Corridor Pipeline: Hartley Creek Crossing

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan J. O’Rourke
Keyword(s):  
First Nations ◽  
Oil Sands ◽  
Environmental Planning ◽  
Riparian Zone ◽  
Provincial Government ◽  
Pipeline System ◽  
Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Isolation Method ◽  
Historical Presence ◽  
Pump Stations

Construction of the 493 km Corridor Pipeline System commenced in summer 2000, and is scheduled for completion in 2002. The system connects the two major components of the Athabasca Oil Sands Project — the Muskeg River Mine, north of Ft. McMurray and the Upgrader adjacent to Shell Canada Limited’s Scotford Refinery, near Fort Saskatchewan. The pipeline will also link the Upgrader with terminals in the Edmonton Area. The system includes dual pipelines (610 mm and 323.9 mm O.D.) as well as associated pump stations and valve sites. Corridor Pipeline Limited is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BC Gas Inc. Corridor pipeline crosses Hartley Creek near the south boundary of Shell’s lease C-13, north of Ft. McMurray, in the Ft. McKay First Nations traditional lands. An evaluation of the proposed crossing completed for the project application identified the location as highly sensitive to pipeline construction activities because of the high fish habitat quality and historical presence of sport and coarse fish. Although a fish survey completed for the above evaluation identified only coarse fish species, the provincial approval for the project required a trenchless crossing method unless authorized in writing by the Director. After completing detailed geotechnical and fisheries assessments of the crossing site, authorization from the director was subsequently obtained to complete the crossing using an isolation method. Planning and consultation with Ft. McKay First Nations to construct through their traditional lands incorporated aspects of traditional ecological knowledge. As part of the program, Corridor Pipeline committed to completion of a traditional plant survey. The results of the survey identified Hartley Creek as having cultural significance to the band. The riparian zone in this area supports a large concentration of food and medicinal plant species. Specialized mitigative measures were incorporated in order to maintain the density and diversity of the Hartley Creek riparian zone. This paper presents information with regard to the environmental studies and the regulatory process used to obtain approval to complete construction of the Hartley Creek crossing using an isolation method instead of the trenchless method originally required by the provincial government. It also explains the consultation program with the Ft. McKay First Nations and environmental planning used to maintain the density and diversity of riparian vegetation at this culturally significant crossing location.

Pressure Cycling Monitoring Helps Ensure the Integrity of Energy Pipelines

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Song ◽  
Doug Lawrence ◽  
Sean Keane ◽  
Scott Ironside ◽  
Aaron Sutton
Keyword(s):  
Fatigue Life ◽  
Pipeline System ◽  
Outer Diameter ◽  
Operating Pressure ◽  
Potential Growth ◽  
Integrity Assessment ◽  
Pressure Cycling ◽  
Pressure Cycle ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
Pump Stations

Liquids pipelines undergo pressure cycling as part of normal operations. The source of these fluctuations can be complex, but can include line start-stop during normal pipeline operations, batch pigs by-passing pump stations, product injection or delivery, and unexpected line shut-down events. One of the factors that govern potential growth of flaws by pressure cycle induced fatigue is operational pressure cycles. The severity of these pressure cycles can affect both the need and timing for an integrity assessment. A Pressure Cycling Monitoring (PCM) program was initiated at Enbridge Pipelines Inc. (Enbridge) to monitor the Pressure Cycling Severity (PCS) change with time during line operations. The PCM program has many purposes, but primary focus is to ensure the continued validity of the integrity assessment interval and for early identification of notable changes in operations resulting in fatigue damage. In conducting the PCM program, an estimated fatigue life based on one month or one quarter period of operations is plotted on the PCM graph. The estimated fatigue life is obtained by conducting fatigue analysis using Paris Law equation, a flaw with dimensions proportional to the pipe wall thickness and the outer diameter, and the operating pressure data queried from Enbridge SCADA system. This standardized estimated fatigue life calculation is a measure of the PCS. Trends in PCS overtime can potentially indicate the crack threat susceptibility the integrity assessment interval should be updated. Two examples observed on pipeline segments within Enbridge pipeline system are provided that show the PCS change over time. Conclusions are drawn for the PCM program thereafter.

Alberta's economic woes have political consequences

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Oil Sands ◽  
Public Spending ◽  
Provincial Government ◽  
Economic Recovery ◽  
Structural Unemployment ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Remaining Oil ◽  
Keystone Xl

Significance With steep reductions in public spending affecting education and social programmes, the budget signals an era of austerity in what had been Canada’s wealthiest province. One consequence is likely to be greater tension between the provincial government and the federal government in Ottawa. Impacts Major international funds will continue to divest from the oil sands sector, further depressing output as subsidies are cut. Remaining oil sands production will be increasingly automated, meaning that structural unemployment will persist. Ottawa’s refusal to contest US cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline has raised tensions with the UCP government in Edmonton. The national broad-based economic recovery expected this year will largely bypass Alberta.

