Well-financed environmental groups are prone to theatrics when it comes to opposing the oilsands, but ForestEthics has taken its rhetoric to new heights in calling the prospect of transporting Alberta bitumen to the British Columbia coast by rail “underhanded.”
It’s broadly understood that shipping oil by rail is less desirable than using pipelines, as accidents such as the one that took place in North Dakota on Dec. 30, and the July disaster in Lac Megantic, Que., remind us. Rail cars are a complementary method of transporting oil, however, particularly in the absence of greater pipeline capacity represented by proposals such as Enbridge’s Northern Gateway project, which would carry diluted bitumen 1,177 kilometres from Alberta to Kitimat on the B.C. coast. Kinder Morgan recently filed an application to double the capacity of its pipeline from Alberta to Burnaby.
tap here to see other videos from our team.
Harnessing rail is a “backdoor way for industry to bring tankers to the coast without the same sort of public oversight or public process that we’ve had around the Enbridge pipeline or would have around the Kinder Morgan pipeline,” says Ben West, campaign director for ForestEthics Advocacy, the Canadian arm of ForestEthics. The U.S.-based environmental group has pushed north, with opposition to Alberta’s oilsands among its key priorities.
People like West must realize that there is nothing “backdoor” about using rail to transport oil — it is a growing reality in North America as production of both oilsands and conventional sources ramps up.
In 2011, Canadian National moved around 5,000 rail cars of crude oil, while Canadian Pacific transported 13,000 rail cars. In 2012, that number increased sixfold for CN to 30,000, and fourfold for CP to 53,500.
It’s estimated that it would require 10 trains of 100 cars each to carry the same volume of bitumen as Northern Gateway would transport to the coast each day — proof that pipelines remain the No. 1 preference.
So far, oil doesn’t make its way west by rail in large quantities, but the notion was examined by a joint B.C.-Alberta task force appointed by the provinces’ premiers as part of their co-operation around energy.
“Rail can be considered a viable alternative to pipeline movement based on costs of transport,” the 10-page terms of reference for the group stated. “If pipelines are not developed, rail will step into the void to deliver bitumen to the West Coast.”
The group’s report has not yet been released, but it was prudent to task officials in both provinces to look into the subject of carrying bitumen by rail, given the cloud that hangs over pipeline projects. Indeed, the premiers would have been remiss in not addressing the matter and instead leaving it to the rail companies and producers to navigate themselves.
The federal cabinet is expected to rule on the Northern Gateway pipeline this summer, and the environmental assessment of Kinder Morgan’s proposal has yet to get underway. Both will have to be assessed on their merits, but no one — not even ForestEthics — should be surprised that the conversation about how to get Canadian oil to market continues to include rail.