Why energy east 2.0?

Information on the town and RM of Moosomin’s plan to restart the discussion on Energy East

The town and RM of Moosomin are pushing for reopening the discussion on Energy East. The town and RM have formed the Energy East Development Committee to promote the development of Energy East, and former SARM president Sinc Harrison has agreed to work on the communities’ behalf, promoting the resurrection of Energy East.

Energy East was a proposal by TransCanada Pipelines to repurpose part of the existing pipeline across Western Canada and Ontario from natural gas to oil, and build new pipeline through Quebec and New Brunswick, to take Western Canadian oil to eastern refineries in Quebec and New Brunswick, and potentially to an export position at St. John, New Brunswick.

TransCanada withdrew its application to the National Energy Board for approval of the pipeline after the federal government announced a change that would take all upstream and downstream emissions into account for any future pipelines.

Moosomin would have been a major beneficiary of Energy East as TransCanada planned a 1,050,000 barrel tank farm at the Moosomin compressor station, a feeder pipeline from Cromer to Moosomin, and potentially an additional pipeline from Williston, North Dakota to Moosomin.

Efforts to date

The town and RM had sent resolutions to the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association and the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities in the fall of 2017, calling for the organizations to lobby for the reinstatement of Energy East.

Since then, SUMA president Gordon Barnhardt has met with TransCanada to discuss the issue.

Barnhardt also met with SARM president Ray Orb to discuss the issue. Sinc Harrison says he sees his role as “doing whatever it takes to get things going again”

“The RM and the town would benefit more than anyone in Western Canada from the pipeline, with the tank farm, and the pipeline from Cromer, and maybe one from down in Williston. There’s good reason for us to push for it.”

Harrison has worked hard to bring the local concerns to the attention of political leaders across Canada.

In addition to raising the issue with and political leaders, the local group has been working with Action Canada on a pro-pipeline rally in Moosomin to bring attention to the need for pipelines.

The alternative - oil by rail

In a recent Fraser Institute study, researchers examined, using data from government sources, whether pipelines or rail were safer for transporting oil and gas. The study focused on the number of occurrences or accidents per million barrels of oil and gas transported.

The result was clear. Both rail and pipelines are quite safe, but pipelines are without a doubt the safest way to transport oil and gas.

In every year from 2003 to 2013, pipelines experienced fewer occurrences per million barrels of oil equivalent transported than did rail. Overall in this period, rail experienced 0.227 occurrences per million barrels of oil equivalent transported compared to 0.049 for pipelines.

This means that rail is more than 4.5 times more likely to experience an occurrence.

Additional data on pipeline safety from the Transportation Safety Board also calls into question the often worst-case scenario rhetoric that surrounds pipeline debates. Consider that 73 per cent of pipeline occurrences result in spills of less than 1m3 and 16 per cent of occurrences result in no spill whatsoever.

The vast majority of pipeline occurrences—more than 80 per cent—also don’t occur in the actual line pipe. Rather they happen in facilities that are more likely to have secondary containment mechanisms and procedures.

But perhaps the most telling statistic regarding pipeline safety is that 99 per cent of pipeline occurrences from 2003 to 2013 didn’t damage the environment.

According to the Energy Information Administration, annual exports of oil by rail to the United States in 2010 amounted to a measly 42,000 barrels of oil. Fast forward five years to 2014 and that number has spiked to 42 million barrels of oil over the year. 

By December 2018 that had skyrocketed to 327,000 barrels a day according to the National Energy Board, or 120 million barrels of oil each year.

The danger of rail by oil was demonstrated tragically on July 6, 2013, when an unattended 74-car freight train carrying crude oil rolled down a 1.2% grade and derailed in Lac Megantic, Quebec, resulting in the fire and explosion of multiple tank cars. 

Forty-seven people were killed. More than 30 buildings in the town’s centre, roughly half of the downtown area, were destroyed,and all but three of the thirty-nine remaining downtown buildings had to be demolished due to petroleum contamination of the townsite.

Initial newspaper reports described a 1-kilometre blast radius.

The death toll of 47 makes it the deadliest rail accident in Canadian history.