Kinder Morgan Trans-Mountain Pipeline System

The Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline System simply the Trans Mountain Pipeline is the only pipeline that carries crude and refined oil from the Alberta to the West Coast of British Columbia it is wholly owned by the Canadian division of Kinder Morgan. It has been in use since 1953.

In 2004 Kinder Morgan began to plan for a second pipe that would run in parallel with the current pipeline between Hinton, Alberta and Hargreaves, British Columbia. In building the additional pipeline 2 more stations were require and were built: the Wolf Pump Station near Niton Junction, Alberta, and the Chappel Pump Station near Pyramid, British Columbia. The project was completed in 2008 and it added 40,000 barrels a day, from 260,000 to 300,000.

There is a proposed expansion of the pipeline system under the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project. The Trans Mountain Expansion Project is a plan to expand the current capacity of the pipeline by creating a twin pipe, such an expansion would result in increasing the capacity of the system from 300,000 barrels a day to 890,000 with 980 kilometres (610 mi) of pipe. The additional pipe would also require 12 new pressure stations. This increase would help supply growing demand in the United States, and specifically in Asia. It is currently pending the approval of the National Energy Board of Canada. A investment $6.8 billion would complete the connection between Strathcona County, Alberta and Burnaby, British Columbia.

However, a study by Simon Fraser University claims that Kinder Morgan has overestimated the economic benefits of the pipeline expansion.

The pipeline is part of multiple projects to grow the export of Canadian oil to international markets as well as to Eastern Canada and to refineries around North America. Other projects include the Northern Gateway Pipeline from Alberta to Kitimat, the Keystone XL Pipeline to the Southern US, and Line 9 and Energy East to eastern provinces.

Reasons for debate around the approval around such pipelines and specifically, the Trans Mountain Pipeline is that in the past Kinder Morgan has had serveral environmental accidents surrounding the pipeline including:

• Abbotsford 2005: A ruptured pipeline dumped 210,000 litres of crude oil. In a 2007 report from the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, Kinder Morgan was criticized for a delay in response time because the line between the Sumas tank farm and the Sumas pump station was not part of a leak detection system.
• Burnaby 2007: A road crew ruptured a pipeline, causing 250,000 litres of crude oil to flow into Burrard Inlet Bay via the Burnaby storm sewer system. Eleven houses were sprayed with oil and about 250 residents evacuated. Cleanup took more than a year. The Transportation Safety Board ruled the accident was the fault of Kinder Morgan as it was responsible for ensuring the excavation crew knew the pipeline’s exact location before they started digging.
• Burnaby 2009: 200,000 litres seeped from a storage tank into a surrounding containment bay at the Burnaby Mountain tank farm.
• Sumas 2012: 110,000 litres of oil leaked from a Sumas Mountain holding tank, caused by freezing water placing pressure on a gasket. The National Energy Board’s investigation found that “the leak was detected later than it should have been,” the company’s management of procedures was “inadequate” and that the operator “failed to recognize the leak situation.” It took three alarms and a shift change before someone was sent out to investigate.

Members of the Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations of British Columbia, Canada paddled canoes on the waters of Burrard Inlet to the Kinder Morgan Burnaby Terminal for a ceremony to protest the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline, in North Vancouver, B.C., on September 1, 2012. Tsleil-Waututh leaders hoped to shut down the project altogether. Many of these pipelines also pass through the Strait of Juan de Fuca which is a extremely sensitive region. The British Columbian Government is also opposed to the Trans Mountain Pipeline as they did not provide enough information on their spill prevention program.