ROE Project

Bitumen from the oil sands, a heavy type of crude oil, is diluted with a lighter condensate and transported by pipeline thousands of kilometers across North America. Concerns over accidental pipeline breaks into British Columbia’s salmon-spawning rivers call for improved oil spill response strategies, yet understanding of the environmental fate and ecological effects of spilled dilbit in rivers is limited and has been identified as a high-priority research need. Given the declining state of salmon fisheries in many rivers in British Columbia, this is of particular urgency. Our study responds to the need to better prepare for an oil spill from the Trans-Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project to salmon-bearing rivers of BC. The twinning of the Trans-Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project will expand the capacity of this pipeline from 48,000 m³/d to 141,000 m³/d. Although pipelines are the safest mode of transporting Canada’s oil to markets, they are not without risk and are the primary concern for Canadians due to the hazards posed by diluted bitumen, the main product transported by pipeline. These pipelines are a potential risk to natural habitats, food chains, and agricultural lands, as evidenced by pipeline breaches and malfunctions in recent years, e.g. the Kalamazoo River in 2012 and the North Saskatchewan River in 2016.