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Originally Posted by Canadian Mind
Klazu, that isn't irony. And it's sad to see you descend to this level of chicken hawk.
I think you are right that companies can't be trusted, but I think that the investigation will reveal human error to be the cause of this spill rather than tech failure. It could be anything from a welder not sealing the pipe properly to intentional overlooking of failed pressure testing (if the pressure testing happened at all).
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I am not a native English speaker but this is exactly what an ironic situation means in my native language. This was supposed to be "best-of-the-best" and "a new generation" pipeline - a real showcase of the top-of-the-line safety pipeline technology. Yet it failed miserably almost immediately. What was marketed to us and what ended up happening were complete opposite and to me that is quite ironic.
How are you so sure that this was a human error? And what does it even matter what caused a burst, as the immediate result was oil leaking into pristine nature.
The point here is that if this can happen with the newest pipelines right next to the source and still go undetected for
weeks (still puzzled how that is possible
), how on Earth would they ever detect a burst taking place in middle of nowhere? Burst are bound to happen (irrelevant if due to technology failure or human error) and this shows that they could go unnoticed for months. That's the real takeaway from this case.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Canadian Mind
Either way, the cause will be found, and the appropriate actions will be taken to prevent it from happening again.
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If it was a human error, how do you prevent it from happening again? Human errors happen because humans make mistakes and enforcing new policies and processes will not be able to prevent that from happening.
And when we are talking about an oil pipelines bursting in middle of pristine nature, even one case can have catastrophical/irreversible results. We cannot afford even one to happen!
Imagine a pipe bursting nearby Fraser River encatchment area and spilling millions of liters of oil into the waterway for weeks if not months. That would be a catastropic thing for tens of thousands of people living downstream and there is no way to clean up such.
One is also never able to really "clean up" oil spills. One just moves the spilled soil somewhere else. Even in the recent English Bay spill they didn't clean it up as many seem to think. Most of the leaked bunker oil dissolved into the water and much of it (supposedly) sunk to the bottom of the ocean, where it still is. Them brushing some rocks and seabirds was a minor thing in what happened.
I don't understand how some people make this some kind of Mount Polley vs. Ft. McMurray spill discussion? Both cases are bad and suck, and I am just as much appalled by the Mount Polley case and how it seems that it is being concluded as an "oops case" and being swept under the rug for business to resume. No fines or charges will be pressed, it seems.
In my opinion we should completely stop transporting bitumen and other unrefined oil products anywhere. We are like a Third World banana country pumping and shipping our cheap unrefined natural resource to other countries that then refine it and sell some of it back to us with a huge markup. We should refine our oil into gasoline and whatnot already in Canada, nearby where the drilling happens and be the ones selling the more expensive refined end product to other countries.
This would also enable us Canadians to enjoy cheap gas like most other oil producing countried do. This would be a huge advantage for our economy and the personal consumers. We are a country of great distances to we need lots of energy for our lifestyle and as an energy produces, we should be able to reap some benefits from it.
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Originally Posted by sunsetmountainland
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Interesting article. Thanks for posting.