A group of environmental researchers says LNG Canada’s broken flare system is spewing more toxic gases into the atmosphere than the company has disclosed, presenting imaging evidence to back up their claims.
“These are unheated, uncombusted, massive emissions,” said Tim Doty, a researcher from Texas who worked in a monitoring program for nearly 30 years at that state’s oil and gas regulator.
Doty used an optical gas imaging camera to photograph a plume of unburned gases emanating from the flare stacks, a cloud he says could contain methane and volatile organic compounds such as benzene and butane. Doty presented his evidence to reporters on Wednesday, June 24.
LNG Canada disputes the findings and says the facility is operating safely.
“Optical gas imaging can be a useful screening tool for identifying the presence and general movement of certain hydrocarbon plumes, but imagery alone cannot determine whether a plume contains benzene, how much of any substance is present, or whether it results in harmful exposure in the community,” LNG Canada said in a written statement to Black Press Media.
The imaging efforts follow a litany of issues the facility has had with its natural gas flaring system. Flaws in the design of flare tips and loose valves are apparently to blame, and an enormous amount of excess gas is being burned as a result, far beyond what is permitted.
The BC Energy Regulator was even forced to issue a public order in April for non-compliance related to black smoke emissions.
LNG Canada turns natural gas into liquid for export and needs to purge gas to keep pressure under control. Flaring is standard practice to burn it rather than release it into the atmosphere, and in Kitimat, this is done through a series of three giant flame-throwing towers.
But the tip of one of them — the warm/wet flare — has cracked, creating a dangerous situation in which flames could spread into the pipes.
So the company began pumping more gas through to keep the flame higher up. Then it switched over to a spare flare, while still pumping extra gas, presumably to prevent a similar situation. Simultaneously, the valves the company uses to pump that gas to the flares weren’t operating as intended, meaning more gas than normal had to be pumped to all flares.
According to documents the environmental researchers obtained through a Freedom of Information request from the BC Energy Regulator, all three flares exceeded permitted levels in April by a wide margin.
On average, the spare flare burned about 18 times the amount of gas it is supposed to, and the other two operated at about twice and five times the limit, respectively.
The documents also show that the company reported exceeding its permitted nitrogen oxide emissions twice in April and was forced to install alarms to alert workers when emissions are nearing the limits.
Meanwhile, LNG Canada has applied for a tenfold increase in the amount of gas it is allowed to flare — essentially to grant it authorization to continue doing what it is already doing.
“It’ll be to maintain that level of flaring as we work through the design,” said Teresa Waddington, the company’s deputy chief operating officer, at a March Kitimat council meeting.
LNG Canada would also conduct updated emissions modelling and health impact assessments as part of the new permit conditions, according to a company spokesperson.
Waddington explained that the company has ordered a new flare tip to be designed, and a substitute one with the same design to be delivered in the interim. These are pieces of equipment nearly as big as the room where the council meeting was held, councillors were told, and can take more than a year to procure.
As a result, LNG Canada needs to keep purging extra gas to prevent the flames from spreading downward into the pipes, likely until 2028.
This has left many in the community worried, so Doty and Tracey Saxby from the environmental organization My Sea to Sky travelled to Kitimat to investigate.
“I can truly say, the worst operating vertical flare and the most emissions that I’ve seen from a vertical flare at an LNG facility that I have surveyed to date,” Doty said.
The optical imaging uses temperature to measure emissions. Doty says ambient air temperature readings show the plume is not just heat, though he anticipated the company would say it was.
“This is not heat,” he said. “This is uncombusted hydrocarbon emissions that are being released.”
Based on available data on the composition of the natural gas being burned, he said these emissions could include volatile organic compounds, including benzene.
But community pollution monitoring stations don’t track these compounds, so it is difficult to know if this is correct. Doty says the onus is on the BC Energy Regulator to find out.
If large amounts of these compounds are being released, there could be health impacts for the community, including heart and lung disease, as well as problems for pregnant women and unborn children, says Dr. Tim Takaro, who spoke at the release of the findings along with Doty.
Takaro is a representative of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.
“This is really dangerous for human health,” he said.
The company dismisses the accuracy of these findings, arguing that the optical imaging only shows heat and that internal testing shows benzene concentrations are minimal.
“They do not provide the quantitative emissions data needed to determine concentration, emission rate, chemical composition, or potential ambient levels at community locations,” the company says.
B.C.’s Ministry of Energy and Climate Solutions and LNG Canada say that at this point, the flaring has caused no adverse measured impact to air quality in the Kitimat Valley, based on data from local monitoring stations and information provided by the company.
“This increased flaring is causing no immediate or imminent risk to public safety or the environment,” the energy ministry said in a written statement.
But Prof. Werner Antweiler, an energy and environmental economics expert from the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business, says these monitoring stations don’t capture all types of gases, and have limitations because they are stationary. And information provided by the company must be double-checked.
“Obviously, we do have a gap here,” he said.
Antweiler wants more publicly available data, particularly on volatile organic compounds.
“So they have good data and can intervene if things actually become problematic,” he said.
Antweiler also questions whether the situation with the flares is not worse than the company is revealing.
“If they have trouble getting the situation under control, it means now there are more significant problems than they’re letting on,” he said.
This all raises questions about a project billed to be one of the cleanest LNG facilities in the world, he said, particularly as Phase 2 of the Kitimat terminal is close to securing a final investment decision.
“The data so far actually points exactly quite on the other end of the spectrum,” Antweiler said. “And that’s bad.”