Real numbers on oil/gas pipeline failures

I have been reading and watching media coverage of TransCanada's public information sessions on the West-East pipeline over the last week or so and continue to hear from opponents of the pipeline that accidents on the pipeline are inevitable...which is true about any human made system, but the key is to look at the scale of the accidents and the actual probability.

I fear that those talking about "inevitable" accidents are not basing it on true facts, or are using worldwide or USA based statistics. This is like hydrofracking opponents using Pennsylvania as a blueprint for what can happen in New Brunswick. The problem with that logic is that we have much better regulations and oversight rules in Canada, so the comparisons are not apples to apples. Business is supposed to always look for the cheapest way to do things, and if you do not regulate them or give them rules (as happened in Pennsylvania) they will not always use the safest practices. If you were to set up a clothing manufacturing plant in New Brunswick would you use safety statistics from Bangladesh to gauge the potential safety of the New Brunswick plant...of course not.

So I decided to look for actual pipeline safety stats for Canada, and with a pretty quick Google search I found the Transportation Safety Board of Canada's 2012 pipeline accident rates. http://goo.gl/yNiIha
Any accidents on pipelines or related facilities must be reported to TSBC, so these numbers can be trusted.

In 2012, 7 accidents occured along Canada's 18,000+km of piplines, down from the 5 year average of 9/year.  Of the 7 accidents, none were on the actual pipeline itself, all were at facilities; so compressor stations, pump stations, meter stations or a gathering line. These facilities are located either at the terminal sites of the pipeline or at intervals along the line. So not over or near waterways, not in farmers fields, not in the middle of nature preserves.

Over a 10 year period, only 18% of accidents occurred on the actual transmission line. Interestingly, of the 93 accidents reported from 2003-2012, 52 resulted in release of product (oil/gas) and only one was over 1,000 cubic meters in size.

So while these numbers back up the idea that accidents happen on pipelines in Canada, it also shows that these accidents are exceedingly rare and mostly result in very little product being leaked into the environment.

I imagine if we looked at the safety statics of transporting oil and gas by train, or other methods, we would find accidents are much more common. A train or a truck operate in a much less controlled environment and have much more touch points allowing for human error. There are no drunk drivers or sleep deprived operators on a pipeline.