Burnaby soured to Kinder Morgan after 2007 spill: mayor (with video)
Jeff Lee, Vancouver Sun 05.15.2014
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METRO VANCOUVER -- Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan said his municipality has the dubious distinction of actually knowing what will happen when - not if - an oil spill takes place if Kinder Morgan is allowed to build another pipeline from Alberta to the west coast.
In a forceful address to Vancouver city council, Corrigan said his municipality discovered in 2007 Kinder Morgan was "not the right partner" to be responsible for oil pipelines after a relatively minor spill damaged 50 houses and dumped 250,000 litres of crude oil into Burrard Inlet.
Even though the Texas-based company stepped up in the wake of the disaster and spent $15 million to clean up the mess, the experience left Burnaby completely soured, Corrigan said. Especially after the company then turned around and tried to sue the city, even thought the federal Transportation Safety Board found Kinder Morgan didn't have accurate maps of the pipeline location and suffered from communications problems.
Now, as Kinder Morgan is trying to gain approval from the National Energy Board for a new $5.4 billion Trans Mountain pipeline to the same area, Corrigan said his city's experience shows it is only a matter of time before another spill takes place.
"They underestimate risks, they consistently trivialize risks, they continually talk about the remoteness of odds in those risks, and then they work to limit their own liability in those risks. That's been my experience," Corrigan told Vancouver council in chambers.
"If you look at the research on them, Kinder Morgan has a history of pipeline accidents all over North America. Why would we be different? Why would we think we would be different than any other place that has suffered it? Why would we not be a Kalamazoo?"
Kalamazoo is in reference to a the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history. It took place in 2010 when a pipeline operated by Canadian-based Enbridge ruptured, spilling 3.3 million litres of heavy bitumen oil into Michigan's Kalamazoo River.
Corrigan said Kinder Morgan has systematically reduced staffing at many of its operations, including tank farms that are now remotely operated from Alberta. In questions it has posed to the company in the NEB process, Burnaby has asked what would happen if the city refused to provide access, including emergency response, water hookups and space under city roads.
"The disappointment to us is that they (Kinder Morgan) proved us that as far as partnerships are concerned, that they are not the right partner in a complicated and potentially dangerous issue like the care of oil lines and terminals," he said.
Lizette Parsons-Bell, a Kinder Morgan spokeswoman, said she hadn't heard Corrigan's address to Vancouver council. However, she said the company recognizes there will be people who disagree with what it is doing.
"The City of Burnaby is an intervener in the process. It has asked a lot of questions and we will respond to them," she said. "We are hoping they will respect the process and continue to ask their questions through the National Energy Board and ongoing community engagements."
Corrigan was invited to address Vancouver council, which approved Mayor Gregor Robertson's motion asking the federal government to intervene and instruct the NEB to hold public hearings into Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline application.
Corrigan said the NEB is handicapping the review process with its refusal to grant intervenor status to people who have a vested interest in Kinder Morgan's application.
"It is a bastardized process that isn't anything close to a true assessment of whether or not this project is in our best interests or in the best interests of Canada," he said.
It was the first time since he was elected as mayor in 2002 that Corrigan has appeared in that capacity before Vancouver council. He was accorded speaking status the Vision Vancouver council doesn't apply to other speakers, which they limit to five minutes.
Corrigan, who shares similar centre-left political views to Vision, was in safe territory as he railed against Kinder Morgan, the National Energy Board and the federal and provincial governments.
He said he was appalled that the province had decided to hand off to the federal government its responsibility for an environmental review, and dismissed the federal government view that such pipelines are in Canadians' best interests.
He noted that in the years since the first Trans Mountain pipeline was built, all but one of the refineries it supplied on the west coast have been shut. And to add insult to injury, when the remaining Chevron refinery applied to the NEB for an assured delivery of oil that was increasingly being exported by Trans Mountain, the board turned it down.
As a result, Corrigan said it increasingly falls to local governments like Vancouver, Burnaby and others, as well as First Nations, to speak up against the pipeline proposal.
"So far I have seen nothing that leads me to believe the federal or provincial governments are looking after our interests.That leaves it up to us," he said.
On Kinder Morgan's application itself, the mayor said it contained many flaws.
"I was amazed that they managed to put together 15,000 pages without really saying anything. It is incredible because the issues we are asking about are not contained in any of the documents. We've got 1,500 questions asking about things they didn't tell us in that 15,000 pages," he said. "Most of it is redundant and repetitive . . . what you discover as you go through it is they haven't addressed (the issues) at all."
Robertson said the two cities have a common goal in trying to get the application rejected and pledged his council will work with Burnaby to defeat the application.
jefflee@vancouversun.com