General - Goods
Find Out what the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline Project means for the surrounding area.
The Enbridge Northern Gateway Project is one of four major pipeline projects proposed for northern BC over next few years. The project proposes a 1200 km dual pipeline—one to move crude oil from the Alberta tar sands to the proposed oil port in Kitimat, and the other to move condensate east from BC to Alberta. In total, more than 700,000 barrels of petroleum products would cross rivers, mountains and valleys of northern BC each day. The proposed oil port would facilitate the transport of the oil and condensate from the pipelines to super tankers, travelling our inside coastal waters.
Spills
Pipeline ruptures and oil spills cause enormous and irreversible damage to entire watersheds and ecosystems impacting fish, wildlife, plants, and drinking water.
Finding detailed information on the total number of spills and ruptures on Enbridge pipelines can be challenging. Enbridge pipelines cross many provincial, national, state, and international boundaries. There are many different agencies that hold the records for the location, type, cause, and volume of each spill.
The following is a summary of some of the information publicly available on Enbridge pipeline spills and ruptures.
Enbridge Self-Reported Spills
2003: 62 reportable liquid spills, totaling 6,410 barrels.
2004:69 reportable liquid spills, totaling 3,252 barrels.
2005:70 reportable liquid spills totaling 9,825 barrels.
2006:67 reportable liquid spills totaling 5,363 barrels
2007:65 reportable liquids spills totaling 13,777 barrels .
These spills and releases occurred throughout their transmission pipelines in Canada and the United States. A “reportable spill” is any spill reportable to a regulatory jurisdiction. What is considered “reportable” can change from one province, state or country to the next.
Tanker Traffic
This project also includes the construction of a loading facility near Kitimat. Tankers would begin to travel to British Columbia’s coast to transport oil and condensate to and from the United States, China, India and other markets. It is anticipated that approximately 225 condensate and crude oil-laden tankers a year would travel along the coast and 140 kilometres up a fjord to the Kitimat terminal. This traffic could include approximately 18 condensate and crude oil tankers per month, including four to five Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) with a capacity of 2 million barrels of oil or more per VLCC. Each of these ships is about 350 metres long – the length of 3.5 football fields– and 60 metres wide.
These coastal waters are an extremely risky environment for tanker traffic. The area is one of the most active earthquake zones in Canada and the stormy unpredictable nature of the weather has made it famous for its severe winter storms. Winter winds have been recor
