Should bigger oil tankers really be in Vancouver?
By Peter Baker,
Special to The Province
June 17, 2010
Vancouver has been a major crude-oil export port for many years. Crude-oil exports last year hit four million metric tonnes, or about 29 million barrels, according to Metro Port Vancouver. Plans are now underway to increase those shipments this year.
So why has there been so little public discussion about this development? Is it wise for Vancouver, the economic engine of the entire province, to be a major crude-oil export port?
Historically, Burrard Inlet was home to four refineries fed by the Trans Mountain pipeline, which had a capacity of 225,000 barrels per day. A small surplus of crude not needed by the refineries was exported through the Westridge marine terminal in Burnaby.
In the 1990s, three of the refineries were shut, leaving just the Standard Oil refinery — and a lot of excess pipeline capacity.
Kinder Morgan, which owns the pipeline and the Westridge terminal, upgraded the pipeline to 300,000 barrels per day. (In contrast, the controversial Enbridge Northern Gateway proposal is for 520,000 barrels per day.)
Vancouver is currently the only crude-oil export terminal on Canada's West Coast and the oil companies are not waiting to expand export markets via the Pacific.
In the past year, the port has allowed larger Aframax tankers of up to 120,000 dead weight tonnage to travel through the Second Narrows to access the Westridge terminal. Each of those tankers carries enough crude to exceed the infamous Exxon Valdez spill by several times.
One has to question the wisdom of allowing a major crude-oil terminal to evolve inside a busy harbour and especially beyond the Second Narrows, an extremely narrow and shallow tidal passage.
Approached by from the east, with Berry Point to the south and mud flats to the north, the narrows is far from an ideal navigational channel. For example, to provide sufficient under-keel clearance, tanker transits are timed to occur precisely on high slack water. Tankers need to be precisely in mid-channel throughout a dogleg approach but proceed at five knots, very close their minimum steerage-way, but still a speed of 154 metres per minute.
If the tanker were in the centre of the channel, it could reach the shallows in about 30 seconds — very little time for the pilot and bridge crew to realize the problem, perhaps a rudder failure, and to co-ordinate escort tugs to respond precisely to avoid a grounding.
With transits at high slack water, an ebbing tide would ensure any grounded tanker would stay put as the water dropped by another four or five metres and five-knot currents would rapidly develop. Would a tanker of this size, even a double-hulled one, be able to remain intact under these conditions?
Even if they could be rapidly deployed, oil booms would be ineffective, given the area's large currents. Crude oil would rapidly spread throughout the harbour and beyond.
Kinder Morgan wants to twin its pipeline to 700,000 barrels per day and has said it is opposes the Enbridge project until there is clear customer demand. The company clearly believes it can serve West Coast crude export requirements from Vancouver for some time. All of this means more, possibly larger tankers operating in Vancouver harbour.
A major tanker spill anywhere on our coast would certainly be an ecological disaster. But a major spill within the port of Vancouver would also be a major economic disaster. Port operations would be interrupted at least until the oil was cleaned up, marine traffic would be diverted to U.S. ports, perhaps for a long time. Tourism and perhaps even housing prices would be affected. The difficulties of cleaning up a crude spill are being demonstrated to us right now in the Gulf of Mexico.
It is said that crude oil has been exported safely through the port of Vancouver for decades. But it has never been exported at anywhere near these levels, with larger tankers, therefore a safety record decades long does not exist.
If you believe as I do that crude exports from Vancouver are a concern, please demand that local politicians pay attention to the evolving risks of tanker traffic on the West Coast and remind them that there is no moratorium on tanker traffic on the south coast.
What would a major oil spill do to Mayor Gregor Robertson's goal of Vancouver being "the greenest city on earth"?
I think that answer is pretty clear.
Peter Baker is a North Vancouver oceanographer and computer scientist.
© Copyright (c) The Province
http://www.theprovince.com/news/Guest%20column%20Should%20bigger%20tanke...
