From the Vancouver Sun – June 18, 2011

by Chris Genovali and Misty MacDuffee

If the Enbridge Northern Gateway project is approved, an estimated
225 supertankers a year would enter Kitimat to load about 318 million
litres (two million barrels) of oil for shipment to American and Asian
markets (“Pipelines to prosperity,” Harvey Enchin, Issues & Ideas,
June 16). Loaded tankers would pass directly through Wright Sound, a
body of water with more than 5,000 vessels moving through it annually.
More than 400,000 vessel movements occur annually on the B.C. coast, so
it is not surprising that accidents are common, including collisions,
groundings and fires on board. Even vessels with state-­of-­the­-art
navigational equipment are vulnerable.

The marine approaches to
the coast of northern B.C. and the port of Kitimat are dangerous. This
area is at least as dangerous as Prince William Sound, where the Exxon
Valdez hit Bligh Reef in Valdez Arm, in a navigable channel almost 10
kilometres (6.2 miles) wide. To enter Kitimat, supertankers will need to
transit Douglas Channel, which is 1.35 kilometres (0.84 miles) wide at
the narrowest point. Severe weather heightens the risk of shipping
accidents.

Should an accident occur involving a large ship,
serious inadequacies in response capabilities would hinder rescue and
containment operations. The south coast, for example, relies heavily on
the availability of American rescue tugs based out of Washington state
to respond to problems. Moreover, procedures between the provincial
government and the federal government to coordinate responses to large
vessel incidents at sea are not well harmonized. In the past, this has
resulted in considerable delays, as evidenced in the Leroy Trucking
barge incident, or no response at all, as in the sinking of the Queen of
the North.

A November 2010 article by Postmedia News revealed
that, according to an internal audit, “The Canadian Coast Guard lacks
the training, equipment and management systems to fulfil its duties to
respond to offshore pollution incidents such as oil spills … The audit
paints an alarming picture of an agency that would play a key role in
Canada’s response to a major oil spill off the world’s longest
coastline.” The article also identifies the relatively paltry budget of
$9.8 million for the coast guard’s environmental response unit.

Enbridge
manager of engineering Ray Doering’s recent claim in the Kitimat
Northern Sentinel that a spill “is likely never going to occur”
contradicts Enbridge CEO Pat Daniel’s statements in an April 2010 Globe
and Mail article in which he said, “Can we promise there will never be
an accident? No. Nobody can.”

Enbridge officials assert they
would not be financially liable for any oil spill at sea, while a June
2010 Vancouver Sun report revealed that owners of the tankers are liable
for the costs of oil recovery, cleanup and compensation for
environmental damage ― but only to the limit of their liability
insurance. Economists have tried to predict the costs of an oil spill
cleanup.

Globally, the cost to industry for spill cleanup averages
$16,000 US per tonne, not including the costs to restore habitat or
repair socio-economic damages to the communities impacted.

In
2003, the cost of cleaning up a 378,000-litre heavy fuel oil spill in
San Francisco Bay was an estimated $93 million. Forty to sixty per cent
of the estimated cost was attributed to restoring habitat and
compensating for socio-economic losses. However, in 2007 when the Cosco
Busan spilled a little over half that amount into the bay, the cost for
the cleanup alone was $70 million. In other words, true costs
dramatically exceeded the estimates.

Attaching a dollar value to
the damage that spilled oil does to marine and terrestrial ecosystems is
an extremely difficult task. The Exxon Valdez spill was the most
expensive in history; the true costs were estimated to be $9.5 billion,
of which only $2.5 billion were related to the cleanup. While
Exxon-Mobil paid more than $1 billion, U.S. taxpayers ended up footing
the bill for the rest.

But does any oil spill damage cost estimate
even begin to cover the price of a pod of killer whales driven to
extinction or the demise of a coastal fishing community’s way of life?

Chris
Genovali is executive director of Raincoast Conservation Foundation.
Misty MacDuffee is a conservation biologist with Raincoast.