The frequency of oil spills suggests a deep-seated problem in the energy industry

Oil spills have made a lot of headlines in the last year. And yet, while I knew about the BP spill in the Gulf, Enbridge’s pipeline spill in Michigan, and the 12 spills from the brand new Keystone pipeline carrying oil from the tar sands to the United States, I intimately felt the impact of the 28,000 barrels of oil that, at the end of April this year, leaked from the Rainbow pipeline in northern Alberta in the biggest spill that Alberta has seen in almost 40 years.




The Rainbow spill literally hit home for me, because that oil was soaking into the traditional lands of my people, the Lubicon Cree. It poisoned the air, water, and soils of the community of Little Buffalo, where I was born, and where my family and friends still live.


I was furious that Plains All American, the company that owns the pipeline, kept pumping dirty tar sands oil for five hours after first detecting the leak, and that it took four days for Alberta regulators to officially notify my community of the spill. And I was frustrated, though not surprised, that Alberta government officials were dismissing reports of community members feeling sick from the noxious odors, and of how school had been suspended due to health concerns.


And yet, as devastating as those local impacts are, it would be a mistake to see this as an isolated incident. A week before the Rainbow spill, Kinder Morgan had to shut down its Trans Mountain oil pipeline after what the company deemed “a small amount” of oil (with no further explanation) spilled into a farmer’s field. And, a few days after the Rainbow spill, there was a major spill from the Enbridge pipeline in the Northwest Territories. This spill was originally downplayed as just four barrels’ worth of oil, but the company later admitted that it could be as much as 1,500 barrels’ worth, spilling forth from an opening the size of a pinhole, which their monitoring equipment couldn’t detect. In late June, we saw another pipeline leak and explosion in northwestern Alberta, and, just this past weekend, another Exxon Mobil pipeline spilled an estimated 42,000 gallons of oil in Montana.


One time can be called an accident. Twice may be a mere coincidence. But five times (or 12 times, as in the case of the Keystone pipeline) shows signs that there’s a much bigger problem. That is what is being recognized south of the border, where a recent bit of investigative reporting uncovered how pipeline operators’ funding of safety research has skewed research priorities and enabled pipeline operators to mold federal- and state-level safety rules in a way that has enhanced corporate profits at the expense of protecting the public from dangerous pipelines.


The report was so damning that U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood immediately promised to change the rules governing safety-research funding to ensure greater independence. We are still waiting for a comparable response from the Canadian and Alberta governments regarding the spate of pipeline leaks in this country. And yet, while we need to challenge the cozy relationship between industry and government, that is only the first step.


At the time of the Rainbow pipeline spill, I was on my way back to Alberta from speaking – on behalf of Greenpeace and the Indigenous Environmental Network – to the shareholders of European oil companies who are investing in the tar sands and the banks that finance them.


I told them that if we have learned anything in the last year from BP's spill in the Gulf, Enbridge's spill in Michigan, or even the Fukushima reactor disaster in Japan, it is that "accidents" are inevitable – albeit more likely when we put profit ahead of safety – and that the consequences become more severe as we pursue ever more extreme, hard-to-get forms of energy like oil from the tar sands, the Arctic, or deep-ocean drilling.


The only true solution to oil spills, and to climate change, is to go beyond oil to a more just and sustainable world powered by renewable energy. Of course, pointing to a green future may seem like cold comfort to members of my community right now. They are struggling to deal with the consequences of this spill that will be with us for years to come in the Peace region.


But when you find yourself in a hole, the first step is to stop digging – or, in this case, to stop expanding oil extraction in the tar sands, and the network of pipelines that serve them.


We need to start building the wind, solar, and geothermal energy systems that are needed if we are to stop climate change and grow the good, green jobs in Canada that come with such a future – a future that will not rob the next generations of the fundamental pillars of life: clean air, good water, and a healthy environment for all.