GreenWatch

B. McPherson You can't drink or breathe oil. Stop the pipeline The standoff between BigOil and environmentalists continues on Burnaby Mountain. Pipeline company KinderMorgan wants to triple its petroleum carrying capacity to bring Alberta oil to the Pacific coast for shipping to the US and overseas. They have not received the go-ahead from the Canadian Energy Board, but they have done preliminary work to map a new route for the proposed pipelines. Part of that route would take them under Burnaby Mountain, much of which is dedicated parkland. The survey crews have been blocked from cutting more trees in the park by protesters. Some would call them protectors depending on one’s point of view. KinderMorgan obtained an injunction to remove the protesters who were blocking the route. This served to increase the number of people joining in the movement. Police were moved in to remove the people. Peaceful, non-violent arrests were made. To date over 100 people have allowed ...

B. McPherson Enbridge Group that moves petroleum products has faced stiff opposition from environmentalists in its push to move Tar Sands bitumen to Canada’s coastlines. Increasing opposition from British Columbians to their scheme to build a pipeline to the Pacific Coast has them looking at pipelines to the east that they already control. Those pipelines have been configured to carry refined, imported oil from the Atlantic Coast, west to Ontario and Quebec. Enbridge has applied to reconfigure them to carry the sandy petroleum product to the coastal refineries on the Atlantic coast or for export to foreign countries. The plan was to start moving the diluted bitumen(dilbit) in Line 9B in November. While one of the things that Enbridge likes to emphasize in attempting to convince people that their pipelines would be an asset, is the safety of moving petroleum products by pipeline. Today the Canadian Energy Board put paid to that premise when they ruled that Enbridge’s ...

B. McPherson Greenpeace activists made a couple of bold moves this week in their efforts to save the Arctic from oil pollution. They have boarded two vessels that were on their way to drill during the short Arctic summer. The drill rig GSP Saturn was boarded when it was in a Netherlands harbour, preventing its departure to drill for the Russian firm Gazprom. You may remember that when the Greenpeace activists attempted to board a drill rig once it was drilling in the Arctic, they were arrested and their ship was impounded. Many were kept in questionable circumstances until Russian president Putin pardoned them just before the Winter Olympics and just before seizing the Crimean Peninsula. This time, the move was made in Europe where the courts are more hospitable to defenders of the environment. The other vessel boarded was the Norwegian Transocean Spitsbergen owned by Statoil. It is stationed in the Barents Sea. It is believed that a bonanza of oil lies beneath the A...

B. McPherson This is what we stand to lose if Enbridge Northern Pipeline is completed. The feds in Ottawa have with the stroke of a pen declared that the North Pacific Humpback Whale is no longer endangered. It is now merely of “critical concern”. It was only in 2005 that the Humpback was red listed as critically endangered.   The SPLASH estimates for the combined Southeast Alaska and British Columbia feeding areas are around 3,000-5,000 (Calambokidis   et al. 2008) …No comprehensive assessment of North Pacific humpback whales has been conducted by the IWC Scientific Committee. The evidence suggests that North Pacific Humpback Whales have been increasing, following depletion by whaling, but that this recovery is not yet complete .    ICUN Red List of Endangered Species Environmentalists are crying foul at the federal government’s actions. There is a federal requirement that for critically endangered wildlife, the habitat must also be protected. Unfor...

B. McPherson Think BP has cleaned up the mess? Think again. It has been nearly four years since a series of incidents led to the spilling of at least 206 million gallons of oil and methane into the Gulf of Mexico. The Deepwater Horizon was the drill platform which burst into flames in April 2010 taking 11 workers to their deaths. The petroleum spewing from the blown out hole killed unknown numbers of wildlife from whales to microscopic plankton. Many clean-up workers fell ill and many businesses went broke when the fishery was closed and beaches were closed. Much of the evidence of the catastrophe has disappeared, but the damage keeps on giving. A paper presented by the National Academy of Science deals with some of the damage caused by the sudden, massive release of hydrocarbons into the water. Scientists exposed tuna embryos to the water contaminated by the BP blowout in the Gulf. They found that many of the fish displayed various heart abnormalities which would li...

B. McPherson Just another day in the oil industry People on the Gulf Coast of Texas are witnessing a wildlife catastrophe in the making as sticky, heavy black oil is moving onto shore from a holed barge. Two ships collided in the Galveston Ship Canal with the result that about 168 000 US gallons of the deadly stuff have leaked into the water. This comes as a particularly bad time for the millions of shore birds returning to their summer grounds as winter lifts in the North. The floating booms that have been deployed to corral the floating oil are ineffective as wind and waves slosh the contaminated water over them. The danger to wildlife – birds, fish, sedges, sea weed, jellyfish – is direct and indirect. If complete cleanup is not done, then the toxic petroleum becomes part of the food chain gradually poisoning those that eat it and those that eat them. But look on the bright side. The barge contained over 900 000 gallons of the tarry oil. The six crew members of the ba...

