobil Corp., BP PLC and ConocoPhillips; and the Alaska Gasline Development Corp. He said he expected a set of terms to be signed soon.
Natural Resources Commissioner Joe Balash called the commercial agreement a “broad roadmap” and statement of intent. He said in an interview that legislation would have to be passed to accomplish what is being contemplated and the state plans to enter a separate, more narrowly defined agreement with TransCanada for pipeline services.
The terms of the inducement act will remain in force for the time being, though the parties envision transitioning into the new arrangement once enabling legislation is passed, Balash said.
“Nobody’s letting go of the rope just yet,” he said, but he noted the state and TransCanada had “pre-agreed” to make the transition. A TransCanada spokesman said the company would continue working to advance the pipeline project.
State to be a partner in pipeline, gas exports
Parnell said he would propose legislation that would allow the state to enter into shipping agreements to move and sell gas. The legislation also would ask lawmakers to switch to a flat gross tax and allow for certain leases to pay production taxes with gas. Parnell previously said he would not propose gas tax legislation unless he saw demonstrable progress on the line.
“The bottom line: We will have an investment-quality project when that’s complete,” he said Friday.
Balash said he thinks the Legislature can act on the proposal this session — which is what the commercial agreement contemplates — “in large part because what we’re asking the Legislature to do essentially is set some of the specific terms that would then go into a contract to be negotiated over the next 18 months or so and would then come back to the Legislature for approval.”
“It’s not like we’re asking the Legislature to make the big decisions this year, but we’re asking them to make some pretty important ones,” Balash said. The next set of agreements would set out specific equity terms, he said.
Parnell said having the state participate in a line is a way to protect the state’s interests, and as a partner, Alaskans stand to gain more. He said the structure is attractive to North Slope oil and gas companies, too, because it could reduce their costs.
The scheduled 90-day legislative session begins Jan. 21.
New line to cost $45-65 Billion, terminate in Alaska, not Canada
Alaskans have long seen as a gas line as a way to create jobs, provide energy for residents and shore up revenues as oil production declines. There have been fits and starts over the years, but Parnell and other state officials believe the current project has momentum.
While Parnell in the past argued for continuing to pursue a project under terms of the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act, even as some state legislators saw it as a dead end, he has indicated he no longer views it as the best way forward. He said the law was designed for one project developer, but the project initially envisioned — a pipeline that would run from the prodigious North Slope into Canada to serve North America markets — has changed, and so have the players.
In 2008, TransCanada won an exclusive license to pursue the project, with a promise of up to $500 million in reimbursable costs from the state. Exxon Mobil later joined TransCanada’s effort. ConocoPhillips and BP, which opposed provisions of the law, pursued a rival line of their own before abandoning it in 2011.
The companies, at Parnell’s urging, united in the last few years behind a liquefied natural gas project capable of overseas exports. The proposed line would run from the slope to south-central Alaska and could cost from $45 billion to more than $65 billion, according to company estimates. The companies have repeatedly said they need competitive, predictable and durable terms on oil and gas taxes and royalties but also have indicated they are open to having the state take an equity position.
Natalie Lowman, a spokeswoman for ConocoPhillips Alaska, said the company sees the new direction laid out by Parnell as a positive step forward and looks forward to working with the state and the Legislature.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. – Schools and restaurants closed, grocery stores sold out of bottled water, and state legislators who had just started their session cancelled the day’s business after a chemical spill in the Elk River in Charleston shut down much of the city and surrounding counties even as the extent of the danger remained unclear.
The federal government joined the state early Friday in declaring a disaster, and the West Virginia National Guard planned to distribute bottled drinking water to emergency services agencies in the nine affected counties. In requesting the federal declaration, which makes federal resources available to the state, state officials said about 300,000 people were affected.
Federal authorities are also launching an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the spill and what caused it, U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin said in a news release Friday.
Shortly after the Thursday spill from Freedom Industries hit the river and a nearby treatment plant, a licorice-like smell enveloped parts of the city, and Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin issued an order to customers of West Virginia American Water: Do not drink, bathe, cook or wash clothes with tap water.
The chemical, a foaming agent used in the coal preparation process, leaked from a tank at Freedom Industries and overran a containment area. Freedom, a manufacturer of chemicals for the mining, steel, and cement industries, said in a news release Friday that the company is working to contain the leak to prevent further contamination. President Gary Southern also said the company still does not know how much of the chemical spilled from its operation into the river.
Officials say the orders were issued as a precaution, as they were still not sure exactly what hazard the spill posed to residents. It also was not immediately clear exactly how much of the chemical spilled into the river and at what concentration.
The tank that leaked holds at least 40,000 gallons, said Tom Aluise, a state Department of Environmental Protection spokesman. “We’re confident that no more than 5,000 gallons escaped,” he said. “A certain amount of that got into the river. Some of that was contained.”
Agency officials do not know how long the chemical had been leaking, Aluise said in a telephone interview. There was a breach in a concrete wall that served as a containment area to prevent spills from leaving the storage site, he said.
“Our understanding is it’s not an especially toxic material. It’s not dangerous necessarily to be around,” he said.
