Page 10 of the BC government's 2012 Heavy Oil policy document, which gave us the five conditions the province has laid out for support of bitumen pipelines in BC, puts the odds of a 250,000 barrel spill occurring along what they call the "proposed north coast" tanker route at one in 1,500 years. Curiously enough, the footnote referencing these figures refers not to the Enbridge Northern Gateway application itself, but rather to a 2010 article about the application and those risks, by Scott Simpson of the Vancouver Sun: http://www.canada.com/story_print.html?id=98675f95-4f5a-41f3-8240-eb0c6a9ae6d7&sponsor=. At that time, Simpson wrote as follows:
"Enbridge Inc. says in a recent filing to federal regulators that the odds of a major spill -- at least 40,000 cubic metres of oil, or half the daily output from a proposed oil shipping terminal at Kitimat -- is once in 1,500 years near the terminal. That extends to once in 15,000 years when tankers reach the relative open waters of Hecate Strait, between Haida Gwaii and the B.C. mainland."
A close examination of the Enbridge Northern Gateway application, however, reveals no such reference to a potential spill of 40,000 cubic metres ( i. e. 250,000 barrels ) at the Kitimat terminal or, for that matter, to a return period of 1,500 years for a spill at that location. The application does, however, reference a 15,000 year return period for a 40,000 cubic metre spill in the Open Water Area.
What this amounts to, then, is that the BC government is basing its heavy oil position in part at least on a tenfold ( 1,500 vs. 15,000 years ) over-estimation of a major tanker spill occurring as a result of the Enbridge Northern Gateway project. This is yet another example of ineptitude and incompetence on the part of the government of British Columbia.
For the record, the author notified the government’s media contact for the Heavy Oil document of the error on the day the report was issued, and was told that the relevant officials would be notified of the error in question. In spite of this, to the knowledge of the author, the error has not been corrected, at least not publicly. In other words, the original wording of the document still stands, and the document, which represents the official position of the BC government towards the Enbridge Northern Gateway project, has not been revised.