B. McPherson Greenpeace defenders of the Arctic kept in cold, stark conditions The 30 environmental activists were detained September 18 th . They were attempting to hang a banner on the Russian oil drill rig in the Arctic Ocean. The Greenpeace members were protesting the exploiting of the Arctic for petroleum extraction. Their ship was also impounded. The Arctic Sunrise was in international waters when it was boarded by Russian troops according to the Greenpeace organization. The 30 people have been held in remand cells in Murmansk, a Russian city above the Arctic Circle. They were originally charged with piracy, a charge that even President Putin scoffed at. Now they are informed that the charges will be hooliganism. While that sounds like a misdemeanor in the west, in Russia it carries a maximum sentence of seven years. (You may remember the Pussy Riot young women who were sentenced to years of hard labour under the same charge.) There is now some confusion as to...

B. McPherson Peaceful fracking protest turns ugly in Canada as RCMP close in. Violence broke out in the hamlet of Rexton, New Brunswick when police officers, armed and with dogs attempted to clear what had been a peaceful road blockade. The police were enforcing a court order to clear the road to a fracking company compound which held fracking equipment. Access to equipment owned by SWN Resources was barred by local the local Elsipogtog First Nation when progress on negotiations broke down. The road was blocked on September 30 th . A court order was issued on October 3 rd to clear the access. October 18 RCMP moved in. In the chaos that ensued Chief Arren Sock and Elsipogtog Council members were arrested. This sparked outrage among the protesters. Rocks were thrown, tear gas fired, non-lethal ‘sock bullets’ were fired and five police cars were torched. The violence sparked protests across the country. Ken Coates, an historian specializing in affairs of indigenous ...

B. McPherson Battle for the Arctic Greenpeace activists arrested in their attempt to board an oil exploration platform in the waters of the Arctic have been declared non-pirates. This has brought some relief to the environmental activists known for their peaceful protests in defending the environment.  Their ship, the Arctic Sunrise, has been confiscated and the activists jailed. A high seas confrontation with the Russian coast guard off the coast of Murmansk saw two activists hanging from ropes, being pummeled with water cannons from above and harassed by coast guard members from below. Greenpeace members in zodiacs were held at gun point. Warning shots were fired from the oil platform into the water near the inflatables. While President Putin has declared that it is obvious that the protesters are not pirates, nine of the Greenpeace people have been told that they will remain in jail for two months while awaiting charges of piracy. Others of the crew will be detain...

B. McPherson If You Build It, It Will Leak The oil pipeline company that is lobbying to build an oil pipeline through British Columbia has had a leak of one of its major pipeline systems. Line 37 which serves as a link from the Alberta Oil Sands to Hardesty Alberta, has had to be shut down after a leak was discovered near Fort McMurray. The company estimates that between 500 and 750 barrels of oil escaped containment. There is speculation that the record breaking rainfall in Alberta may have caused the sodden earth to shift, breaking the pipeline. A crew will have to be dispatched to the scene for confirmation. There is the danger, that other pipelines which criss-cross the province will fail in the aftermath of the widespread flooding. Early in the epic floods, a sour gas pipeline ruptured near the town of Black Diamond in the Turner Valley. Enbridge is unable to communicate with the media efficiently at this time because their head office is in downtown Calgary which r...

B. McPherson Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine, who worked as well site leaders on the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon oil drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico, are facing manslaughter charges. The charges arise from the deaths of 11 workers who lost their lives in the fiery explosion that saw over four million barrels of oil spew into the waters of the Gulf. The months long spill fouled water, beaches and wetlands. It affected the health of countless people exposed to the oil fumes. The jury is still out on the eventual effect of the dispersant Corexit which was sprayed on the oil slicks. In the legal action it is alleged that the site leaders ignored the warning signs that the well was not secure. The defense argues that the USA has no jurisdiction over the Deepwater Horizon drill platform because it was outside the territorial waters. It was tethered 50 miles offshore and the control extends only 12 miles. Beyond the 12 miles, the defense argues, if a vessel is flo...

B. McPherson Hold onto your hats. Here Canadians thought the Tar Sands were Oil Sands in Alberta. Some people call the product bitumen. It’s the consistency of peanut butter so won’t flow nicely in the pipelines. It needs to be heated in cold climates and diluted with a witch’s brew of chemicals, including that old favourite – benzene. When the Enbridge Pipeline carrying diluted bitumen or dilbit ruptured in the Kalamazoo River two years ago, they made some effort to clean up the oil, only it wasn’t oil. You know the old saying “If it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck and walks like a duck, it must be a duck.” In the fairy tale land of the US lawmakers, dilbit isn’t oil. It’s something else again. Why is this important? Oil companies are required to pay into an Oil Liability Trust Fund that has the money to clean up the inevitable spills that occur during the transportation of oil products. But if you are transporting dilbit   or oil, not oil they don’t h...

B. McPherson This could come to your neighbourhood too. An old oil pipeline threading through a small town in Arkansas ruptured Friday spewing thousands of barrels of diluted bitumen(dilbit) on houses and yards. Twenty-two homes had to be evacuated with no word as to when it is safe for the people to return. The Exxon Pegasus pipeline was installed in the 1940s. Originally it carried refined oil but had been converted to carry oil sands product south for refining. Critics of the plans by oil companies to carry dilbit in pipelines, point out that the flow under pressure acts much like sandpaper would on the interior of the pipes, continuously scouring the metal. The continuing corrosive action of the product is expected to cause more pipeline ruptures. While Exxon has declined to give a figure as to how much product had leaked from the broken pipe, they have stated that 12 000 barrels of oil and water have been recovered. Exxon spokesperson has stated that the air...