Enbridge Inc. handled a crude pipeline spill in Michigan like “Keystone Kops,” the chairwoman of a U.S. investigator said Tuesday as environmental groups called for greater scrutiny of future projects.
A probe by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board concluded Enbridge did not fix a defect on the pipeline when it was discovered five years earlier and control room staff responded poorly when Line 6B ruptured on July 25, 2010.
“Learning about Enbridge’s poor handling of the rupture, you can’t help but think of the Keystone Kops,” said NTSB chair Deborah Hersman, referring to the incompetent policemen in silent films.
“Why didn’t they recognize what was happening? What took so long?”
Enbridge (TSX:ENB) has billions in new pipeline projects and expansions in the works, including contentious plans to ship crude to the West Coast and to Central Canada.
Critics of the company’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline between Alberta and the B.C. coast as well as expansion to ship more Alberta crude eastward seized on the NTSB report as evidence the company should not be allowed to build those projects.
Hersman said Enbridge knew about a corrosion problem on Line 6B in 2005 — well before it ruptured and caused the most expensive onshore spill in U.S. history.
“Yet, for five years they did nothing to address the corrosion or cracking at the rupture site — and the problem festered.”
The NTSB said it took 17 hours and 19 minutes for Enbridge staff to respond to alarms signalling a problem on the line in southern Michigan. And when they did respond, it was only after a worker with a local natural gas utility informed them of the spill.
Instead of stopping the flow, Enbridge staff misinterpreted the alarms and twice pumped more crude into the ruptured pipeline — representing about 81 per cent of the total spill, Hersman said.
More than three million litres of crude oil spilled into nearby wetlands, Talmadge Creek and the Kalamazoo River.
The total cleanup cost more than $800 million — more than five times the next most expensive onshore oil spill, Hersman said, citing figures from Enbridge and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
She said poor regulatory oversight by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration was also to blame.
“Delegating too much authority to the regulated to assess their own system risks and correct them is tantamount to the fox guarding the hen house,” she said.
But Hersman said PHMSA did take the “necessary and important step” of proposing a $3.7-million fine against Enbridge last week.
In a release, Enbridge CEO Pat Daniel said the employees involved at the time of the spill were “trying to do the right thing.”