As an example of Worldocean's influential marine oil spill consulting work, in 2010 the company's President, Dr. Gerald Graham, provided expert advice to the Living Oceans Society and Coastal First Nations Great Bear Initiative on the joint environmental assessment of Enbridge's Northern Gateway pipeline, marine terminal and tanker project under the NEB Act and CEAA. Gerald was tasked with reviewing the marine oil spill prevention and response aspects of the application. Coastal First Nations subsequently submitted Gerald's report, entitled Marine Oil Spill Aspects of the Northern Gateway Project, without his prior knowledge or consent, as Expert Testimony to the Joint Review Panel.
Several issues raised in Gerald's 2010 study subsequently resurfaced in the course of the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project Final Hearings. For instance, in their cross-examination of Enbridge Northern Gateway ( see article entitled Gateway Oil Spills: Hoping for the Best, Not Preparing for the Worst?, two Intervenors defined risk as being the product of probability times consequence; demanded that the Proponent choose a worst case scenario for a marine oil spill; and specifically proposed the Scott Islands as the location for such a scenario. Application of the "probability times consequences" definition of risk was applied to oil spills on the BC coast by Gerald in a 2003 submission to the Royal Society of Canada entitled Probability and Consequence: A Submission to the Royal Society of Canada Expert Panel on the British Columbia Offshore Oil and Gas Moratorium. The 'worst case scenario' idea as well as the suggestion that the Scott Islands be used as a location for a worst case scenario, both appeared in Gerald's 2010 study for Living Oceans and Coastal First Nations. Alas, nowhere is Gerald's previous work in these areas acknowledged by either of these Intervenors.
Similarly, Page 20 of Gerald's 2010 Living Oceans/Coastal First Nations study included the following Table, which is based on his own original research, listing several spill incidents around the world involving double hull tankers, thereby putting pay to the notion that double hull tankers are a panacea for oil spills:
Table 4: Notable Marine Oil Spills Involving Double Hulled Tankers, OBOs and/or Tank Barges
Source: Worldocean Consulting Ltd, 2010
In his April 4, 2013 cross-examination of Northern Gateway, Intervenor Dave Shannon alluded to this same Table from Gerald's 2010 report for Living Oceans and Coastal First Nations, and specifically the reference to the double hull Eagle Otome tanker oil spill itemized in the Table. Mr. Shannon acknowledged Gerald's authorship of the Table. Unfortunately, there are other instances in which Gerald's contribution has not been acknowledged, as follows.
In 2011, one year after Gerald submitted his Northern Gateway marine oil spill report to Living Oceans and Coastal First Nations the Living Oceans Society submitted a report to the Joint Review Panel entitled Tanker Technology: Limitations of Double Hulls. That report ( which was also submitted to the Enbridge Northern Gateway Joint Review Panel as Expert Testimony ) included brief summaries of three specific double hull tanker oil spill incidents that had been mentioned by Gerald in his 2010 report to Living Oceans and Coastal First Nations- namely, the MV Eagle Otome, MV Bunga Kelana and MV Krymsk incidents.However, nowhere in the 2011 Living Oceans report is there any acknowledgment of the previous double hull tanker oil spill work of Gerald Graham.
In a similar vein, a 2012 Vancouver Sun article entitled What if a Supertanker Tanks?, mentions a “recent Living Oceans report” and then lists, among other incidents, the MV Eagle Otome, MV Bunga Kelana, MV Petersfield and MV Pathfinder incidents. Only two of these incidents- MV Eagle Otome and, MV Bunga Kelana, are specifically mentioned in the 2011 Living Oceans report cited in the previous paragraph. On the other hand, all four incidents were specifically mentioned in Gerald's 2010 report which was submitted to Living Oceans and Coastal First Nations. In the Vancouver Sun article, Gerald receives no credit for drawing attention to any of these specific incidents.
Gerald's 2010 report to Living Oceans and Coastal First Nations also called upon Enbridge Northern Gateway to state what percentage of the time a credible response operation would not be possible for various times of year, given typical conditions at sea and the ineffectiveness of booms, skimmers and other types of spill response equipment during suboptimal operating. The following year the Living Ocean Society issued its own report on this subject, entitled Preliminary Mechanical Response Gap Analysis for the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project. This report was also submitted to the Enbridge Northern Gateway Joint Review Panel as Expert Testimony. Again, there was no acknowledgment whatsoever in the Living Oceans report that the idea for such an analysis had been previously advanced by Gerald in his report to Living Oceans and Coastal First Nations.
The long and the short of it is, in 2010 Living Oceans and Coastal First Nations hire Gerald Graham, a marine oil spill expert to review the Northern Gateway proposal. Then, a year after Gerald submits his report, Living Oceans releases two reports on topics or issues that were touched on in the earlier report, without any acknowledgment of the original expert's contribution to the subject matter. Subsequently, the author of those two Living Oceans reports becomes a member of Living Ocean's team of Expert Witnesses to the Enbridge Northern Gateway Joint Review Panel, with the two reports written by that person submitted as Expert Testimony.
Moving on, on pp. 61 and 62 of their Written Final Argument to the Panel, Coastal First Nations cited Non-Accidental Structural Failure (NASF) tanker casualty statistics that were contained in unpublished papers. For the record, these papers had been kindly supplied to Gerald by a Greek tanker expert. The papers had been duly cited by Gerald in his 2010 Living Oceans/Coastal First Nations report.
Earlier, in their Written Evidence to the Panel, Coastal First Nations included a three and one half page quote ( on pp. 62-66 ) from Gerald's aforementioned 2003 submission to the Royal Society Expert Panel, which reviewed the issue of the BC offshore oil and gas moratorium. At no time was the author's approval sought for reproducing such a lengthy passage.
Also, during his Enbridge Northern Gateway Joint Review Panel cross examination on February 22, 2013, MP Nathan Cullen had a rather lengthy exchange with the Applicant about the way they present tanker spill risks in their Application. The relevant exchange takes place between lines 14356 and 14414 [Adobe pp. 119-124] in this transcript. In the course of his cross examination, Mr. Cullen specifically mentioned Gerald's calculation that there was between an 8.7 and 14.1% chance of a spill greater than 31,500 barrels occurring over the lifespan of the project.
Finally, Gerald is gratified to see that a number of individuals who made Oral Statements to the Panel mentioned points raised by Gerald in his own, personal Oral Statement. Click here for a video re=enactment of that appearance before the Panel by Gerald. He is also grateful to Larry Pynn of the Vancouver Sun for writing an article about his Northern Gateway work, entitled Tankers too risky on BC's north coast, oil-spill consultant says, and to his dear friend, the late Dr. Beverly Mitchell, SSA, who drew the attention of Leslie Campbell, Editor of Focus Magazine, to Gerald's Northern Gateway work, resulting in Ms. Campbell featuring both Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Graham in an editorial entitled A Significant Risk. This is just a sample of the extensive media coverage that Gerald's Northern Gateway work has generated.