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Massive Michigan oil spill pumps up debate over Enbridge’s Alberta-to-B.C. pipeline
News Articles | Vancouver Sun | Post-Media News | July 29, 2010
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Early this week, a section of Enbridge’s Lakehead Pipeline system burst in Michigan. It has unleashed more than three million litres of oil into a tributary of the Kalamazoo River, with the oil making its way into the river. There are fears it could travel all the way down to Lake Michigan.
On Thursday, the Detroit Free Press reported that U.S. federal regulators conducted corrosion tests as recently as last year that found “metal loss anomalies” along the pipeline.
Just two weeks ago, the paper reported, Enbridge notified the government it was considering replacing a section of pipe rather than repairing it.
During a news conference on Thursday, the company’s executives said as many as 400 people were going to be working on the cleanup, collecting oil at 17 different boom sites.
“There is oil yet to be collected,” said Enbridge president and CEO Patrick Daniel, apologizing to the people of Michigan for “the mess we have made” and vowing to spend “whatever it takes” to clean it up.
Daniel said much of the slick has pooled around the site where the break occurred. “It has been a challenge getting in because of the very marshy area we’re involved in. There is no further oil leaving that site.
“We have collected most ‚Äî and I do emphasize most ‚Äî of the oil on the river, (but) by no means all,” said Daniel, adding that efforts would soon be concentrated on the “fine sheen” of oil that sits atop the water’s surface.
The fallout from the spill is casting a shadow over another project for which the company has big plans: its Northern Gateway Project.
Aboriginal and environmental groups have been speaking out against the projects for months. They say it poses an unacceptable risk to the environment and their livelihoods.
The Northern Gateway pipeline would extend 1,172 kilometres from Bruderheim, just north of Edmonton, to Kitimat on the B.C. coast. It would carry an average of 525,000 barrels of petroleum per day. The joint review panel established to evaluate the project is holding pre-hearings beginning in Whitecourt, Alta., on Aug. 10.
Further pre-hearings, used to help the panel decide on the scope of the actual hearings, will be held in Kitimat and Prince George later in August and September.
“I definitely think the (Michigan) spill reinforces a lack of trust and also the incredible risk this pipeline poses to British Columbia in particular,” said Nikki Skuce, senior energy campaigner for ForestEthics.
Skuce said the Northern Gateway pipeline is supposed to cross 1,000 streams and rivers, including the Skeena and Fraser Rivers, which are valuable wild-salmon habitats and important to cultures and economies in B.C.
The company has promised again and again that it will have the best technology for Northern Gateway and that it would be able to tell within five minutes if there was a leak and shut it off, she said. “This latest spill just shows you: How can we trust them?”
Skuce said residents along the Northern Gateway route will want even more emphasis in the hearings on the actual response rates, the company’s spill record and worst-case scenarios.
There is some controversy about when the spill in Michigan from the pipeline, called Line 6B, started. Residents in the area reported hydrocarbon odours Sunday, but the company says the leak started Monday.
The Detroit Free Press reported that on Wednesday, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration or PHMSA — a division of the U.S. Department of Transportation — sent Enbridge Energy Partners Ltd., a corrective action order in the wake of the spill, spelling out the steps that must be taken before the pipeline is reopened.
It also ordered that the section of failed pipe be given to the National Transportation Safety Board for testing and a 20-year review of any problems along Line 6B of the 3,057-kilometre Lakehead System be provided.
The Battle Creek Inquirer in Battle Creek, Mich., reported this week that the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said that three Enbridge spills since 2002 accounted for an estimated 1,465 litres of spilled crude.
The most serious Enbridge accident was in 2007, when an explosion on an Enbridge pipeline near Clearbook, Minnesota, caused two deaths and $2 million in damage, according to regulators.
PHMSA said the company exceeded the maximum pressure. The agency fined Enbridge $2.4 million and ordered it to make several procedural changes.
The company’s goal is to have no spills, but it acknowledges that the size and complexity of their pipeline systems create a major challenge to that objective. The company’s most recent annual report, for 2008, showed it had 93 reportable spills, leaks and releases.
A Polaris Institute report on Enbridge from earlier this year said the company had 610 incidents, spilling 21 million litres of hydrocarbons into the environment between 1999 and 2008: “This amounts to approximately half of the oil that spilled from the oil tanker the Exxon Valdez after it struck a rock in Prince William Sound, Alaska, in 1988,” said the report.
Karen Campbell, staff counsel for the Pembina Institute, says she’s worried the review process for the Northern Gateway project will be inadequate. The pipeline has arguably more potential environmental impacts than the proposed Mackenzie gas pipeline and yet will get a shorter review process, she said.
The panel that reviewed the Mackenzie project had seven members, four of whom were from the Northwest Territories and three of whom were aboriginal, she added. The Northern Gateway panel has three members, none of whom is from B.C. and only one of whom is aboriginal.
Tagged with: enbridge, northern gateway, oil spill, pipeline safety, michigan, kalamazoo river