Risk Assessment for Small Diameter Piping for Liquid Pipeline Facilities

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. M. Refaul Ferdous ◽  
Amanda Kulhawy ◽  
Jessica Farrell ◽  
Chris Beaudin ◽  
Anthony Payoe ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Risk Measure ◽  
Small Diameter ◽  
Pipeline System ◽  
System Description ◽  
Maintenance Program ◽  
Inspection And Maintenance ◽  
Pressure Transmitter ◽  
Integrity Risk ◽  
Main Station ◽  
Pump Stations

The Enbridge Liquids Pipeline system is comprised of a large number of facilities including storage terminals, pump stations, injection sites, and delivery sites. Given the vast amount of small diameter piping (SDP) within company Pipeline facilities, SDP represents a significant portion of total facility integrity risk. An event such as equipment failure or product release can cause significant business impacts, and adverse consequences to the environment and/or safety of operations personnel. A quantitative risk based approach is required in order to establish robust, risk-based plans and programs to maintain the integrity of these SDP sections. Small diameter piping lengths are relatively short. Consequently, it is impractical to use SDP length as a unit of likelihood and risk measure. Instead, the preferred methodology is to determine the total number of assemblies for each type of SDP. In support of this approach, an inventory of SDP sections throughout the system has been gathered. For illustrative purposes, an example of a small diameter section would be a pressure transmitter branch connection. The isolatable section that would be risk assessed would start from the surface of the main station piping connection and continue up to the transmitter. This paper presents the framework for likelihood and consequence assessment of SDP based on the system description above. This framework quantitatively estimates the risk of SDP failure and risk-ranks SDP sections in support of implementing and establishing a system wide Risk Based Inspection and Maintenance program for SDP.

scholarly journals Evaluation of Approaches to Depicting First Nations, Inupiat and Inuvialuit Environmental Information in GIS Format: Options for the Handling of Spatial Information in the Arctic Borderlands Ecological Knowledge Co-Op Database

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jadah Elizabeth Folliott
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
First Nations ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
Time Series Data ◽  
Atmospheric Transport ◽  
Data Gathering ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Series Data ◽  
Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Sea Levels

As the pace of climate change continues to accelerate in the North, traditional environmental knowledge systems are increasingly recognized by researchers, land use planners, government agencies, policy-makers and indigenous peoples as important contributors to environmental impact and climate change assessment and monitoring. Increasing temperatures, melting glaciers, reductions in the extent and thickness of sea ice, thawing permafrost and rising sea levels all provide strong evidence of increasing temperatures in the Arctic. This warming climate has the potential to change migration patterns, the diversity, range, and distribution of animal and plant species, and increase contaminants in the food chain from atmospheric transport of organic pollutants and mercury, thus raising concerns regarding the safety of traditional foods. Since 1996, the Arctic Borderlands Ecological Knowledge Co-op (ABEKC) has systematically recorded First Nations, Inupiat and Inuvialuit observations of landscape changes in the lower Mackenzie, Northern Yukon and eastern Alaska. Time-series data (regarding berry, caribou, fish, weather, ice and snow, plants, and other animal observations) have been obtained through annual interviews with the most active fishers, harvesters and hunters in the communities of Aklavik, Arctic Village, Fort McPherson, Kaktovik, Old Crow, and more recently, in Inuvik, Tsiigehtchic, and Tuktoyaktuk. An evaluation of the spatial utility of the ABEKC database and the many steps that are involved in the collection, storage, and organization of the Co-op’s data was documented. The ABEKC database provided an excellent opportunity to explore the problem of depicting complex qualitative information on northern landscape change in an intelligible GIS format. Initial attempts to develop the database in spatial format were critically evaluated and recommendations were provided in order to explore whether the data gathering and subsequent mapping process can be improved, whether more useful information can be obtained from the data, and to ensure the proper handling of the data in future years.

