Pipeline Troubles

Anchor Aaron Schachter talks with The World’s environment editor Peter Thomson about a small oil spill that may have big consequences for a plan to pump oil from Alberta to the Pacific Ocean, and may even play into the fight over the Keystone oil pipeline in the US.

SCHACHTER: A small oil spill in Wisconsin could mean big problems for a Canadian company that wants to build a controversial pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific Ocean.

The World’s environment editor Peter Thomson joins me now.

Peter, I understand that this spill in Wisconsin was only about 50,000 gallons. That’s an amount doesn’t usually rise to the level of international attention. Why are people so concerned with this spill?

THOMSON: Well Aaron, the spill happened last Friday in a tiny town called Grand Marsh, Wisconsin, pretty much in the middle of nowhere unless you live there, It was only about 1,200 barrels, or about 50 thousand gallons, as you said… And the company that runs the pipeline says it’s bringing “all necessary resources to bear” in cleaning up the site. So on its face, its not a really such a big accident as these things go…

But what’s gotten people’s attention, including the attention of US regulators and environmentalists here in the US and Canada, is that the company that runs the pipeline is a firm called Enbridge. And this is the same company that wants to build this major pipeline from the oil sands, or tar sands, as some people call them, of Alberta across the northern Rocky Mountains to the Pacific coast in British Columbia. Of course the tar sands themselves are extremely controversial, but this pipeline—which is called the Gateway pipeline—is also pretty controversial itself because it would go through some extremely sensitive wilderness territory and native lands in northern British Columbia. So there’s been a growing fight over it in Canada.

SCHACHTER: So can I assume opponents of that Gateway pipeline are using this spill in Wisconsin as ammunition in their arguments against that pipeline?

THOMSON: Well, they’re starting to. And the bigger problem for Enbridge is that this is not an isolated incident. The company’s had other pipeline problems in Canada and another one of its pipelines here in the US burst two years ago, in Michigan. That accident dumped close to a million gallons of a type of oil called bitumen into the Kalamazoo River. It closed more than 30 miles of the river for 2 years and it’s still being cleaned up today. And just last month, a regulatory agency in the US issued a scathing report on the spill. It condemned the company and compared its response to the spill to the “Keystone Kops.”

Now, in the wake of that report and this latest spill the US department of transportation has ordered Enbridge to certify the safety of the entire 19-hundred miles of the pipeline that runs from North Dakota through Wisconsin and on to New York State. So that likely means this pipeline will be closed a lot longer than it would otherwise have been. And it also increases the scrutiny for Enbridge at in Canada a time when its proposal for that pipeline is in the middle of that growing battle.

SCHACHTER: Right, so what’s the latest on that? We’ve covered it a bit here on the world.

THOMSON: Well there are two big issues. One of course is what that pipeline would carry, and that’s this thick, heavy crude oil out of the Alberta called bitumen. It’s been the object of massive opposition from environmentalists in the US and Canada. They say it’s among the world’s dirtiest oil and would have a huge impact on global warming. You’ll remember that the opposition was part of what led President Obama to suspend construction earlier this year on the Keystone pipeline, which would carry tar sands oil across the Canadian border and the US Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico. After that decision, Canada said it would redouble its efforts to build this second big pipeline from the tar sands west to the Pacific, to send the oil to markets in Asia.

But native groups in British Columbia are essentially saying, that’ll happen over their dead bodies, and the premier of British Columbia has also taken a tough stance, although more for economic reasons than environmental ones. She says that the province would be carrying all the environmental risk and get none of the financial benefit from it.

SCHACHTER: So is the pipeline from Alberta to British Columbia—dead in the water?

THOMSON: I wouldn’t’ say that at all. It’s certainly facing some stiff headwinds, but mind you, the Canadian government has made its intention to get this build extremely clear. It’s part of—

SCHACHTER: This is a lot of money we’re talking about.

THOMSON: A huge amount of money, and its part of essentially a huge national energy and economic plan in Canada. In fact, the government there essentially just rewrote a huge swath of environmental law to allow this to go forward without as much environmental review as there would otherwise have been. So there’s a huge amount of momentum behind it.

But like I said, there are also formidable forces lining up against it. And remember, all of these pipelines emanate from the Alberta tar sands, which is the object of what’s really a global battle. And that’s what kind of brings this story back to the US.

SCHACHTER: How so?

THOMSON: Well, remember the reference in that US government report on the Michigan spill, calling the company—

SCHACHTER: “Keystone Kops!”

THOMSON: “Keystone Kops”—it’s kind of hard to miss the resonance in that with the fight over the Keystone pipeline. This also would carry bitumen from the tar sands in Alberta. Along with being worse for the climate, the stuff is especially difficult to clean up when it spills. So you can be pretty sure that when the Keystone battle is reopened following the election next fall, that environmentalists are really going to push this issue of potential spills of bitumen from the Canadian pipelines.

SCHACHTER: The world’s environment editor Peter Thomson. Thanks very much.

THOMSON: Thank you, Aaron.