ENERGY EAST: TransCanada delivers barrel of 'alternative fa

[Oscar]

TransCanada delivers a barrel of alternative facts on Energy East to Sackville Town Council

[ http://canadians.org/blog/transcanada-d ... wn-council ]

February 8, 2017 - 3:46 pm

PHOTO: (TransCanada's Patrick Lacroix and Steve Morck take questions from Sackville Town Council, February 6, 2017)

The setting is dramatic. Sackville and the surrounding Tantramar Marshes area are among the most vulnerable regions to the impacts of climate change in New Brunswick, merging towards the Bay of Fundy to form one of the largest tidal salt marshes on the Atlantic coast of North America.

And the stakes are high. The Town Council of Sackville is only a week away (Monday, Feb. 13th @ 7:00pm) from voting on an important resolution based on climate change to officially oppose the proposed Energy East tar sands pipeline. And TransCanada is ready to take the podium and present their side of the Energy East project.

TransCanada has flown in 3 people (from Montreal, Toronto and Calgary) to join their lead person for community relations in New Brunswick. With 340 municipalities, the l'Union des producteurs agricoles (UPA) of 41,000 farmers, and the Mohawk Council of Kanesatake that officially oppose Energy East in neighbouring Quebec, it seems as if TransCanada fears that New Brunswick's public opposition to the tar sands pipeline is poised to become widespread.

Sackville Councillors, residents and Mount Allison University students were about to hear first-hand the reason why TransCanada aggressively avoids public meetings. [ https://canadians.org/blog/would-you-tr ... ons-public ] Fortunately I was allowed to videotape the entire exchange between TransCanada's Patrick Lacroix, TransCanada's Steve Morck, and the Sackville Town Council. I anticipate that the Sackville Councillors & Mayor, the general public, as well as the Mayor of Edmundston, Mr. Cyrille Simard, and their Councillors, will feel very deceived and upset when they read through the following long list of alternative facts (in RED) delivered by TransCanada:

FACT #1 - THE CITY OF EDMUNDSTON, N.B. HAS NOT TAKEN A YES OR NO POSITION ON ENERGY EAST, AND IS ACTIVELY GOING THROUGH THE SUBMISSION PROCESS WITH THE NATIONAL ENERGY BOARD AS AN INTERVENOR

ALTERNATIVE FACT (repeated twice): The City of Edmundston supports Energy East.

(TC's Patrick Lacroix) "The Town of Edmundston supports Energy East. They continue to have concern with the route. We are committed to continuing to work with them on that. But they are supportive of the project."

(NOTE: This is a very misleading statement by Patrick Lacroix since he was present for the Feb. 11, 2016 public information meeting on Energy East held by the City of Edmundston. [ http://canadians.org/blog/residents-sta ... nergy-east ] Mayor Cyrille Simard made it clear that they were not taking a position on the pipeline but rather sharing their concerns with the public about how the current pipeline route proposed by TransCanada could impact their sole drinking water supply as well as that of Madawaska First Nation.

On April 26, 2016, the City of Edmundston adopted Resolution 2016-026 against any and all pipeline routes that go through the Iroquois watershed in its entirety. [ http://canadians.org/blog/city-edmundst ... sition-new ] On August 15, 2016, Mayor Simard repeated these concerns in his presentation to the National Energy Board's Panel Session in Fredericton, even releasing their presentation in a Press Release and on their municipal website. As the New Brunswick Manager of Stakeholder Relations for Energy East, Patrick Lacroix would be well aware of all of these developments, and that, to date, the City had not made any change to their position on Energy East.)

FACT #2: TRANSCANADA HAS THE WORST PIPELINE SAFETY RECORD IN CANADA, WITH 17 FULL-BORE RUPTURES SINCE 1992.

ALTERNATIVE FACT: TransCanada has a very safe pipeline record.

(TC's Patrick Lacroix) "The safety record of the pipeline industry is very strong."
(TC's Steve Morck) "Typically, pipeline-related leaks and spills are quite small….. "

(TC's Patrick Lacroix) "We are also in the liquid pipeline business and a lot of people hear about Keystone XL but there's the original Keystone that links Alberta's Hardisty to the U.S. And that pipeline has been in business for over 5 years now and has safely delivered over 1.4 billion barrels of Canadian crude to the U.S. market."

