Secrecy Around Composition of Oilsands Dilbit Makes Effective Spill Response, Research Impossible: New Study

Knowledge gaps about the behaviour of diluted bitumen when it is spilled into saltwater and lack of information about how to deal with multiple problems that can result from extracting and transporting bitumen from the Alberta oilsands, make it impossible for government or industry to come up with effective policies to deal with a disaster, says a newly published research paper, Oilsands and the Marine Environment.

The study by ecologists from Simon Fraser, Stanford, Oregon State and Northern Arizona universities, who scrutinized more than 9,000 research papers, concludes that officials should collect more information about the environmental effects of (Read more…) before setting regulations.

There just isn’t enough science in the public eye to answer questions about the risk bitumen poses to the ocean,” said lead author Stephanie Green, a Banting postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Ocean Solutions at Stanford University.

We found almost no research about bitumen’s effects on marine species,” she said.

As controversy continues to swirl around the federal government’s approval of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion and as president-elect Donald Trump prepares to overhaul energy and environmental regulations and reopen the Keystone XL pipeline application, the lack of credible information highlights policy flaws, the researchers said.

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