yup; located right in de middle of de Nile River.
Canada's oil capital Calgary could be without power for months after floods
 
1 of 2. The grounds of the Calgary Stampede remain under water after they were flooded in Calgary, Alberta June 22, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Melissa Renwick
By Nia Williams
CALGARY, Alberta | Sun Jun 23, 2013 4:52pm BST
CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Power outages in the Canadian oil capital of Calgary could last for weeks or even months, city authorities said on Sunday, after record-breaking floods that killed three people and forced more than 100,000 to flee their homes swept across southern Alberta.
Some Calgary residents were able to return to sodden homes as river levels slowly dropped and some mandatory evacuations orders were lifted.
But Bruce Burrell, director of the Calgary Emergency Management Agency, said power restoration in the downtown core, where many of Canada's oil companies have their headquarters, could take days, weeks or even months.
Many of oil companies were making plans for employees to work from home.
"This is an evolving situation and because of the volatility of electricity and water and the infrastructure that was damaged we have got a lot of issues with restoring power to different parts of the city of Calgary," Alderman John Mar told CBC radio.
"We are facing an absolutely gargantuan task."
Heavy rains were blamed for 750 barrels of synthetic oil spilling from a pipeline approximately 70 kilometres (43 miles) south of Fort McMurray in northern Alberta early on Saturday.
"We are still investigating the cause, however, we believe that unusually heavy rains in the area may have resulted in ground movement on the right-of way that may have impacted the pipeline," Enbridge, Canada's largest pipeline company, said in an emailed statement.
The company also has shut down two major oil pipelines serving Canada's oil sands region as a precaution.
Provincial authorities said it was too early to count the cost of the flood damage because rivers have not peaked in some places.
The South Saskatchewan River is expected to burst its banks in the city of Medicine Hat in southeastern Alberta on Monday. About 10,000 people have been evacuated.
The floods already look significantly worse than those of 2005, which caused C$400 million (248 million pounds) in damage in the western Canadian province.
The floods followed 36 hours of unusually heavy rainfall that pushed the volume of water in rivers to record levels. Some communities received six months of their normal rainfall in fewer than two days.
Evacuations started on Thursday and utility Enmax switched off power to central Calgary on Friday afternoon to avoid water damage to its downtown facilities. Troops were used on Sunday morning to shore up the east bank of the Bow River in Calgary and ensure the stability of an Enmax substation.
It was unclear how much crude trading would take place on Monday after little if any trade on Friday.
Shorcan Energy Brokers, which provides live prices for many Canadian crude grades, operated out of Toronto on Friday rather than from Calgary, although there were no trades in Western Canada Select heavy blend or light synthetic crude.
Net Energy Inc, the other main Calgary crude broker, was closed on Friday and no trading took place.
As the Bow and Elbow rivers in Calgary, which during the weekend hit five times their normal flow rate, slowly receded, the scale of the damage became apparent. Roads and pavements were left covered with a layer of thick silt, fallen trees lined the riverbanks and residents pumped dirty brown water out of basements.
Police said three bodies had been found near High River, about 60 km (40 miles) south of Calgary.
Flood water covered the grounds of the Calgary Stampede, an annual extravaganza of cows, cowboys and horses scheduled to start on July 5. City authorities insisted the show would go ahead despite the disruption
uk.reuters.com
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Enbridge Shuts Canadian Pipeline After Oil Spill By CHIP CUMMINS
Canadian pipeline operator Enbridge Inc. ENB.T +0.21%said it had shut down and isolated a pipeline north of Cheecham, Alberta, after detecting a spill of some 750 barrels of light, synthetic crude oil.
The company said oil had been discovered on the ground at the site, about 42 miles southeast of Fort McMurray, and field personnel had been mobilized.
The company said it was still investigating the cause of the leak but said that it believed unusually heavy rain "may have resulted in ground movement" that impacted the pipeline. Enbridge said it had shut down all other Enbridge pipelines in the area.
Alberta has been swamped by some of the heaviest rain and floodwaters in years. The flooding has shut down large swaths of Calgary, Alberta's financial hub, displacing tens of thousands of residents.
The region around Cheecham is a major center of oil-sands production, and it wasn't immediately clear what volumes of oil have been affected by the various Enbridge pipelines shutdowns. A spokesman for Enbridge said it wasn't disclosing how much oil has been affected by the shutdowns and likely wouldn't until it had "a material effect on deliveries, if that occurs."
Enbridge said it had sent first responders, who had installed oil-cleanup booms. The spill, first detected early Sunday, had been contained at the site "and the local water bodies." The company said there have been no reports of harm to wildlife.
Enbridge said the affected line, Line 37, was constructed in 2006 and is a 12-inch-diameter pipeline that is a little more than 10 miles long, connecting facilities in the Long Lake area to Cheecham.
The spilled oil is a light, low-sulphur blend that several oil-sands producers make synthetically by processing the heavy bitumen crude that they extract from the area's oil-sands deposits.
The spill is the latest in a string of significant crude spills in Canada, and it comes at a time when the industry is on the defensive over its safety record as North American crude production soars. Amid the boom, pipeline companies have been proposing new lines and projects that would repurpose or reverse the flow of existing oil and natural-gas lines.
The spate of Canadian spills also comes as the U.S. weighs approval of TransCanada Corp.'s TRP.T -0.97%Keystone XL pipeline expansion, which envisions carrying large volumes of heavy oil-sands crude from Alberta to the Gulf Coast. Many environmental groups have opposed the line because of worry over oil spills.
Enbridge is also facing mounting environmental opposition in Canada for its Northern Gateway project—a plan to build a pipeline from Alberta, across the Rocky Mountains, to the British Columbia coast.
Pipeline companies, including Enbridge and TransCanada, and industry lobby groups have defended their safety record. Still, both the industry and Alberta have responded to the recent spate of spills, promising new safety guidelines and provincial scrutiny. The Canadian Energy Pipeline Association earlier this month released new guidelines for bolstering pipeline safety.
Earlier this month, Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP KMP -1.03%reported a small leak on its Trans Mountain pipeline, which ships crude from Alberta through British Columbia. The same week, Apache Corp. APA +0.13%disclosed a spill in northern Alberta that released 2.5 million gallons of contaminated water, affecting an area of about 104 acres.
And last Sunday, a Canadian unit of U.S.-owned pipeline company Plains All American Pipeline LP PAA -2.56%shut down a pipeline after a spill of approximately 950 barrels of oil in northwestern Alberta, affected an area of roughly 3.5 acres about 55 miles north of Manning, Alberta.
online.wsj.com |