(TransCanada's Presentation Slide) The "Control Centre Operations" located in Calgary, Alberta "Detects small leaks and shuts down pipeline within minutes"

FACT #3: TAR SANDS BITUMEN SINKS IN WATER & AGGRESSIVELY STICKS TO THE BOTTOM SURFACE MAKING CLEANUP DIFFICULT, EXPENSIVE, & IMPOSSIBLE TO FULLY RESTORE THE ECOSYSTEM

ALTERNATIVE FACT: Bitumen does not sink in water.

(Steve Morck) "There's a little bit of myth that goes on about dilbit and what's it like in the pipeline and the suggestion that it sinks." "This is a bottle with dilbit in it. I will explain this in a minute or so. You can see how it floats so you can pass it around and look at it ." "It's a light end oil so when we blend it with the bitumen we actually get a very flowable, lighter-than-water oil, which is similar to some of the oils that are already imported into Canada. So you can turn over the bottle itself. You can turn it over and it floats back up."

PHOTO: (Councillor Bruce Phinney examines glass bottle containing water and diluted bitumen, Sackville Town Council, Feb. 6, 2017)

FACT #4 - ENERGY EAST WOULD BE AN EXPORT TAR SANDS PIPELINE, NECESSARY FOR THE EXPANSION OF THE TAR SANDS.

ALTERNATIVE FACT: The pipeline will not lead to the expansion of the Tar Sands.

(TC's Steve Morck) "Typically pipelines come after." "A pipeline itself doesn't actually directly cause expansion of oil sands. So it's actually the other way around. So what happens, it is the consumers that create the demand and then the producers respond to that demand. And then once they are certain of their investment they are comfortable in investing in that pipeline. So we are really after-that decision effect."

FACT #5 - AT LEAST 80% OF THE 1.1 MILLION BARRELS/DAY COMING TO SAINT JOHN IS ALREADY UNDER COMMERCIAL AGREEMENT FOR EXPORT

ALTERNATIVE FACT: TransCanada doesn't know how much is destined for export.

(TC's Patrick Lacroix) "It really is up to world markets." "So some is definitely destined for exportation and in markets that want more oil, so we need Canadian oil as opposed to oil from other countries but I can't give you. Refineries would want to keep certain flexibility."

FACT #6 - TRANSCANADA HAS A $1 BILLION CAP ON LIABILITY IN THE EVENT OF A MAJOR SPILL IN A WATERWAY OR THE BAY OF FUNDY

ALTERNATIVE FACT: TransCanada is liable for the full cost of any cleanup and compensation.

(TC's Steve Morck) "TransCanada is fully accountable, and they're also on the hook to pay for all the costs if there is an incident."
(TC's Patrick Lacroix) "Steve mentioned that we are 100% responsible for any incident."

We have to speak up against these and other alternative facts coming from the oil and gas industry. Indigenous and non-indigenous communities throughout this province and country must demand more from TransCanada and the National Energy Board:

Trust. Evidence. Public safety. Real maps. Community notices along the pipeline route. Public meetings.

Please come out to Sackville Town Council next Monday night, February 13th, @ 7:00pm to show your support for the Mount Allison University students who originally brought the Energy East issue to Sackville Town Council. They have a Facebook group Sackville, No Energy East [ https://www.facebook.com/sackvillenoEE/ ] and Event Page [https://www.facebook.com/events/403572489991840/ ] for more information. This resolution is important for their climate future and for our own children's climate future.

PHOTO: (Mount Allison University students Will Balser, Naia Noyes-West, Mara Ostafichuk, and Claire Neufeld from Sackville, No Energy East group, Sackville Town Council, Feb. 6, 2017)

NOTES & REFERENCES:

FACT #1 - THE CITY OF EDMUNDSTON, N.B. HAS NOT TAKEN A YES OR NO POSITION ON ENERGY EAST, AND IS ACTIVELY GOING THROUGH THE SUBMISSION PROCESS WITH THE NATIONAL ENERGY BOARD AS AN INTERVENOR

"Our approach is to select the most practical construction method using the least adverse effects", answered a Energy East Pipeline Ltd. representative at the NEB Panel Session in Fredericton on August 15, 2016. The proposed pipeline route crosses 18 km of the Iroquois watershed in Quebec and New Brunswick. The aquifers of the City of Edmundston and Madawaska Maliseet First Nation are supplied by the Iroquois River and Blanchette Stream watersheds,

