The eventual fate of the proposed Northern Gateway project will likely come down to how decision makers perceive its risk.
The impact of an oil spill, either during the pipeline's overland route from northern Alberta to Kitimat, at the terminal or once its loaded onto a tanker on its way to Asia could be devastating. Just how those risks are calculated have been a topic for discussion during National Energy Board hearings and took another twist Thursday when a new report came out suggesting Northern Gateway was understating the chance of a spill.
In his study, Simon Fraser University professor Tom Gunton said the risk assessment the company provided the Joint Review Panel (JRP) examining the environmental assessment application is flawed.
Funded in part by the Coastal First Nations, the study concluded the chance of a spill, either on land, at the terminal or in the marine environment over the course of the project is between 95 per cent and 99 per cent.
"It's close to a certainty that at some point across the operating life of that project there will be that spill," he said.
Gunton's study includes spills of all sizes; for land based spills it could be a small as one to three barrels or as large as 20,000 as was the case during the Kalamazoo incident in 2010. For marine spills, he looked at everything over 1,000 barrels.
"As you move up to larger and larger spills, of course the probability declines on the likelihood of a spill," he said.
In its filings with the JRP, Northern Gateway touts its safety measures as world class and estimates that the chance of a tanker spill is just one in 250 years, or 18 per cent over the course of the life span of the project.
Northern Gateway consultant and expert witness Keith Michel said the marine aspect of Gunton's study was flawed because it didn't take into account the decline in the number of tanker spills in recent years or the fact that only double-hulled tankers will be used at the Kitimat terminal.
"Tanker spills are declining and continuing to decline in a steady manner," Michel, the former chairman of Herbert Engineering, said. "Personally, as I discussed in my testimony I think the trend will continue in the future."
Michel said that worldwide there are an average of two major tanker spills, defined as at least 8,000 barrels, each year. In 2012 there were no major spills reported for the first time ever.
"In reality when you look at the total quantity of oil that ends up in the water over time, it in fact comes from a very few, very large spills," he said.
Gunton countered that 2012 is too small of a sample size to be relevant and there's no guarantee the downward trend will continue forever.
"There is also recent research that suggests that tanker spill rates may start to increase as the fleet ages - the last number of years the average age is low due to replacement of double hull tankers - so no one knows for sure what the future tanker spill rates will be," he said.
Gunton's study was released the day after the questioning phase of the JRP wrapped up and came too late to be considered as evidence.
"Mr. Gunton should have made his study available to the JRP process, the most thorough review of a pipeline that's ever taken place in Canada," Northern Gateway president John Carruthers said in a news release. "All of Northern Gateway's conclusions have been subject to peer review, information requests and questioning by interveners and the Joint Review Panel."
Gunton said he's been working on the report for a year and a half alongside a Ph. D candidate and said more work still needs to be done so that all sides can agree on the risk the project poses.
"I think it's important for the JRP to have the best evidence scientific available to make an informed decision," he said. "So it would be prudent to ask Enbridge to go back and redo its risk assessment and address a number of the deficiencies and work with other parties and other experts and come up with a risk assessment that everybody has confidence in so that we can make the best decision possible based on the best information possible."
