Pipeline safety records under scrutiny as B.C. set to get more

Kinder Morgan says Trans Mountain project has seen only small leaks in the last decade

By Gordon Hoekstra, Vancouver SunJuly 17, 2012

Kinder Morgan’s 1,150-kilometre Trans Mountain pipeline that transports oil from Alberta to southwestern B.C. has averaged about one leak a year in the past decade, but has not experienced the kind of major spill seen more recently in Alberta and Michigan from other pipelines.

“The pipeline is in many ways in better condition than when it was constructed almost 60 years ago,” said Kinder Morgan vice-president of operations engineering Hugh Harden.

“We have extensive integrity management programs that identify defects from original construction [and] removes them or repairs them. The tools we have today can see much smaller defects than we used to, maybe even 10 years ago,” he said.

The public’s interest in the risk of leaks on oil pipelines has been heightened in British Columbia, with two major projects moving forward in the province.

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