Five tankers a month currently pass through the Salish Sea exporting oil from the Westridge Marine Terminal in Burnaby, British Columbia. That number will likely increase to 34 a month due to an approval by the National Energy Board of Canada to allow expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline.
“There is no way to mitigate the impacts of the heightened risk of a catastrophic oil spill to U.S. and Canadian waters associated with the increase in oil tankers from approximately once a week to once daily,” said Fred Felleman, NW consultant for Friends of the Earth, a non-governmental environmental protection agency. “Each of these tankers carry over 25 million gallons of tar sands-derived oil that cannot be recovered once spilled in waters that support many endangered species including the Southern Resident community of Killer Whales and Chinook salmon on which they depend.”
Currently, the pipeline carries 300,000 barrels per day of oil from the oil sands in the Canadian province of Alberta to Burnaby. The company that owns the pipeline, Kinder Morgan, wants to expand the capacity of the pipeline to 890,000 barrels per day. Increasing capacity of the pipeline will in turn increase the oil tanker traffic to match the new output.
“This is a distressing decision as the NEB found that it does not need to address the whole issue of spill response, vessel traffic or impacts of noise on the soundscape of the Salish Sea,” said Stephanie Buffum, executive director of Friends of the San Juans. “These threats would impact the culture, environment and economy of the Salish Sea.”
The decision to continue forth with the project now will move on to the Canadian Federal Government which is expected to have its answer before the end of the year.
“Friends of the San Juans will continue to push Canadian lawmakers to include the U.S. National Academy of Sciences report on the fate and effects of diluted bitumen, published in December, 2015, as well as work to designate the Salish Sea As a Particularly Sensitive Sea Area,” said Buffum.