At the Feb. 11, 2016 public information meeting held by the City of Edmundston, the CIty's own risk analysis calculated that the window for getting emergency equipment to a spill would be 1 hour and 15 minutes. TransCanada's risk analysis calculated the same reaction time would be 7 hours.
"We are talking millions, if not billions, of dollars," explained Sébastien Duguay, Environmental Coordinator for the City of Edmundston, in describing the worse-case scenario for a spill in the watershed

At the August 15, 2016 presentation to the National Energy Board's Panel Session in Fredericton, Mayor Simard stated that Edmonston's "unique underground source of supply does not require the presence of a water treatment plant. Should contamination occur, these aquifers would be destroyed and unusable forever after."

"No other underground water supply sufficient for our needs exists in the municipality and no other source of water of any sort is available in the immediate future without requiring major investments for construction and operations because a water treatment plant would become necessary."

More information can be found on Edmundston's Resolution passed unanimously on April 26, 2016 [ http://canadians.org/blog/city-edmundst ... sition-new ] and on Edmundston's presentation at the August 15, 2016 NEB Panel Session [ http://edmundston.ca/en/renseignements/ ... ergy-board ]

FACT #2: TRANSCANADA HAS THE WORST PIPELINE SAFETY RECORD IN CANADA, WITH 17 FULL-BORE RUPTURES SINCE 1992.

The 2015 analysis by Council of Canadians [ https://canadians.org/sites/default/fil ... ercent.pdf ] found that the "Pipeline rupture data produced by the National Energy Board shows that TransCanada has the worst safety record in Canada, with 17 full bore ruptures since 1992. When TransCanada's actual rupture history in Canada is used to calculate the likelihood of Energy East failing somewhere along the 4600km pipeline route, the result is a 15 per cent chance of rupture per year." "A catastrophic rupture could produce the largest oil spill in recent Canadian history - up to 30 million litres of diluted bitumen - in a worst case scenario."

But it is the smaller slow leaks under the ground that also worry many landowners and communities. Current leak-detection technology allows large spills to go undetected. Pipeline spills that cause a pressure drop of less than 1.5% of daily volume cannot be detected. This is a huge amount of volume for the proposed 42-inch diameter Energy East pipeline that would carry 1.1 million barrels every day. A 2015 independent study commissioned by the MRC d’Autray, [ http://www.covivia.com/img/courriels/20 ... Impact.pdf ] a municipal region in Quebec, found that Energy East leaks as large as 2.6 million litres per day, for a period of up to two weeks, could go undetected.

FACT #3: TAR SANDS BITUMEN SINKS IN WATER & AGGRESSIVELY STICKS TO THE BOTTOM SURFACE MAKING CLEANUP DIFFICULT, EXPENSIVE, & IMPOSSIBLE TO FULLY RESTORE THE ECOSYSTEM

The most comprehensive study of diluted bitumen to date, released in 2016 by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS), [ https://www.nap.edu/read/21834/chapter/7 ] concludes that it substantially differs from other types of oil when spilled near or in water.

(page 90) "Given the known composition of diluted bitumen, a much greater proportion of the material released can be expected to become denser than water and/or adhere to sediments, thereby sinking and entering the bed load and sediments of riverine, wetland, and coastal environments."

(page 100) "This weathering process begins rapidly following a release and can change the behaviour of diluted bitumen in a matter of days. At the same time, the level of concern for responders and public safety associated with toxic and potentially explosive volatiles in the diluent fraction is similar as for commonly transported crude oils as these concerns are associated with properties of the diluents used."

The hugely expensive cleanup of the Kalamazoo River, Michigan (2010) and the North Saskatchewan River (2016) disasters are clear examples where over 25% of the bitumen still remains stuck to the bottom of these fresh-water bodies. Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre stressed that the cost of a major spill in the Metropolitan Montreal region could reach $10 billion. And a 2013 consultant's report for the BC Ministry of Environment [ http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/main/west-coas ... 130717.pdf ] estimated that a bitumen spill on the salt-water ocean would leave more than 50% of the volume of oil in the water, due to viscosity, sinking and submergence of the tar.

Mark D'Arcy's blog
New Brunswick Energy East campaigner.
[ http://canadians.org/blogs/mark-darcy ]