A lot of attention has been paid to TransCanada, the company that owns the Keystone pipeline that has gotten such controversy, but more people should also know about Enbridge, the other big Canadian oil pipeline company that has had big problems with spills. Here’s a video that makes fun of their proposed Northern Gateway project, which would carry tar sands oil to the Pacific coast of Canada to hit the world market.
Almost exactly two years ago, Enbridge’s Lakehead 6B pipeline burst near Marshall, Michigan, sending almost a million gallons of oil into Talmadge Creek and the Kalamazoo River. I was the editor of the Michigan Messenger at the time and our two brilliant reporters, Todd Heywood and Eartha Melzer, did some amazing investigative work on the story over the next several months. The spill was a disaster in every conceivable way.
The EPA and Enbridge launched a major containment and cleanup effort, but they were hampered by the fact that the company never told anyone that the oil flowing through that pipeline was not conventional crude but was diluted bitumin — that is, tar sands oil. In fact, the MSDS sheets that the EPA state agencies were working off were for conventional crude oil. Why does this matter? Because tar sands oil reacts very differently in the environment than regular crude oil.
It was Eartha’s reporting that discovered that it was tar sands oil. It was also her reporting that prompted the cleanup agencies to test for heavy metal contamination in water and soil samples, because tar sands oil has much higher levels of toxic metals. They didn’t even know that was the case so they didn’t know they should be doing those tests.
It was Todd’s reporting that uncovered the fact that one of the cleanup contractors was using undocumented workers and forcing them to work in unsafe conditions with little concern for health and safety, for little pay (and paid under the table, of course). And that tar sands oil creates hundreds of false pressure readings in pipelines that prevent operators from knowing when they’ve got a leak until long after it begins.
All of this was entirely avoidable, if the company had taken safety and compliance seriously. Enbridge was recently fined a record $3.7 million by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) for 24 “violations of its hazardous liquid pipeline safety regulations related to integrity maintenance, failure to follow operation and management procedures, and reporting and operator qualification requirements.”
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Setár, self-appointed Elf-Sheriff of the FreethoughtBlogs Star Chamber
July 7, 2012 at 10:09 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Here’s the piece of information you forgot: that animation was done by a BC political cartoonist for the BC provincial newspaper, The Province, who removed it after Enbridge kicked up a fuss and threatened to pull ad revenue.
Some objective mainstream media we have.
D. C. Sessions
July 7, 2012 at 10:57 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Part of the cost of doing business, and cheap at the price.
Setár, self-appointed Elf-Sheriff of the FreethoughtBlogs Star Chamber
July 7, 2012 at 11:03 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
D.C. Sessions, they’ll have it even cheaper here. Crommunist refers to the Conservative Party of Canada as “Republican North” for a damn good reason, and their 166-seat majority in the House of Commons means that Stephen Harper and his Cabinet can ram through anything they please short of a constitutional amendment (that at least requires the approval of 7/10 provinces representing at least 50% of the population) banning all forms of regulation.
At most, I bet that Enbridge would be forced to undertake corporate social responsibility just like Big Tobacco — remember that?
slc1
July 7, 2012 at 12:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re #3
Harper is bad but, compared to some of the whackjobs in the Rethuglican Party, he looks almost moderate. Of course, we can also laugh at chiropractor and creationist Gary Goodyear as the Minister for Science and Technology in the Harper cabinet.
Pinky
July 7, 2012 at 9:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
You remember all those books and movies about the dystopias where the world is a grimy mess, depleted of easy energy resources and now too poor to find new energy to keep civilization going.
Enbridge is doing its part to make those sordid visions come about.
What will history make, if there is a future, of humans grasping at the last drops of oil solely for the profits of a few?
What will be said of a civilization who had within its grasp the ability to find / invent new energy sources but was stymied because the oil companies owned the government, maintaining the status quo through a few easily co-opted power hungry religious leaders?
caseloweraz
July 9, 2012 at 5:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“And that tar sands oil creates hundreds of false pressure readings in pipelines that prevent operators from knowing when they’ve got a leak until long after it begins.”
You mean the so-called bubbles that cause low-pressure alarms? Or do you mean that the low pressure readings from the leak were taken to be false alarms, as shown here?
From The Dilbit Disaster by McGowan & Song, Part 1.
If the former, the low reading should travel from one sensor to the next in fairly short order, I would think — unlike the reading caused by a leak.
Making Fun of Enbridge « Hands Across New Hampshire
July 9, 2012 at 8:53 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
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