Two projects -- from the west and from the east -- that could increase the number of oil tankers in the Bay of Fundy are raising concerns among environmentalists and fishermen about the risks posed to the bay's ecosystem and its fisheries.
     TransCanada Corp.'s proposed Energy East Pipeline would pump 1.1 million barrels of crude oil a day from western Canada to the east, with 80% of the crude oil destined for export. Saint John is currently the only export terminal included in the project, meaning most of the oil would pass through the Bay of Fundy‑Gulf of Maine ecosystem on an additional 115 to 290 tankers per year, according to the Conservation Council of New Brunswick.
     To the east, Shell Canada is hoping to begin exploratory drilling for oil and gas in the Shelburne Basin, about 155 miles southeast of Nova Scotia, with seven exploration wells over a four-year period. The oil reserves available from Shell's lease sites on the Scotian Shelf are estimated at 8 billion barrels, which could mean that Shell might be extracting oil for 80 years, according to John Davis, director of the newly formed Clean Ocean Action Committee, comprised of fishermen's organizations and concerned individuals on Nova Scotia's South Shore. In addition, BP Canada also is looking at drilling southeast of Nova Scotia.
     Noting that the proposed sites are near the oil and gas drilling moratorium area of Georges Bank, Davis says, "These proposals have to be of great concern to the fishing industry in Massachusetts and Maine." Any oil that is drilled would be taken by tanker, and Davis believes there is a good chance it would be sent up the Bay of Fundy to the Irving Oil refinery in Saint John, since it's the closest refinery. Also, Irving Oil recently announced a $200 million project this fall to upgrade the refinery, which will be the largest turnaround in the company's history.
     "You are the downstream victims of what's going on here," Davis warns those living in the Bay of Fundy and Gulf of Maine areas, as a flood tide would carry oil from any spill toward those coastlines. He notes that if a subsea blowout were to occur, as happened with the BP Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, it could take 21 days to obtain a capping stack, since the closest one is in Norway and Shell is not being required to have one available on the East Coast.
    Although final regulatory approval has not yet been granted for drilling on the Scotian Shelf, Davis believes it is inevitable. Predicting that the Canadian government is waiting until after the October 19 federal election to make a decision, he comments. "To my mind it's a fait accompli. They're just waiting till the election is over until they announce a decision."
     The possibility of Shell Canada planning to use the Saint John refinery for Scotian Shelf oil is also firmly in the mind of David Prior, CEO of Extreme Spill Technology in Halifax. He wonders whether Shell was rehearsing for a possible tanker accident when in June 2013 the company sent a large contingent to participate in a joint U.S. and Canadian exercise to test the response to an oil spill along the border between the two countries. Hundreds of federal, state and provincial responders, along with the group from Shell, assembled in Calais and Saint John for the exercise.
     Under the scenario, just east of the Wolves a ship carrying scrap metal ran into a Shell oil tanker that was headed to the Irving refinery. The collision ended up causing about 40,000 barrels of crude oil to be spilled into the Bay of Fundy. Currents then carried the oil south and west so it hit the shores of Grand Manan, Campobello and the mainland around Passamaquoddy and Cobscook bays. According to the Canadian and U.S. Coast Guard, the exercise demonstrated that environmentally sensitive areas, salmon farms and other priority areas would have been protected.
     Prior, though, raises a number of questions about the response. While the Coast Guard noted that booms would have helped contain the spill, he says they would have accomplished almost nothing. In 2010, BP deployed three million meters of boom in the Gulf of Mexico spill. "The boom helped recover 3% of the oil, which is all that BP, with 48,000 workers and 6,000 skimmer vessels, ever recovered."
     According to Canada's National Energy Board, floating boom is ineffective in waves over 3 feet high and in currents faster than 0.75 knots. During the exercise, floating boom was deployed off St. Andrews, and Prior comments that perhaps the St. Andrews location was chosen because it's a more protected area. "It's much more likely that the accident scenario would happen on a snowy night in February, but a sunny afternoon in June is close enough to reality, and certainly a lot more pleasant for the experts!"
