Standards needed for heavy oil cleanup, U.S. Coast Guard says

The U.S Coast Guard in Cleveland, Ohio, says more resources and better equipment are needed to be properly prepared to respond to a heavy oil spill in the Great Lakes region.

"Heavy oils, the challenge that they bring is they need to be recovered off the bottom once they sink, so the technology and the tactics to do that that's really where the research and development is focused," said Jerry Popiel, incident management and preparedness adviser for the Ninth Coast Guard District in Cleveland.

Popial said heavy oil cleanup preparedness is a concern because more is being shipped from Canada to the U.S. than ever before.

He said there is currently no standard to recover submerged heavy oil.

"The research and development that's on going has to work hand-in-hand with the industry to develop a standard recovery method for clean up of submerged oil," he said.

Derek Coronado, with the Citizens Environment Alliance in Windsor, agreed a more solid plan should be in place when dealing with potential heavy oil spills.

He said the focus should be on prevention instead of reaction.

"It seems to be the usual inertia," said Coronado. "Wait until there's a problem.

"That's always been the case in the Great Lakes, hence, we're still 20 plus years later, remediation [in] areas of concern in the Great Lakes...This would be emergency response, as well. The issue is, are we doing now all we can to prevent potential problems in the future. My answer would be no."

Risky heavy oils and cleanup

Popiel said there are a network of pipelines that carry two types of heavy oil in Canada and the United States.

The first is oil-sands product, which is too thick to flow through pipelines. It's made thinner with dilutants. The diluted oil can be flammable once spilled in water.

The other is Bakken crude, a lighter oil, that is more flammable and volatile. It's the same oil that caused the Lac-Mégantic train disaster, which killed 47 people and destroyed the downtown of the small Quebec town in 2013.

When a heavy oil is first discharged onto a body of water it floats on the surface for days or even weeks due to the dilutants. This makes it possible to use traditional oil spill response measures to clean it up, Popial explained.

Traditional means of cleanup include booming, using absorbent material, vacuuming and using skimmers on the surface of the water.  

Heavy oils pose a bigger challenge because they need to be recovered off the bottom once they sink, and better methods of cleanup have yet to be developed, according to Popial.

He said there is equipment to deal with the heavy oil, but none has been used on the Great Lakes.

"We don't have a track record to see how well it performs in a deep water environment," he said.

He also said the oil industries that transport the produce also have a responsibility to have a response plan ahead of time.

Currently no ships are carrying heavy oil products on the Great Lakes, said Popial.

Sarina Mayor, Mike Bradley, said there should be more regulation of the oil companies.

The Canadian Coast Guard said they were not available to comment.