Exploring Alternate Explanations for Agency-Level Effects in Placement Decisions Regarding Aboriginal Children

2020 ◽  
pp. 215-234
Author(s):  
Barbara A. Fallon ◽  
John D. Fluke ◽  
Martin Chabot ◽  
Cindy Blackstock ◽  
Vandna Sinha ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Child Welfare ◽  
First Nations ◽  
Organizational Factors ◽  
Child Welfare System ◽  
Welfare System ◽  
Provincial Government ◽  
Organizational Level ◽  
Placement Decisions ◽  
Aboriginal Children

This chapter summarizes a series of published papers that used data from the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (CIS) to explore the influence of case and organizational characteristics on decisions to place Aboriginal children in out-of-home placements. The premise of the analyses was that these influences were consistent with the framework of the Decision-Making Ecology. In Canada, Aboriginal children are overrepresented at all points of child welfare decision-making: investigation, substantiation, and placement in out-of-home care. Case factors accounting for the overrepresentation of Aboriginal children at all service points in the child welfare system include poverty, poor housing, and substance misuse, and these factors, when coupled with inequitable resources for First Nations children residing on reserves, result in the overrepresentation of Aboriginal children in the Canadian child welfare system. For this study, the authors examine case characteristics and organizational factors in a multilevel context, hypothesizing that children are more likely to be placed out of home in agencies that serve a relatively high proportion of Aboriginal children. According to the statistical models presented, the most important of these factors is whether the provincial government operates the child welfare agency. As with the proportion of Aboriginal children on the caseload, the risk of a child being placed is greater in government-run agencies compared to agencies operated by private funders. Further analysis needs to be conducted to fully understand individual- and organizational-level variables that may influence /decisions regarding placement of Aboriginal children.

scholarly journals A Machine Learning Approach for Mapping Forest Vegetation in Riparian Zones in an Atlantic Biome Environment Using Sentinel-2 Imagery

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (24) ◽  
pp. 4086
Author(s):  
Danielle Elis Garcia Furuya ◽  
João Alex Floriano Aguiar ◽  
Nayara V. Estrabis ◽  
Mayara Maezano Faita Pinheiro ◽  
Michelle Taís Garcia Furuya ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Environmental Planning ◽  
Riparian Zone ◽  
Learning Algorithms ◽  
Vegetation Mapping ◽  
Forest Vegetation ◽  
Machine Learning Algorithms ◽  
Riparian Zones ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Sentinel 2

Riparian zones consist of important environmental regions, specifically to maintain the quality of water resources. Accurately mapping forest vegetation in riparian zones is an important issue, since it may provide information about numerous surface processes that occur in these areas. Recently, machine learning algorithms have gained attention as an innovative approach to extract information from remote sensing imagery, including to support the mapping task of vegetation areas. Nonetheless, studies related to machine learning application for forest vegetation mapping in the riparian zones exclusively is still limited. Therefore, this paper presents a framework for forest vegetation mapping in riparian zones based on machine learning models using orbital multispectral images. A total of 14 Sentinel-2 images registered throughout the year, covering a large riparian zone of a portion of a wide river in the Pontal do Paranapanema region, São Paulo state, Brazil, was adopted as the dataset. This area is mainly composed of the Atlantic Biome vegetation, and it is near to the last primary fragment of its biome, being an important region from the environmental planning point of view. We compared the performance of multiple machine learning algorithms like decision tree (DT), random forest (RF), support vector machine (SVM), and normal Bayes (NB). We evaluated different dates and locations with all models. Our results demonstrated that the DT learner has, overall, the highest accuracy in this task. The DT algorithm also showed high accuracy when applied on different dates and in the riparian zone of another river. We conclude that the proposed approach is appropriated to accurately map forest vegetation in riparian zones, including temporal context.

scholarly journals Drag Reducer Selection for Oil Pipeline Based Laboratory Experiment

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leksono Mucharam ◽  
Silvya Rahmawati ◽  
Rizki Ramadhani
Keyword(s):  
Crude Oil ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Energy Requirement ◽  
Pipeline System ◽  
Chemical Application ◽  
Oil Pipeline ◽  
Pipeline Flow ◽  
Oil Transportation ◽  
Pump Stations

Oil and gas industry is one of the most capital-intensive industry in the world. Each step of oil and gas processing starting from exploration, exploitation, up to abandonment of the field, consumes large amount of capital. Optimization in each step of process is essential to reduce expenditure. In this paper, optimization of fluid flow in pipeline during oil transportation will be observed and studied in order to increase pipeline flow performance.This paper concentrates on chemical application into pipeline therefore the chemical can increase overall pipeline throughput or decrease energy requirement for oil transportation. These chemicals are called drag reducing agent, which consist of various chemicals such as surfactants, polymers, nanofluids, fibers, etc. During the application of chemical into pipeline flow system, these chemicals are already proven to decrease pump work for constant flow rate or allow pipeline to transport more oil for same amount of pump work. The first application of drag reducer in large scale oil transportation was in Trans Alaskan Pipeline System which cancel the need to build several pump stations because of the successful application. Since then, more company worldwide started to apply drag reducer to their pipeline system.Several tedious testings on laboratory should be done to examine the effect of drag reducer to crude oil that will be the subject of application. In this paper, one of the testing method is studied and experimented to select the most effective DRA from several proposed additives. For given pipeline system and crude oil type, the most optimum DRA is DRA A for pipeline section S-R and for section R-P is DRA B. Different type of oil and pipeline geometry will require different chemical drag reducer. 

