Natural Resources Committee on June 15th, 2010

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

And the board is looking into that? Are they looking at re-evaluating it? Those amounts seem to be fairly nominal compared to some of the costs that are being incurred right now in the Gulf of Mexico.

[Mark Corey]

Again, that's one of the things that I know there have been a lot of questions in the House recently to our minister about whether or not the government will be reviewing the levels. That really is an issue for ministers to decide. It would be inappropriate for me to address that issue today as an official, but we can tell you what the provisions are.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Has there been any discussion or direction given by the minister to reassess this?

[Mark Corey]

Again, that would violate my oath as a public servant in terms of advice to ministers. As I say, the ministers are responsible for that. We can explain the system, but it is really more appropriate to put questions to the minister in terms of changes. It would be ministers who would basically decide and announce any changes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Bains.

We go now to Mr. Hiebert, for up to five minutes.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My questions are for Mr. Brown and they deal with the options that are available to the people who are cleaning up the spill. You mentioned in situ burning. You talked about chemical dispersants. You've talked about using boom technology. What other options are available?

[Dr. Carl Brown]

The options you would use in any particular spill really have to do with that specific situation, including where the spill is, what type of oil it is, and the proximity of sensitive environments. The three things that you mentioned are the primary response countermeasures.

In some situations, natural attenuation, or leaving the environment to take care of the oil, might be the proper choice. That option might be used sometimes in areas like marshlands, where, if you brought in heavy equipment, you might cause more damage than the oil itself. On a beach, for example, where there's a lot of wave energy, nature will take care of a lot of that oil. It will overwash the beach and bring some of that oil back into the water column and naturally disperse it. Bio-remediation would take care of it.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Okay, that makes a lot of sense.

When you're looking at the three other options—using boom technology, in situ burning, or chemical dispersants—how do you decide? You're providing advice to the Department of Homeland Security and the EPA, so how do you decide which of these methods should be used in the circumstance?

[Dr. Carl Brown]

In almost all major marine spills, you would use all three of those countermeasures—or the fourth, that of natural attenuation. You need to look at the net environmental benefit of each of those possibilities. Each of those countermeasures is a trade-off. You may have a sensitive environment such as a bird colony or a habitat where there are fish or shellfish, and you would want to protect that. If the spill occurs, such as this one, in deep water, you may choose to use dispersants that would disperse a great amount of the oil into the water column. It would then be further diluted. You're trading off protecting that sensitive shoreline environment, and looking at the possible consequences of the oil and the dispersant on that marine deep-water community.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

My guess is that the boom technology is finite. We talked about the number of meters that are available. Is it not the case that it would be used to its maximum capacity and then beyond that there's really no other alternative but burning or chemical dispersants? Is there any reason the boom technology would not be used?

[Dr. Carl Brown]

Certainly, again, it depends on the situation. If you're using booms to corral oil so that it can be skimmed off and put into a barge or tanker, you can only skim at certain speeds, and most of these booms only work up to one nautical mile per hour. After that, you lose oil outside the back of the boom. Certainly you're restricted by that. You're restricted by foul weather, which may preclude the—

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

It's the natural first line of defence, I would imagine.

[Dr. Carl Brown]

It certainly is, yes.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

The other question I have relates to the experiment that was done off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador with an in situ burn. What are the trade-offs there? Is it a good alternative, burning in situ?

[Dr. Carl Brown]

Yes, it is a good alternative, depending on where it is. Certainly you wouldn't choose to use that if there were a coastal environment or human habitation where the emissions would blow directly onto the community.

But we measured the emissions, and most of the emissions are things like carbon dioxide and water, basically, that go up. There are some aromatic compounds that go up and there's some soot. The levels of those are well within human safety limits half a kilometre or a kilometre downwind.

It will rapidly remove up to 90% of the oil in a short period of time. So, for example, in those Newfoundland offshore burn experiments, there were two major burns where we deployed 50 tonnes of oil—50,000 litres—and over 90% of that oil was removed in just over an hour.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Hiebert.

We go now to Mr. Anderson for up to five minutes.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you, Chair.

Dr. Brown, I'd like to come back to you. You mentioned in your presentation the Arctic and marine oil spill program. I'd like you to talk a little bit more about that. You said you have been meeting for 30 years and had a meeting last week in Halifax. What was covered there? What were the discussions about and what kinds of decisions were made?

[Dr. Carl Brown]

AMOP, as I've mentioned, is an international forum. We look at several things. We look at spill modelling. That enables response personnel to predict the fate, effects, and behaviour of the oil. Those models have been advanced substantially over the last number of years. They are contingent upon the inputs, though. We need to know what the fate of the oil is and do that by experimentation both in the lab and in the environment.

We look at the efficiency of countermeasures like spill-treating agents, so dispersants. We look at their toxicity, their effectiveness. There are other spill-treating agents in the marketplace, like solidifiers. So we look at how those things respond and increase the ability of a spill responder.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Who comes to the seminar?

[Dr. Carl Brown]

This year in Halifax we had about 180 people. Probably 60 of those are Canadian federal researchers and regulators. About 25% of our attendance is from U.S. federal agencies, academia, major spill research organizations: SINTEF in Norway would be there, Cedre from France would be there. The International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation will send people there, because they too want to learn about spill response technologies.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

So you've spent 30 years with oil research and development, and spill technology, in the Arctic. What are the main results that you've found? After 30 years, what are your main conclusions?

[Dr. Carl Brown]

Our main conclusions are that response in the Arctic is difficult because of the limitations we have on available resources and infrastructure. Some of the technologies we use in the south are effective in the north, and we're learning more about that as time goes on. Certainly some of the techniques we've studied and developed work well in the north. In situ burning does work well in open ice conditions, and it works well if you have a spill on top of the ice.

More recently, we've looked at chemical herding agents. That's a chemical you would apply around the perimeter of a spill, and that would force the oil into thicker portions, which would enable you to have an in situ burn without the need to have a boom around it.

We've looked at the improved pumping of heavy and viscous oils through things like pumps that the coast guard would typically use, but those pumps are not as efficient at pumping heavy oil. We've studied things like annular water injection or steam injection, so that you basically increase the lubrication inside those pumps so you can pump heavy oil. We know these things work because we see they're being picked up by the response community. The response organizations are using these, and we're getting feedback. There was a bunker fuel spill in the winter, and the Eastern Canada Response Corporation used it last January, and it worked very well.

So we're getting feedback from industry to show that what we're doing works as well.

Certainly it's a great forum for people to get together and for researchers to interact. It's expensive to do research. It's good that we work with our international partners and are able to leverage the funding that we can put forward. We all benefit from that interaction.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Anderson.

We go now to Mr. Cullen for up to five minutes.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll try to keep my questions short, and I'd ask that the answers would be also.

Mr. Corey, has the NEB ever refused the licence once it's gone through the licensing stage? Have they ever come back and said they don't find this up to scratch, and sent the company back?

[Mimi Fortier]

I mentioned earlier in answer to a previous question that prior to the National Energy Board taking over the Canada Oil and Gas Operations Act responsibilities, there was a review done by the Environmental Impact Review Board pursuant to the Inuvialuit Final Agreement, whereby they found that the drilling program was insufficient. There were still concerns. That advice was turned over to the regulator, and the drilling program was not approved.