Suzuki Foundation takes aim at Gulf drilling #oilspill

Kathy Dunderdale might not be too worried about the environmental impacts of an offshore oil spill. 

Charlene Johnson might have trouble from day to day figuring out if the offshore is in her jurisdiction or not.

But make no mistake:  David Suzuki has the Gulf of St. Lawrence firmly in his sights. The David Suzuki Foundation is encouraging its supporters to contact the federal government to get a halt to drilling and other exploration in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

A big part of the campaign is simulations of the impact of a spill at Old Harry:

Each simulation illustrates what could happen if an spill of approximately 10,000 barrels of oil per day took place over a 10-day period in various seasons. The model demonstrates the direction of the flow of oil emanating from an instant or continuous spill. Forecasts indicate the location and concentration of surface and underground oil over time.

There’s a spring, summer, fall and winter version.

The spring spill hits Newfoundland very hard.

Summer is worse for western Newfoundland.

Fall nails the south coast as far away as the Burin Peninsula.  St. Pierre would take it heavily in this scenario.

Winter hits five provinces but affects only a small portion of south western Newfoundland.

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Related:

• NL offshore drilling bans rests with prov gov
• Drill, baby! Drill!
• Miles before they hit the shore (labradore)

Federal briefing note cautions against #oilspill speculation

A briefing note prepared for federal natural resources minister Christian Paradis describes the potential impact an oilspill offshore Newfoundland and Labrador from one of the existing fields.

The note describes projections about impacts of an oilspill as risky since they are speculative. Nonetheless, the briefing note – obtained by Canadian Press under federal access to information laws – does give some idea of what might happen in a “non-trivial” spill:

The note says a “non-trivial” spill could leave oil in the water for weeks or months and much of it likely wouldn't be recovered. But little-to-no oil would likely wash up on Newfoundland's shores, and most of it would drift eastward and disperse in the Atlantic Ocean.

Sea birds might not be so lucky. The document says “it is likely that oil from a large blowout offshore eastern N.L. would cause substantial and significant seabird mortality, due to these species' extreme vulnerability to surface oiling.”

Fish might survive, but the fishery would likely be affected:

“This could have an economic effect upon the fishery enterprises involved. ... There is also the possibility that market perceptions could be affected for fishery products caught over a wider area than that actually affected by oil.”

Okay.  So this is speculation and, as the briefing note suggests, the minister should avoid speculation.  That’s actually good advice and someone should have fed the minister some better talking points.

Someone should have fed better lines to Premier Danny Williams and Kathy Dunderdale, too.  Both not only speculated on potential scenarios, they downplayed the potential impact of a spill.

And of course, neither the federal nor provincial Conservative politicians mentioned the possible impact of a “non-trivial” spill in some places offshore but not quite so far out to sea.

Like say in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

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Sins of omission

“Five key bridges in the western portion of the T’Railway Provincial Park that closed in 2008 are now re-opened to park users. … [The five bridges are being ] replaced as a result of a $3.6 million allocation in Budget 2010: The Right Investments – For Our Children and Our Future.”

That’s part of the first paragraph of a happy-news release from the province’s environment.  It’s one of dozens issued every week in July as part of the happy-news offensive mounted by the provincial government in the run up to August’s scheduled polling by the provincial government pollster.

The release leaves out much relevant detail.

Not surprisingly, that detail is embarrassing to the provincial government and especially to the ever-embarrassing minister, Charlene Johnson.

For starters, the bridges in questions were all former railway bridges inherited by the provincial government in 1988 when the railway closed.  The provincial government took responsibility for the bridges but until 2008 – apparently  - did nothing with them.

No maintenance.

No repairs.

No inspections either, apparently.

At all.

That is until the federal government inspected a few that crossed over federally-monitored waterways.  They found a raft of them in what appeared to be perilous states of disrepair. 

In one case, one of the bridges had vanished entirely.  When inspectors showed up to take a lookee-look, they couldn’t find anything except the footings on either shore.

So basically this splendiferous investment of more than three and a half millions could have been avoided or at least spread out over time if someone – anyone – at any point along the way had decided to do some regular maintenance on the bridges.

Or even taken a peek at them once in a while.

Even an auditor general’s report in 2003 on inadequate inspection of road bridges seems to have prompted any action on the former railway bridges, the ones now used by pedestrians, snowmobilers and ATV operators.

