Enbridge is opening a second front in its battle with environmentalists and First Nations over the movement of Bakken and oil sands crude to refineries in eastern North America and Asia.
Already immersed in an epic clash of wills over its proposed Northern Gateway link to Asia, Canada’s second largest energy pipeline company is now facing a pitched battle over its sweeping plan to spend C$2.6 billion de-bottlenecking congested pipelines in the U.S. Midwest.
It doesn’t help in either case that transcripts released by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board on May 18 pointed accusatory fingers at Enbridge’s role in a mid-2010 spill of 20,000 barrels of crude from its 290,000 bpd Line 6B between Sarnia, Ontario, and Griffith, Ind., which has cost about US$700 million to clean up.
The rupture resulted in crude escaping into the Kalamazoo River in southwestern Michigan, creating a costly and embarrassing headache for Enbridge that continues to put a cloud over its ambitious expansion plans.
The NTSB documents said the Line 6B rupture went undetected as shift changes occurred at its control room in Edmonton, Alberta.
One operator, who has been with Enbridge for 25 years, said in a transcript that there is a constant turnover of supervisors, reducing the accumulated experience of those doing the job.
Enbridge insists it has been working closely with the NTSB from the outset, but will not comment on the findings until the NTSB delivers its final report, although the company said it has made changes to operating procedures over the past two years.
Groups demand full assessment
However much Enbridge argues it has met or exceeded all applicable regulatory and industry standards, the Line 6B incident and other lesser events provide a prod for opponents of the Eastern Access program.
The flashpoint in Canada is the proposal to reverse Line 9, allowing Western Canadian and Bakken crude to flow from Sarnia to Montreal, giving refiners in Ontario and Quebec an alternative to the premium of US$20 per barrel they are currently paying for imported crude.
Public hearings by Canada’s National Energy Board are under way, with environmental organizations demanding an assessment of Enbridge’s complete expansion program.
That includes claims — despite Enbridge’s emphatic denial — that the company is intent on reviving its Trailbreaker project to extend the pipeline reversal to Portland, Maine. Enbridge abandoned that project in 2009 as uneconomic.
Among the environmental spokesman, Equiterre’s Steven Guilbeault and British Columbia-based ecologist David Suzuki said the interests of Quebecers will not be served by the proposals.
Guilbeault said the reversal of Line 9B from Westover, Ontario, to Montreal “would carry tar sands oil all the way from Alberta to Quebec and would go through some of the most densely populated areas of (Canada), such as the Greater Montreal area.”
He noted that Quebecers have shown in polls that they are opposed to the oil sands operations because of that industry’s environmental impacts.
Suzuki said Canadians should be reducing their reliance on oil and leave “tar sands oil in the ground, period.”
“This whole battle over pipelines is masking the big question, which is why we don’t have a national energy policy.”
Environmental Defence and Equiterre issued a joint statement arguing that pumping oil sands crude will mean more air pollution and greater risks of toxic spills into waterways.
“Getting raw tar sands oil through pipelines is like moving hot, liquid sandpaper that grinds and burns its way through a pipe, thus increasing the chance that weakened pipelines will rupture,” a joint press release said, contending that pipelines from the oil sands spill three times as much oil per mile in the United States as the average pipeline.
Michigan focus
The tussle in the United States is expected to center on Michigan because of the Line 6B episode.
“The expansion of this tar sands pipeline amounts to double-jeopardy for the community of Marshall, Michigan, which has faced over 20 months of a prolonged and expensive cleanup of their local river,” said Danielle Droitsch of the Natural Resources Defense Council in a blog posting.
Steve Wuori, president of Enbridge’s liquids pipeline division, told the Montreal Gazette that any claim that Enbridge is carrying “sandy crude through a pipeline is absolutely false.”
He said crude carried by Line 9B will be either diluted bitumen or partially refined crude, similar to crude currently being processed at Quebec refineries.
Wuori said crude entering a pipeline is analyzed to ensure it is no more than 0.5 percent sediment and water.
“This project is really about light crude for refineries because they can get it at more attractive prices than their current sources,” he said.
