Advertisement

News

Eco groups call on Obama to ban oil sands tankers from U.S. waters


TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline plans are no longer just a Canadian problem.

A new report by a coalition of American and Canadian environmental groups, led by the Virginia-based Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), says that TransCanada’s plan to pipe tar sands crude to the East Coast and ship it on tankers to Gulf Coast refineries, puts the entire Eastern Seaboard at risk. 

Energy East’s plan, which is calling for some 300 supertankers of crude to be shipped per year, “would form a high-risk, waterborne pipeline down the U.S. Eastern Seaboard, around the Florida Panhandle, and on to refineries along the Gulf Coast,”  warns the report. 

That’s a five-fold increase in tanker traffic carrying diluted oil sands bitumen along some parts of the coast, NRDC’s Canada Project’s director Anthony Swift said at a press conference Tuesday morning. That puts not only Bay of Fundy waters off TransCanada’s proposed Canaport Marine Terminal in New Brunswick at risk, but also places in its wake the last remaining pods of Atlantic right whales, several other iconic whale and dolphin species as well as Maine’s and Atlantic Canada’s lobster and scallop fisheries. 

The NRDC calls the fallout from a possible spill in the Energy East proposal “even worse than Keystone XL,” the 3,500-kilometre pipeline proposed by TransCanada from Hardistry, Alberta to Steele City, Nebraska that was ultimately rejected by the Obama administration. Keystone would have had capacity for 839,000 barrels per day. Energy East is planning to pump 1.1 million barrels to the East Coast coast daily.

Issuing the report on the sixth anniversary of Enbridge’s devastating oil spill in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the most expensive inland spill in U.S. history totalling some $1.2 billion in clean up costs, Swift points out that the tankers will be carrying the same mixture of heavy bitumen and volatile natural gas liquids that scientists say is impossible to clean up. Earlier this year, a National Academy of Sciences study concluded that,  “There are no known, effective strategies for recovery of crude oil that is suspended in the water column.”

The problem now, says the NRDC, is that Canada’s National Energy Board has refused to weigh in on upstream activities associated with Energy East.

“This means Energy East’s cumulative climate impacts, as well as the risk of damage to U.S. waters… will not be studied,” says the report.

US NGOs are calling on Americans to sign a petition urging U.S. President Barack Obama to ban tar sands oil-carrying supertankers and barges in U.S. waters as “the single best means we have to protect our coasts and our planet from the next generation of climate-wrecking tar sands oil.”

In a statement, TransCanada says they don’t own or operate ships but that, “The Canaport Marine Terminal will have a number of preventive safety measures beyond the International Maritime Organization’s requirements for crude tankers.”

The statement adds that “TransCanada is an industry leader in testing, developing and deploying technologies for leak protection, pipeline construction and integrity management.” 

It makes no mention of the 630,000 litres of crude that leaked from the South Dakota leg of TransCanada’s Keystone pipeline (a section built before Obama’s time) back in April.  

adriav@nowtoronto.com | ecoholicnation 

Advertisement

Exclusive content and events straight to your inbox

Subscribe to our Newsletter

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

By signing up, I agree to receive emails from Now Toronto and to the Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.

Recently Posted