None of this, by the by, stopped Johnson from claiming that her department prized public safety. As your humble e-scribbler noted at the time:

We understand the inconvenience of the closure of these structures; however, public safety has to be our number one priority," said Minister Johnson.

But...

Environment Minister Charlene Johnson said today the province does not conduct routine safety assessments of structures on the T’Railway, which is a provincial park.

“There’s no regular inspections, no,” Johnson said in response to questions from reporters.

That sort of bumbling is why some people find it odd that Charlene has adopted a tone of haughty arrogance when dealing with issues like the Abitibi expropriation fiasco or offshore oil.

That sort of bumbling is also likely why Charlene’s publicists decided to torque this release without any reference  whatsoever - an omission in other words - to the mess that started it all.

But all of it doesn’t explain the real sin of omission here:  namely the explanation of why the Premier keeps this minister in a job for which she is clearly unqualified and at which she has clearly been a disaster of BP proportions.

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Offshore board releases complete #oilspill response plans

From the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board:

“The CNLOPB wishes to advise that Operator Oil Spill Response Plans will be available to the public upon request, and the plans will include oil spill trajectory model information and oil spill response management information that had previously been redacted.

Redaction of this information had been done based on advice given to staff, but the decision to release the information now is being made in the interest of the public’s right to know.

The CNLOPB committed to make Oil Spill Response Plans available to the pubic and to redact only the information that falls within a classification of being either personal, proprietary or security sensitive information.

Copies of the plans are available on request by e-mailing information@cnlopb.nl.ca”

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Government Talking Points: the oil will never reach shore edition #oilspill

Danny Williams, speaking in the House of Assembly in May 2010, as reported by CBC:

"As recently as this morning, we've looked at just exactly what the situations are in the North Atlantic," Williams said.

"It is a general understanding that because the offshore sites are significantly offshore and well east of the province that ... there's a lower likelihood that oil would actually come ashore in Newfoundland and Labrador."

From the Wall Street Journal, June 2010:

BP PLC and other big oil companies based their plans for responding to a big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on U.S. government projections that gave very low odds of oil hitting shore, even in the case of a spill much larger than the current one.

Natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale, in the House of Assembly, June 2010, as quoted by the Telegram:

  Mr. Speaker, based on 40 to 50 years of wind study, it is shown that oil, because of the wave action and the coldness of the sea, Mr. Speaker, breaks up and disperses. ... Mr. Speaker, we had an oil spill in 2004 on the Terra Nova. Mr. Speaker, that oil dispersed, broke up, and went away. Ocean floor studies have been done, Mr. Speaker, there is no evidence of oil from that oil spill on the floor around our Terra Nova project.

The WSJ, again:

The government models, which oil companies are required to use but have not been updated since 2004, assumed that most of the oil would rapidly evaporate or get broken up by waves or weather.

 

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There are gulfs and then there are #oilspill gulfs

labradore explains in graphic detail the gulf between the Old Man’s bland assurances that such things could never happen here and what an oil spill of BP magnitude in the Gulf of St. Lawrence (centred theoretically on Old Harry or a field near it) might look like.

The Premier focused his attention on current production wells which are a couple of hundred miles offshore.

But there is another offshore that isn’t quite so far away.

Bear in mind this isn’t based on an analysis of currents and so forth.  it’s just what you get if you lay a map of the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico in another oil rich Gulf.

What opens, as a result, is not so much a gulf but ye olde chasm of credibility that swallows the Premier’s assurances whole.

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The pictures tell another #oilspill story

Natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale, as quoted in a recent Telegram editorial:

Mr. Speaker, in terms of an oil spill offshore, the greatest vulnerability will exist to the bird population.   Mr. Speaker, based on 40 to 50 years of wind study, it is shown that oil, because of the wave action and the coldness of the sea, Mr. Speaker, breaks up and disperses. ... Mr. Speaker, we had an oil spill in 2004 on the Terra Nova. Mr. Speaker, that oil dispersed, broke up, and went away. Ocean floor studies have been done, Mr. Speaker, there is no evidence of oil from that oil spill on the floor around our Terra Nova project.

From the same editorial, a quote attributed to a Chevron report on drilling in the Orphan Basin:

The report notes a spill could cause 'relatively few' to a 'very large' number of seabird deaths. But overall, it concludes a spill 'will not result in any significant residual impacts' on animals.

And when you’ve digested that, take a look at some pictures from the Gulf of Mexico.

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