According to a fact sheet from Fisher Scientific, the chemical is harmful if swallowed — and could be so if inhaled — and causes eye and skin irritation. Other symptoms include nausea, vomiting, dizziness, headaches, diarrhea, reddened skin, itching and rashes, according to a news release from the American Association of Poison Control Centers.
Freedom Industries will be responsible for cleanup at the site, Aluise said.
“I don’t know if the water is not safe,” water company president Jeff McIntyre said. “Until we get out and flush the actual system and do more testing, we can’t say how long this (advisory) will last at this time.”
McIntyre said the chemical isn’t lethal in its strongest form. Kanawha County emergency officials said the chemical is called 4-methylcyclohexane methanol.
State law requires companies to report any industrial accidents within 15 minutes; those who fail to do so can face a fine up to $100,000. It is not clear how much time passed before Freedom reported the chemical spill.
The emergency declaration involves customers in all or parts of the counties of Kanawha, Boone, Cabell, Clay, Jackson, Lincoln, Logan, Putnam and Roane. State Department of Education spokeswoman Liza Cordeiro said schools in at least five of the counties will be closed.
The smell from the spill was especially strong at the Charleston Marriott hotel a few blocks from the Elk River, which flows into the Kanawha River in downtown Charleston. The hotel notified guests Friday that they would be moved to another hotel in Huntington, about an hour’s drive away.
Even as the National Guard made plans to mobilize at an air base at Charleston’s Yeager Airport, many people — told to use water only for flushing toilets — weren’t waiting for outside help. For instance, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was planning to deliver more than a million litres of water from nearby Maryland, but the first shipments were not expected to arrive until Friday night.
Once word got out about the governor’s declaration Thursday, customers stripped store shelves in many areas of items such as bottled water, paper cups and bowls. As many as 50 customers had lined up to buy water at a convenience store near the state capitol in Charleston.
“It was chaos, that’s what it was,” cashier Danny Cardwell said.
State Attorney General Patrick Morrisey warned residents about price gouging on water, ice and other items, calling it “just plain wrong” to inflate prices and encouraging those who’ve seen such practices to report them to his office’s consumer protection division.
Although the governor noted that the water advisory extended to restaurants, hospitals, nursing homes and other establishments that use tap water, state public safety spokesman Lawrence Messina said Friday that he wasn’t aware of any hospitals closing and that medical centres “seemed to have adequate water supply, at least for the short term.”
The Charleston Area Medical Center hospital chain was getting help from an unaffected hospital in Hurricane, W.Va., to sterilize equipment. That chain, which includes CAMC General, CAMC Memorial and CAMC Women and Children’s Hospital, had cancelled all elective surgeries, though emergency surgeries were to proceed, said Dale Witte, a spokesman for the hospitals.
Those hospitals have enough water to last at least 48 hours, and officials are working with authorities and other hospitals to address other water needs, Witte said. Of the system’s 6,000 employees, those who don’t deal directly with patients were told to stay home to minimize water use.
Witte said four patients were kept overnight for symptoms similar to what the chemical can cause, though it was not clear if those symptoms may have been caused by other issues given that it’s cold and flu season, Witte said.
At the Little India restaurant in Charleston, about 12 customers were asked to leave when bar manager Bill LaCourse learned about the shutdown notice.
Karlee Bolen, 16, of Charleston, said her family, including her parents, two sisters and brother, were considering the possibility of heading to her grandmother’s home in Braxton County, where tap water was unaffected, an hour to the northeast.
“I kind of want to shower and brush my teeth,” she said.
Associated Press writers Brendan Farrington, Pam Ramsey and Jonathan Mattise contributed to this report.
CIBC VP and former Conservative Environment Minister Jim Prentice (image: youtube)
CALGARY – Former Conservative cabinet minister Jim Prentice is urging Canada and the United States to look beyond the contentious and high-profile Keystone XL oil pipeline when it comes to their trade relationship.
Prentice, now a senior executive at CIBC (TSX:CM), says “we must move beyond this distraction” and calls for a “bigger picture” and “longer term” focus.
In a speech in Calgary Thursday evening, Prentice reiterated his staunch support for the $5.4-billion project, which would enable oilsands crude to flow to Texas refineries, saying it’s in the national interest for both Canada and the United States.
Moving forward, Prentice says Canada and the U.S. must work on harmonizing national energy standards, instead of leaving it to a patchwork of state and municipal rules, many of which single out oilsands-derived fuels.
He also says the two countries should work together on environmental policies that are in their mutual interest and building the necessary infrastructure to export both oil and natural gas to international markets.
VANCOUVER – Federal Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq says an independent panel will review plans to build a major shipping-container terminal at a port south of Vancouver.
Port Metro Vancouver wants to build a three-berth, marine-container facility that can handle an additional 2.4 million units every year at Roberts Bank in Delta, B.C.
The port is already the largest container terminal in Canada, and this past November the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency asked for public comment on the project.
Instead, Aglukkaq says she’s decided an independent panel will assess the project’s environmental impact because of concerns raised by the public and First Nations.
She says the decision to refer the project was also made after considering the terminal’s potential for significant adverse environmental effects.
The minister says the panel will have 14 months to submit a report to the minister who will then have five months to make a decision.
Read more about the lack of economic need for expanding Deltaport
