Oil spill at Kinder Morgan is 'fully contained'

C Myers
Burnaby Now
May 9, 2009


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About 200,000 litres of crude oil spilled from one of the tanks at the Kinder Morgan facility on Burnaby Mountain this week, but it was completely contained and presented no health or environmental risk, says a company spokesperson.

At about 10 p.m. on Wednesday night, staff at the facility realized that oil was being released from a tank.

"It was discovered immediately, and we were able to take immediate action," said Lexa Hobenshield, manager of external relations with Kinder Morgan. But, she says, even if staff hadn't spied it immediately, "the tank bay is designed to contain a spill like that."

Hobenshield told the NOW that each of the 13 tanks on the site sits inside a berm, or containment bay. The berm is designed to hold more volume than the tank itself, so that any spill from the tank would be easily contained.

Additionally, each berm has monitoring equipment inside so that a spill would activate the closure of a valve to contain the bay.

"The release is contained, and there are no health concerns. But we are very apologetic to our neighbours," she said, noting that a strong odour was in the air for some time after the spill.

"Protecting the public and employee health and safety and the environment is number 1 for us," she said. "To ensure safety, we monitored air quality around the site."

Staff performed repeated patrols outside the site fence overnight Wednesday and into Thursday to assess air quality.

"There were nuisance odours - quite strong, but the air quality assessment showed no health concerns," she said.

Local fire service crews were on site shortly after the spill, and foam was sprayed onto the oil in the bay to help mitigate the odours, said Hobenshield.

The company also alerted all required regulatory agencies, who may now perform their own investigations on top of the investigation Kinder Morgan will carry out on its own.

Though Ho-benshield said it was too early to say exactly what caused the spill, they believe that it resulted from the failure of equipment being used by a third-party contractor.

Specifically, Hobenshield explained that it's believed a jet mixing pump failed. The pump is used to stir up the contents of the tank to loosen any deposits at the bottom, to prepare for an internal inspection of the tank.

The tank itself did not leak and wasn't damaged, nor were any of its permanent fixtures damaged.

On Thursday, staff at the site were working to transfer the contained oil to a storage tank, and the company is hopeful the 200 cubic metres of crude oil can be reclaimed.

When asked about early media reports that there may have been an oil slick spotted in Burrard Inlet, Hobenshield said they were confident the spill was totally contained in the berm.

"We believe that the spill was effectively contained on site, and any product anywhere else is not related to us," she said.

She also noted that, geographically, the tank farm sits on the south slope of Burnaby Mountain, not the north side, so that if oil had had been spilled outside the containment tanks its very unlikely it could have travelled in that direction.

When asked if the company is concerned about the public's perception of operations at Kinder Morgan, in light of the 2007 massive oil spill and this incident, Hobenshield said the two situations can't really be compared.

"This is a really unfortunate event. It's also very unusual, and it's under a completely different set of circumstances. We've never had anything like that before," she said.

In July 2007, city-hired building contractor accidentally hit a pipeline xburied under a residential street with an excavator.

The spray of oil that erupted led to the evacuation of several homes in the area, and lawsuits in that case are still pending.

Hobenshield says the facility, which is the end of a 1,150 kilometre petroleum pipeline coming from Edmonton, holds the safety and health of its neighbours as a top priority.

"Our top concern is the health and safety of the public and the environment," she said.

A community open house, scheduled prior to the latest spill, is set for June 20, and Hobenshield says it's an opportunity for neighbours to check out the facility and talk to staff about concerns.

cmyers@burnabynow.com

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Posted by Arthur Caldicott on 11 May 2009