Fraser Institute.  It’s been a difficult couple of weeks for Kinder Morgan’s proposed expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline. The Santa Barbara oil spill has irritated already-sensitive public concern about oil pipelines. And as the pipeline’s review before the National Energy Board continues, several new reports commissioned by municipalities and groups in the region have expressed serious concerns about the potential effects of an oil spill.

One study found that more than one million birds might be affected by a spill and 100,000 could possibly be killed as a result. Another assertedthat millions of barrels of oil could erupt into flames, start a forest fire on Burnaby Mountain, stranding 30,000 students at Simon Fraser University. The latest report concluded that a 16 million-litre spill in the Burrard Inlet could deliver a $1.2 billion blow to Vancouver’s economy. Alarming scenarios indeed. But a focus on worst-case scenarios loses sight of what’s vastly more likely to happen, which can only be assessed by looking at the overall performance of pipelines, where progress in controlling spills has been tremendous.

According to Transportation Safety Board data, from 2009 to 2013 there were 770 pipeline accidents and incidents in Canada. Of this number, 654 resulted in some sort of release of product. Again, this mayseem large, but during this period Canada’s federally regulated pipeline system moved more than 11 billion barrels of petroleum and natural gas products, making the per barrel accident rate remarkably low.

More telling still is that only five accidents or incidents in this period resulted in any sort of environmental damage. This means….  (More)