British Columbia won’t allow any increase in shipments of diluted bitumen through the province until the results of a scientific inquiry into the risks of oil spills in marine environments is completed, according to an announcement from the B.C. government on Tuesday.
“We are proposing we restrict the transport of diluted bitumen until we hear back from the B.C. scientific community about the impacts of a spill and what we would need to mitigate that,” B.C. Environment Minister George Heyman told DeSmog Canada.
Diluted bitumen is a mixture of bitumen — the unrefined, thickest form of (Read more…) extracted from Alberta’s oilsands — and natural gas condensate — the same substance the Iranian tanker Sanchi was carrying when it collided with another ship in the East China Sea. Condensate is added to allow the viscous substance to flow through pipelines.