Oil Spill. As bad as they say?

[Street Pharmacist]

[Quote]
Toxic waste spill in northern Alberta biggest of recent disasters in North America[\quote]

[Quote] The substance is the inky black colour of oil, and the treetops are brown. Across a broad expanse of northern Alberta muskeg, the landscape is dead. It has been poisoned by a huge spill of 9.5 million litres of toxic waste from an oil and gas operation in northern Alberta, the third major leak in a region whose residents are now questioning whether enough is being done to maintain aging energy infrastructure.[\Quote]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repor...ticle12494371/



I'm no expert, but isn't this getting a little ridiculous now? Is this media sensationalism, or do we need to start holding some people accountable?

[SeeGeeWhy]

It's for sure the salt that kills plant and animal life, not the trace amounts of oil. Produced water is nasty

[burn_this_city]

The spill is the equivalent of 80,000 barrels, how it wasn't detected quickly is beyond me.

[stang]

Holy crap that's a lot, with crap like this I can see why new pipelines are having a hard time

[Kavvy]

"Every plant and tree died"

Thats alot of plants and trees for the Globe to not have a single picture of.

[Russic]

You know we're all screwed when fotze appears to be the most ethical voice in the oil industry.

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by fotze

In the field I have, there was a line break just prior to me starting, operator just happened to be driving by and caught it before it got too bad. That didn't sit well with me, so I had monitors put on all injection lines, you could have them alarmed to shut them in too.

Its not even a requirement and you can actually do it pretty cheap.

That Zama area is an absolute nightmare, its the wild west up there.

Just pulled all their 11 disposal wells in the area. They average 100-400 m3/d disposal each. For the amount that they estimate was spilled (which is probably about half of the actual spill), they pumped water for 30 days before noticing the leak. If it was on a line with one of the lower rate wells (100 m3/d) it was 4 months prior to leak detection.
That probably isn't acceptable.

It's okay, the ERCB is undergoing rebranding at the moment! I'm sure that will increase their efficiency at keeping O&G under control!

[Minnie]

Originally Posted by fotze

That Zama area is an absolute nightmare, its the wild west up there.

Yep. My husband was born in and raised in High Level, so we're quite familiar with that whole area. We lived up there for several years as well, when the kids were tiny. Wild west is probably a mild description. The other description that area gets is "Little 'Nam". There's a First Nations reservation near(ish) there that has an RCMP detachment and the longest the officers can be there is 6 months. One of the female RCMP officers transferred there a number of years ago was gang raped. It gets really bad out in that part of the bush.

If the spill was 'not far from Zama City' it's incredibly odd that it wasn't noticed sooner.

[Yasa]

Originally Posted by fotze

In the field I have, there was a line break just prior to me starting, operator just happened to be driving by and caught it before it got too bad. That didn't sit well with me, so I had monitors put on all injection lines, you could have them alarmed to shut them in too.

Its not even a requirement and you can actually do it pretty cheap.

That Zama area is an absolute nightmare, its the wild west up there.

Just pulled all their 11 disposal wells in the area. They average 100-400 m3/d disposal each. For the amount that they estimate was spilled (which is probably about half of the actual spill), they pumped water for 30 days before noticing the leak. If it was on a line with one of the lower rate wells (100 m3/d) it was 4 months prior to leak detection.
That probably isn't acceptable.

Ignorance alert here: Do the pipelines not have a pressure monitor that detects when there's a leak, or does the pressure in the pipeline flucuate a bunch already making them useless?

[YYC in LAX]

I'm all about the industry and don't consider myself an environmentalist or anything...but uhhhhhhh this sounds pretty ####in' bad. Next to commercial aviation, the energy indsustry is right about there in regulation and someone should be held accountable.

Things break and spills happen, but something is wrong when an event like this goes undetected for so long.

Uneducated opion.

[SebC]

I would also agree that mandatory automatic leak detection, being not that expensive, is probably a good idea (at least on new pipelines, even though they're the ones that need it the least). Having said that, I don't see 42 hectares as reason to freak out.

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by SebC

I would also agree that mandatory automatic leak detection, being not that expensive, is probably a good idea (at least on new pipelines, even though they're the ones that need it the least). Having said that, I don't see 42 hectares as reason to freak out.

