Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline System

Trans Mountain Pipeline
Map of Trans Mountain Pipeline
Location
Country	Canada
Province	Alberta and British Columbia
From	Edmonton, Alberta
To	Burnaby, British Columbia
General information
Type	Oil
Owner	Kinder Morgan
Commissioned	1951
Technical information
Length	1,150 km (710 mi)
Diameter	24 in (610 mm)

The Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline System, or simply the Trans Mountain Pipeline, is the only pipeline that carries crude and refined oil from Alberta to the west coast of British Columbia. It is wholly owned by the Canadian division of Kinder Morgan and has been in use since 1953.^[1]

History

The idea for a pipeline from Alberta to BC quickly emerged after the discovery of large oil deposits around Leduc. This was driven by the growing demand for oil both in Asia and on the west coast of Canada and the US. The US military was also interested in developing this infrastructure so that oil could more easily be accessed for military use, specifically because of the ongoing Korean War.

On March 21, 1951, the Trans Mountain Pipeline Company was created by a special act of parliament. On the same day the company made a pipeline proposal to the Board of Transport Commissioners. Owernship of the company was split between Canadian Bechtel Ltd. and Standard Oil.

After approval construction of the pipeline began in February 1952. Canadian Bechtel Ltd. was responsible for the engineering, design, and construction of the project.

Finally on October 17, 1953, oil began to be pumped through the pipeline which cost $93 million.^[2][3]

In 2004 Kinder Morgan began to plan for a second pipe that would run in parallel with the current pipeline between Hinton, Alberta, and Hargreaves, British Columbia. For the additional pipeline two more stations were required and were built: the Wolf Pump Station near Niton Junction, Alberta, and the Chappel Pump Station near Pyramid, British Columbia. The project was completed in 2008 and it added 40,000 barrels a day, from 260,000 to 300,000.^[4]

Expansion project

In 2013, Kinder Morgan filed its application to the Canadian National Energy Board for building a second pipeline that would roughly run parallel to the existing pipeline, for transporting diluted bitumen between Edmonton and Burnaby, east of Vancouver under the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project.^[5] Such an expansion would result in increasing the capacity of the system from 300,000 barrels a day to 890,000 with 980 kilometres (610 mi) of pipe. The additional pipe would also require 12 new pressure stations. This increase would help supply growing demand in the United States, and specifically in Asia. A investment of $6.8 billion would complete the connection between Strathcona County, Alberta, and Burnaby, British Columbia.^[6]

Kinder Morgan had the support of several large petroleum industry customers for this expansion, (BP Canada Energy Trading Co., Canadian Natural Resources, Canadian Oil Sands Ltd., Cenovus Energy Inc., Devon Canada Corp., Husky Energy Marketing Inc., Imperial Oil Ltd., Nexen Marketing Inc., Statoil Canada Ltd., Suncor Energy Marketing Inc., Suncor Energy Products Partnership, Tesoro Refining & Marketing Co. and Total E&P Canada Ltd).

In 2016, B.C. said that it did not support Trans Mountain, partly because Kinder Morgan has not provided enough information about its proposed spill prevention program.^[7]

On November 29, 2016, the government announced, along with other pipeline plans, that they had approved the pipeline which is subject to 157 binding conditions. The project will create an estimated 15,000 new jobs.^[8]

Debate

Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan addresses the crowd, at the STOP KINDER MORGAN protest rally, on Burnaby Mountain Park.

Reasons for debate around the approval around such pipelines, and specifically the Trans Mountain Pipeline, is that in the past Kinder Morgan has had several environmental accidents surrounding the pipeline including:

• Abbotsford 2005: A ruptured pipeline dumped 210,000 litres of crude oil. In a 2007 report from the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, Kinder Morgan was criticized for a delay in response time because the line between the Sumas tank farm and the Sumas pump station was not part of a leak detection system.^[9]
• Burnaby 2007: A road crew ruptured a pipeline, causing 250,000 litres of crude oil to flow into Burrard Inlet Bay via the Burnaby storm sewer system. Eleven houses were sprayed with oil and about 250 residents evacuated. Cleanup took more than a year. The Transportation Safety Board ruled the accident was the fault of Kinder Morgan as it was responsible for ensuring the excavation crew knew the pipeline's exact location before they started digging.^[10]
• Burnaby 2009: 200,000 litres seeped from a storage tank into a surrounding containment bay at the Burnaby Mountain tank farm.^[11]
• Sumas 2012: 110,000 litres of oil leaked from a Sumas Mountain holding tank, caused by freezing water placing pressure on a gasket. The National Energy Board's investigation found that "the leak was detected later than it should have been", the company's management of procedures was "inadequate" and that the operator "failed to recognize the leak situation". It took three alarms and a shift change before someone was sent out to investigate.^[12][13]

A study by Simon Fraser University claims that Kinder Morgan has overestimated the economic benefits of the pipeline expansion.^[14] This report directly contradicts the narrowing of the WTI and Brent futures index after Obama similarly opened the US domestic market to foreign exports.^[15]

The existing and proposed pipelines ship diluted bitumen through the Strait of Juan de Fuca, an extremely sensitive environmental region. The tankers have to pass through a very narrow channel of shallow water to reach the open sea, making the project controversial and strongly opposed by some Canadians and Americans, for reasons similar to the opposition to Keystone XL, Line 9, and Northern Gateway and offshore deep ocean oil drilling.

Protests

RCMP policemen contain Burnaby citizens protest against oil giant Kinder Morgan on Burnaby Mountain.

The expansion project faced strong opposition from civic governments, First Nations, environmentally concerned citizens, and others. Protests in November 2014 focused on Kinder Morgan's surveying work.

Members of the Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations of British Columbia, Canada paddled canoes on the waters of Burrard Inlet to the Kinder Morgan Burnaby Terminal for a ceremony to protest the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline, in North Vancouver, B.C., on September 1, 2012. Tsleil-Waututh leaders hoped to shut down the project altogether.^[16] Many of these pipelines also pass through the Strait of Juan de Fuca which is an extremely sensitive region. The British Columbian Government is also opposed to the Trans Mountain Pipeline as they did not provide enough information on their spill prevention program.^[17] On November 28, 2016, the project was approved by the federal government.

Those who support the pipeline say that it will create jobs and that it has a lower risk of spilling oil then transporting oil by rail which would otherwise have to be used.^[18]

Other projects

The pipeline is part of multiple projects to grow the export of Canadian oil to international markets as well as to Eastern Canada and to refineries around North America. Other projects include the Northern Gateway Pipeline from Alberta to Kitimat, the Keystone XL Pipeline to the Southern US, and Line 9 and Energy East to eastern provinces.

References

External links

• Oil Across the Rockies - Documentary of the building of the pipeline.
• The Building of Trans Mountain: Canada's First Oil Pipeline Across the Rockies - Book about the building of the pipeline.