Environmental Management and Mitigation: Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines Project

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Anderson ◽  
Jeffrey Green ◽  
Linda Postlewaite
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Effects ◽  
Oil Sands ◽  
Oil Spills ◽  
Assessment Process ◽  
Canadian History ◽  
Regulatory Review ◽  
Oil Pipeline ◽  
Potential Risks ◽  
Pump Stations ◽  
Canadian Pacific Railway

The Northern Gateway Pipelines project drew more attention from the Canadian public than most in recent Canadian history. Northern Gateway has proposed to construct and operate an oil pipeline, a condensate pipeline, associated facilities, two tunnels, powerlines, multiple pump stations, a land tank terminal, and a marine transportation terminal to be located near Kitimat, British Columbia. Not since the Canadian Pacific Railway has a project raised the interest of Canadians. The regulatory review and assessment process for Northern Gateway was extensive. The Canadian government established a Joint Review Panel to preside over the assessment and review process. To ensure that stakeholders and potentially affected aboriginal communities were heard, the Panel embarked on an extensive public hearing and consultation program. They received thousands of letters of interest, and 4,300 requests for public statements. The Panel heard from approximately 1,200 registered participants in 19 locations. The regulatory hearings spanned a period from September 2012 to June 2013. Opposition to the project stemmed primarily from concerns about the effect of oil spills on freshwater and marine environments and human use. Others were concerned about the expanded development of oil sands. The environmental assessment undertaken by Northern Gateway was extensive, as was the mitigation proposed by the project to avoid or minimize environmental effects resulting from the project. The project incorporated new and innovative approaches to minimize environmental effects. The paper introduces the project and the latter part discusses the extraordinary measures proposed and undertaken to minimize potential risks to the environment.

Oil Spill Prevention Measures for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System

1973 ◽  
Vol 1973 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. W. Wellbaum
Keyword(s):  
Crude Oil ◽  
Oil Spill ◽  
Oil Spills ◽  
Pipeline System ◽  
Prevention Measures ◽  
Operating Life ◽  
Oil Storage ◽  
Operation And Maintenance ◽  
Pump Stations ◽  
Design Construction

ABSTRACT Oil spills only occur after the start-up of a facility but oil spill prevention for a pipeline-terminal-tanker complex begins with route selection and continues through design, construction, personnel training, operation and maintenance. The trans-Alaska pipeline project has faced all of the usual, and some unusual, problems which needed solutions to give maximum assurance that oil spills would not occur during the operating life of the facilities. This conference today is considering the prevention of oil spill incidents associated with tanker and pipeline operations, refineries, and transfer and storage terminals. The trans-Alaska pipeline system is concerned with each of these functions of the petroleum industry. Alyeska Pipeline Service Company is responsible for design, construction, operation, and maintenance of the pipeline system which will move crude oil produced on the Alaskan North Slope along a route to Valdez, an ice free port located on an arm of Prince William Sound. At Valdez, the oil will be transferred to ocean going tankers. The project will have at its ultimate design capacity of two million barrels per day:Almost 800 miles of 48-inch pipeline.Twelve pump stations with 650,000 installed HP.Twenty-million barrels of crude oil storage in fifty-two tanks.Five loading berths at a deep water terminal servicing a fleet of tankers ranging in size from 30,000 dwt to 250,000 dwt.Eight crude oil topping plants, manufacturing fuel for pump stations, each with a charge of 10,000 barrels per day.A ballast water treating plant capable of handling up to 800,000 barrels per day of dirty ballast.A 25,000 KW power generation plant.Several dozen mechanical refrigeration plants which will be freezing the ground in Alaska.

scholarly journals The Importance of Belief Systems in Traditional Ecological Knowledge Initiatives

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas J Reo
Keyword(s):  
Resource Management ◽  
First Nations ◽  
Natural Resource ◽  
Traditional Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Biological Data ◽  
Public Land ◽  
Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Resource Managers ◽  
Holistic Understanding

Resource managers are increasingly engaging with tribes and first nations and looking for methods to incorporate their perspectives, priorities and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) into public land and resource management. Many initiatives that engage tribes and their TEK holders only seek tribal input, such as biological data, that is most easily integrated into existing management structures. Increasing attention on tribal belief systems would provide a more holistic understanding that could benefit TEK-related initiatives. Such a shift could reduce misunderstandings about tribal natural resource perspectives and lead to insights valuable for society at large.

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