Problem is leak detection isn't 100% effective.
If it's a minor leak, on a long line, it's not going to show up in any sort of pressure data, so it could possibly go undetected for quite some time, meaning a low rate leak can eventually turn into a large volume spill, which is exactly what seems to have happened here.

[Street Pharmacist]

If the clean up costs and fines prohibitive enough, would it put cost pressure on pipelines enough to develop better leak protection?

Should there be personal negligence claims against executives responsible for ensuring safety? Possibly laws passed to ensure culpability and adequate penalties? As in CEOs and further down the line with regards to pipeline integrity? We changed things years ago with regards to workers safety and that helped huge. Could work here, no?

I guess I feel like this is a "We are so sorry, it won't happen again- Oh, ok. Don't let it happen again" again.

[Table 5]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

I guess I feel like this is a "We are so sorry, it won't happen again- Oh, ok. Don't let it happen again" again.

And that's pretty much why there are so many people against all the pipeline projects. I think it's hard for many Albertans to look at it with an unbiased eye, but you don't have to be a raging hippie to see that this stuff happens over and over again...and even if there are people (like our valiant white knight, Fotze) doing their best to prevent it. I've done projects for a couple ad agencies here in town, and it seems like half their work is damage control for the energy industry.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by fotze

The costs of cleaning up something like this are absolutely prohibitive. I was a little flippant in my initial post on how easy it is to solve all these problems. i.e. I read that Plains midstream break last year and the resulting shut down resulted in a loss of $1.5 billion in Royalties. These breaks suck a lot more for the company than for the government, public.

I think the public would be shocked in how much pipeline is in this province. It is not possible to have full proof never leak pipelines in the same way that we will never have roads free of accidents. They should have regs to limit the frequency and impact though.

Maybe require flow meters at the battery and at the wellhead.
Flow going to the line must equal flow going to the wellhead.

I don't think zero tolerance its the goal, it's unattainable. However, an uneducated eye sees that the level of accountability doesn't seem to enough to deter these things. Perhaps there needs to be more penalties? Like one day on jail for fotze per day for every ml leaked from his pipeline?

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by fotze

Well those penalties sound like zero tolerance.

Only for fotze. I was kidding. And I honestly have no idea what penalties exist, but after reading the biggest spill in North America just happened, right as we're telling the world its safe seems like it's not enough.

[Flash Walken]

Don't worry guys, it's not as bad as it sounds.

- Oil and Gas industry after every major spill

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Like I said earlier, any kind of leak protection will never be 100% reliable.
Meters aren't always correct, and pressure monitoring can't always detect small problems.

As for having penalties that are stronger to keep people from having leaks, that's already in place, and stiffening penalties, won't have an appreciable impact on the number of leaks.

Right now penalties are based on wheather a company, employee, exectuvie, etc, was dilligent and did everything reasonable to prevent leaks. Things like proper maintenance, and inspection. Having those programs in place is the strongest defence against pipeline leaks, and hence making sure those things are in place is what regulations really punish people for failing to do.

But like anything, they won't be 100% effective. A company can have the best policies in place and accidents will still happen, and sometimes they will go undetected. There is no point punishing people who have done everything they reasonably can do to prevent this type of thing, when circumstances beyond their control have caused the problem.

And if things have been missed, then punishment needs to be in line with the damage caused, which right now, i would say is pretty close to the balance we have. If it were tilted too far in either direction, you'd either see a lot more problems (and trust me, even though it may seem like there are a lot of problems, compared to the STAGGERING ammount of pipelines in this province, it's not even a drop in the bucket), or no one would build any sort of infrastructure for fear of the horrible consequences.

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by fotze

Reading the article again, if the tops of trees are stained, it doesn't sound like a pinhole leak.

To me it actually sounds like that's exactly what it could have been, well maybe not a pinhole, but a relatively small hole.
Large breaks/leaks tend to pool up, small leaks tend to spray. You can get a lot of coverage from a very small hole, and it will look like a lot more oil than it actually is.

Still can do a lot of damage though.

[BlackArcher101]

Originally Posted by fotze

Reading the article again, if the tops of trees are stained, it doesn't sound like a pinhole leak.

Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz

Large breaks/leaks tend to pool up, small leaks tend to spray. You can get a lot of coverage from a very small hole, and it will look like a lot more oil than it actually is.

I took it as meaning the tree tops were brown because they were dying, not residue from spray?