Editorial

Containment questions

The oil spill that happened on Apr. 30 probably didn’t do too much damage to plant and animal life. We say that without really knowing, going on the optimistic reports from the Natural Resources Conservation Board in the aftermath of the pipeline break near the Otawau River.
There’s a certain amount of faith inherent in saying it, and we wonder if it’s justified.
The pessimist could look at the situation and say we’re headed for a disaster, sooner or later.
In fact the Otawau break happened on the heels of a breakdown in Syncrude’s system of discouraging waterfowl at its Fort McMurray tailing ponds. Was it really a breakdown, or do ducks die there regularly? The premier has pledged an investigation, and we’ll just have to trust him.
Closer to home, there have been two pipeline breaks in the past 18 months or so. Both times we got lucky.
The bigger of the two happened on the Rainbow Pipeline line not far southeast of Slave Lake. Quite a lot of oil escaped, but it didn’t get into any river system thanks to a series of beaver dams, which served as containment lagoons. The damage was localized.
The Apr. 30 break was on a much smaller line, with less than 125 barrels escaping. How much of that seeped into the nearby Otawau River we’re not sure. Perhaps not much, but an oil ‘sheen’ was visible on both the Lesser Slave and Athabasca Rivers later that day or the next day.
The NRCB tells us, or implies, that the sheen was not enough to be too worried about. Fair enough – they’re the experts. Or are they? Perhaps their expertise lies in calming an excitable population.
In any event, what’s interesting and a bit ominous about the situation is that the containment booms put out on the Lesser Slave had to be abandoned due to high water and debris. The pipeline break couldn’t have happened at a worse time of year, with ice and other junk in the water likely to wreck the boom at worst, or at least render it ineffective in containing surface oil.
It doesn’t take much imagination to picture a much larger pipeline break at the peak of spring runoff – or during a flood event later in the spring or summer.
What then? Does the oil industry have any experience in containing a spill on the surface of a rampaging torrent full of trees and jagged ice? Is there any reason to think they could handle it?
Is there any reason to think that because we’ve been lucky in the last two spills we will be again in the third? The fourth?
This is not frivolous alarmism. It could very easily happen that a large amount of oil leaks into Lesser Slave Lake or into the river. All it would take would be the right set of unfortunate circumstances.
The spill containment expertise in Alberta is considerable, no question. The area co-ops do a lot of good work in training their members. But if there’s no containment solution to high water and floating debris, we’re in for some very bad news, sooner or later.