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Last edited by Macfury; Jun 19th, 2012 at 09:27 PM.
Yep, a mere drop in the bucket the media and anti oil groups are trying to make a big deal of instead. Kinda like your kid dripping his popsicle on the local water park.
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So how big does a spill have to be before the authorities need to be notified? I would've thought a responsible company would notify authorities at the first sign of *any* spill, in order to ensure that whatever problems occur are kept to a minimum.
So how big does a spill have to be before the authorities need to be notified? I would've thought a responsible company would notify authorities at the first sign of *any* spill, in order to ensure that whatever problems occur are kept to a minimum.
This was done and duly reported by the company:
Quote:
EDMONTON - Cleanup is underway after an oil spill Monday along Enbridge’s Athabasca pipeline, southeast of Elk Point, the Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board says.
The company estimates about 230,000 litres of heavy crude oil spilled from a pumping station along the surface pipeline about 24 kilometres southeast of Elk Point, the board said Tuesday.
The spill was reported to the appropriate agencies on Monday, said ERCB spokesman Darin Barter.
“It does take some time to assess the site, get our field folks on-site, determine the extent of the spill, talk to the company and see what they estimate the volume at,” Barter said. “This one is significant enough that we issued a news release on it.”
It was just big enough for the agency to issue a news release, so it is considered a minor spill. From what I read, it threatens no groundwater and will be entirely cleaned up.
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Okay, I misunderstood. From the earlier postings it appeared that the appropriate authorities had not been contacted, and that some of you were okay with this because it was "just a small spill."
I'd be much more comfortable with the development of oil resources if I trusted that the companies (or even the government) viewed environmental protection as anything other than "a cost of doing business" (i.e. something to be minimized).
Any heavy industry (including environmentally sustainable industries) are going to have impacts, and accidents are going to happen in which habitat is destroyed, wildlife and even people get killed. What we need is more than contrite CEOs apologizing (or worse, deflecting responsibility) when that happens. We need to see significant (i.e. substantial investments) in minimizing impact, mitigating effects, maintaining infrastructure, remediating impacted sites, and researching potential improvements. The oil industry in Alberta is both a great and terrible example of this; they often say and even do the right things, but they have also dragged their feet and/or participated in "greenwashing" shams (not to mention their prodigious efforts at political lobbying to reduce their environmental constraints). Unfortunately, the government of Alberta has a tradition of letting the oil industry do whatever is most profitable, so it is difficult to trust that they're really monitoring pipelines etc. effectively.
Last edited by bryanc; Jun 20th, 2012 at 09:40 AM.
Reason: clarification
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Any heavy industry (including environmentally sustainable industries) are going to have impacts, and accidents are going to happen in which habitat is destroyed, wildlife and even people get killed. What we need is more than contrite CEOs apologizing (or worse, deflecting responsibility) when that happens. We need to see significant (i.e. substantial investments) in minimizing impact, mitigating effects, maintaining infrastructure, remediating impacted sites, and researching potential improvements. The oil industry in Alberta is both a great and terrible example of this; they often say and even do the right things, but they have also dragged their feet and/or participated in "greenwashing" shams (not to mention their prodigious efforts at political lobbying to reduce their environmental constraints). Unfortunately, the government of Alberta has a tradition of letting the oil industry do whatever is most profitable, so it is difficult to trust that they're really monitoring pipelines etc. effectively.
There are a considerable number of leak detection technologies being worked on that not only accurately pinpoint oil leaks, but proactively check pipeline condition. A lot of these technologies are developed in Canada. This one sends a monitor shaped like a ball through the active pipeline:
Another uses cellular technology to phone in accurate line leak information with considerable accuracy.
This is fairly new stuff and, as with any new technology, these are currently in testing, but are being fully implemented in phased roll-outs.
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Okay, I misunderstood. From the earlier postings it appeared that the appropriate authorities had not been contacted, and that some of you were okay with this because it was "just a small spill."
I'd be much more comfortable with the development of oil resources if I trusted that the companies (or even the government) viewed environmental protection as anything other than "a cost of doing business" (i.e. something to be minimized).
On this we can agree. No spill is acceptable, but let's keep them in perspective. When a relatively small and harmless to the environment spill occurs, oil opponents use the opportunity to exaggerate the spill for their own purposes against big oil.
Is that any different than an oil company downplaying a spill? I think not. Both are unacceptable to me and unfair to the public's being properly informed of the magnitude of any spill.
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Is that any different than an oil company downplaying a spill? I think not.
Fair enough. But I think it's worth keeping in mind that the oil companies have massive budgets for PR and lobbying, whereas the environmentalists are largely small organizations of private citizens trying to look after their 'back yard.' So I'm not sure it's reasonable to hold both sides to the same standards.
Furthermore, if environmental extremists "won" and oil production stopped, it's not like the oil would go away. If that turned out to be a bad decision (and I think it would), there'd be nothing stopping us from extracting the resource. I think a better balance between environmental protection and resource extraction can be found, as well as a better balance between stimulating investment and generating tax revenue that benefits everyone. But finding those balances can certainly be challenging, and I think they're moving targets, so what was a good balance in the past is not necessarily a good balance today.
So it's important that we keep scrutinizing these processes, deals, and relationships, and re-evaluate them frequently in light of new data. One of my biggest problems with the current government is their propensity to prevent the collection of new data, and prevent access to what data there is. You'd think they either had, or are planning to have something to hide.
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