Canada's embattled federal pipeline regulator will soon require companies to provide more thorough emergency response details when they apply for new project approvals.
The National Energy Board announced Wednesday that it seeks public comment before amending the manual that tells oil and gas companies what information is required in project applications. In a press statement released earlier this week, the Board said the new rules address "increased requests for company emergency response information" after recent pipeline hearing processes.
According to incident reports and provincial databases, there are an average of two oil spills per day in Alberta and 20 per year in Saskatchewan.
The proposed regulations would require companies to provide an overview of how they would respond to emergencies on their project site, and a more general account of their protocols for managing emergencies. Companies would be required to provide methods of risk-assessment on how much oil or gas could be released in an accident, where and how it would spread, and potential ecological effects.
Companies would also have to provide the NEB with a more detailed account of how a response to an accident would be coordinated, including financial compensation and measures in place in the event that the impact of an incident “exceeds company resources."
Examples of accidents include oil spills, pipeline ruptures, leaks and explosions.
Companies would also have to provide a detailed assessment of how they would deal with emergencies in hard-to-reach areas and in bad weather. Other proposed considerations are handling evacuations and ensuring the safety of first responders.
The NEB will prepare a final draft of the proposed rules at the end of a 60-day period for public comment, which began on Jan. 11.
A spokesperson for TransCanada Corp., which currently has several large applications with the NEB, said the company was still reviewing the proposal and did not yet have a response.
"We are pleased the NEB supports providing Canadians with more information on emergency management for all pipeline companies during the application phase," a spokesperson for Kinder Morgan said in an email to National Observer.
The changes come at a time when the NEB is under enormous scrutiny for perceived conflict of interest related to its review of TransCanada's controversial Energy East pipeline, and allegations of having done a narrow review of the now-approved Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain expansion.
The NEB expects the rules to be adopted by the early summer. A larger review on modernization of Canada's pipeline regulatory regime is due to report back to the Minister of Natural Resources by the end of the spring.
Comments
The NEB continues to pay lip service to the public with this latest ploy to feign concern followed by unlikely action (they've set the precedents).
It already allows companies to repeatedly disregard the NEB's safety orders, with no substantive outcome, penalties or resolution.
Proffering any input to the NEB is like flushing the toilet. Gone and forgotten.
Better the NEB's superficial veneer of a bona fide regulator is peeled away to reveal the captured regulator that it really is. Keep exposing their inadequacies and reveal how abysmally imperilled they have left the environment, landowners and the public.
What another waste of time and money. Get rid of the NEB, already.
These corporate plans seem to consist mostly of Could, Should, Would, yet when a spill happens the systems they claim are "state of the art" turn out to be substandard, broken, not even installed properly, or unmonitored. The recent Husky spill in Saskatchewan was shown to have started weeks or months before it was noticed and even when it was pouring into the river they failed to report it until the following day. Husky even gets to decide what "help" will be given FN for cleanup, and after the initial cleanup they were told the rest would be left to dissapate on it's own - despite the danger to wildlife. Foxes running hen houses don't work and neither do captive regulators. Coastal spills are inevitable and the "world class" marine spill response will be as effective as spitting in a hurricane while dilbit sinks to the bottom and poisonous Corexit destroys sea life for unknown generations.
NEB staff have been shown to be increasingly horrified by what is going on, so I appeal to them to please help real journalists like the ones at NO expose the full extent of this corruption. We need to rip the bandage off and expose the extent of the rot before it can be eradicated.