VANCOUVER — The federal government’s approval of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline is raising concerns among Washington state officials, who say they have not received adequate assurances that U.S. waters will be protected in the event of an oil tanker spill.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s office said he doesn’t have enough details of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s pledged $1.5-billion Oceans Protection Plan to know whether enough spill-prevention measures will be in place, or if the state would be protected in the event of a spill.
“The governor has been very clear that safe transport of crude oil across the Salish Sea requires robust oil-spill planning and response including the necessary equipment to locate, contain and recover sinking/submerged oil,” said Tara Lee, a communications officer for Inslee. “We do not have enough detail yet that this plan will address our concerns.”
The planned pipeline also faces opposition from Seattle politicians who, like their counterparts in Vancouver, are opposed to any expansion of the oil industry. It has also generated promises of court fights from First Nations on both sides of the border.
“It is fair to say that Seattle and regional leaders are very concerned about proposals related to fossil-fuel infrastructure across the Northwest and have consistently pushed for stronger safety measures through the Safe Energy Leadership Alliance,” said Lisa Herbold, a Seattle council member.
She said the alliance “has more than 165 elected leaders from western states and British Columbia and I would expect us to take a careful look at this issue because the pipeline expansion would increase sevenfold the number of oil tankers in the Salish Sea, raising many of the same crucial safety issues as oil trains and terminals.”
Fred Felleman, a Seattle Port commissioner and a consultant for Friends of the Earth Society, an intervenor in the National Energy Board hearings, predicted the project will attract a protest similar to the Standing Rock drama unfolding in North Dakota over the Dakota Access pipeline.
Any tanker export of Canadian oil from Kinder Morgan’s Westridge terminal in Burnaby necessarily threads through island-strewn U.S. and Canadian waters in the Strait of Georgia and Juan de Fuca Strait, collectively known as the Salish Sea. But while there are existing bilateral marine pollution contingency plans between Canada and the U.S., they do not go far enough to cover the Trans Mountain project.
In September, before Trudeau announced his oceans protection plan and his approval of the Kinder Morgan project, Washington’s Department of Ecology sent a letter to Ottawa raising concerns over the National Energy Board’s approval of the pipeline. The department said in the letter that the imposition of 157 conditions set by the board would be inadequate.
“Ecology remains concerned that the NEB-proposed conditions for oil-spill prevention, preparedness and response will not adequately protect our shared waters,” said Dale Jensen, the department’s program manager of spill prevention, preparedness and response. Lee said that despite Trudeau’s ocean protection plan announcement, Inslee’s concerns have not abated.
Scott Ferguson, manager of spills prevention for Washington, said much of the worry relates not to how Canada would respond in the event of a spill, but how Kinder Morgan would.
“I don’t want you to think that Washington Ecology is pointing the finger at Canada. We’re not. We are looking at Kinder Morgan to be the key impetus to do a lot of work to help reduce the risk of a pollution incident, and then to reduce the impact if there is an issue in the future,” he said.
Kinder Morgan has met with Washington state officials for several years and has worked to resolve their worries, said Ali Hounsell, a Trans Mountain spokeswoman. Although the company has approval to build the pipeline, that consultation will continue, she said.
Trans Mountain has put in place or encouraged other stakeholders, such as the Western Canada Marine Response Corporation, an industry-funded group, to put in place spill prevention and response assets. The corporation has said it would install six new response stations on the Salish Sea and Barkely Sound on Vancouver Island’s west coast.
Trans Mountain has said it would be fully responsible for any oil spill that occurs in its pipeline and in the delivery to a tanker, but that any spill by a vessel would be the responsibility of the carrier and its insurance company. However, Hounsell said Trans Mountain has agreed to extend the mandatory tethered-tug escort through Juan de Fuca Strait, which now ends near Victoria, to farther out to sea.