     Of the offshore sweep system that was deployed in the exercise, Prior says that BP had used many vessels with offshore sweep systems in the Gulf spill. "They are essentially useless outside the harbour. Floating boom and side sweep systems can only work in currents of 1 knot or similar vessel speeds. Otherwise the oil simply gets entrained under the boom and escapes." He notes that in the Bay of Fundy currents are much greater than that in many locations.
      Prior also claims that northwest winds or currents would have swept the oil into the right whale conservation area east of Grand Manan and up the Bay of Fundy to the World Heritage sites. "Small wonder the 'exercise' was held on a calm and pleasant day."
     Shell has proposed using dispersants such as Corexit in its plan for dealing with oil spills at the Shelburne Basin site, but both Prior and Davis cite concerns about the use of the dispersant. Prior says, "The use of Corexit would guarantee that the seafloor of the whale sanctuary was contaminated, which would affect the whale food supply for many years. Last year the submersible Alvin from Woods Hole discovered 3,000 square miles of BP oil and Corexit thickly covering the seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico."
     According to Davis, research conducted by Dr. Terry Snell, chair of the School of Biology at Georgia Institute of Technology, has shown that dispersants mixed with oil are substantially more toxic than oil alone. The study, done after the Deepwater Horizon blowout, found that mixing the dispersant with oil increased the toxicity up to 52 times and increased the mortality of microscopic grazing animals at the base of the Gulf's food chain. "Shell's environmental impact statement (EIS) is the first EIS where the procedure to mitigate a spill would make it worse," he comments. Prior adds, "It's worth noting that Shell's currently approved oil spill plan, based entirely on Corexit, will wipe out the American side of Georges Bank as well as the New England coast.”
     The Clean Ocean Action Committee has proposed two demands to regulators concerning the Shelburne Basin project site: that dispersants not be allowed and that Shell must have the equipment and expertise to clean up any spilled oil.

Energy East Pipeline
     The Conservation Council of New Brunswick raises similar concerns in its report, titled "Tanker Traffic and Tar Balls: What TransCanada's Energy East Pipeline Means for the Bay of Fundy and Gulf of Maine," which examines the impacts the proposed Energy East Pipeline would have on the marine environment and the 75 coastal communities in New Brunswick that depend on tourism and fisheries jobs along the Bay of Fundy.
     Fundy Baykeeper Matthew Abbott, the author of the report, believes that a single tanker spill could have a devastating impact on the fisheries and the tourism industry around the Bay of Fundy. "With this pipeline proposal, we're gambling thousands of existing, permanent jobs for the prospect of short‑term employment that will leave the Bay of Fundy at risk for the long term." He also notes that the project would be "locking us in to 60 more years of the status quo" as far as solutions to energy needs.
     The report states that noise from tanker traffic causes heightened levels of stress in the North Atlantic right whale, the most endangered large whale in the world, and impedes whales' ability to communicate; bitumen is likely to form into tar balls and sink when mixed with saltwater, which would spell disaster for many fisheries, particularly the bottom‑feeding lobster and scallop catches; and the bay's tides and fog present difficult challenges to spill response efforts.
     The future of the proposed pipeline is uncertain, though. Abbott comments that the "regulatory process is designed to generate a yes on projects like this," but public opposition is presenting a significant obstacle for TransCanada to overcome. "There are major hurdles," he observes. "It's not a sure bet."
     The Fundy Baykeeper's concerns about the fisheries are echoed by the Maritime Fishermen's Union (MFU) in Nova Scotia, which is adding its voice to the Clean Oceans Action Committee to demand responsible offshore drilling practices. Of the time being allowed to obtain a capping stack for an undersea blowout, Kevin Squires, president of the MFU Local 6 in Cape Breton, says, "It is completely amazing and unacceptable that they would allow such a long period of response time after a spill C 21 days is completely unacceptable." He adds, "It is insulting and infuriating that big oil is allowed to potentially ruin our livelihoods and not be held to strict environmental practices."
     Gordon Beaton, president of MFU Local 4 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, states, "I don't see this as progress if we are simply trading oil and gas jobs for loss of fishing jobs due to a major oil spill in the Gulf and destroying a very robust, highly productive ecosystem in the process."