Enbridge affiliates have had 175 leaks, spills over 10 years in U.S.

OTTAWA — Subsidiaries of the company that wants to build the Gateway pipeline through northern B.C. have reported more than 170 pipeline leaks and spills in the United States since 2002, accident reporting data show.

Records filed with the U.S. government show companies owned by Calgary-based Enbridge Energy experienced 159 reportable accidents and incidents involving liquid pipelines and another 16 in their natural gas lines.

The reports detail minor incidents, with only a few gallons lost, and major accidents, including the 2007 leak from an Enbridge pipeline in Clearbrook, Minnesota, that killed two workers and led to $2.4 million U.S. in fines against the company.




The great majority of the incidents occurred in the American Midwest, around the Great Lakes and close to the Canadian border.

National Energy Board hearings into the proposed Gateway pipeline kicked off this week. The Conservative government is pushing the project hard and has denounced environmental groups who want to testify against the pipeline as foreign-funded “radicals.”

Enbridge’s safety record is expected to be one aspect under consideration for a pipeline that will slice through the B.C. wilderness to a port in Kitimat, where bitumen will be shipped by tanker to Asian markets.



Enbridge did not respond to a request for comment. The company has defended its safety and environmental record in the past, saying it spills less oil than the industry average.

At a speech in 2010, company CEO Patrick Daniel said Enbridge pipelines spilled only about 4.2 barrels of oil for every billion barrel-miles, compared with the industry average of more than 10.7 barrels spilled. A barrel-mile is defined as one barrel of liquid moving one mile.

Projecting Enbridge’s figure of 4.2 barrels spilled per BBM onto the Gateway pipeline would result in about 588 barrels spilled each year — about 94,000 litres.

The company’s own data, from 2004 to 2008, shows 32,000 barrels spilled from its liquid pipelines, a rate of about 7.7 barrels per billion barrel miles. Projected on to Gateway’s average capacity, that rate would produce more than 1,000 barrels spilled each year.

One of Enbridge’s worst pipeline accidents occurred in July 2010, when a line belonging to Houston-based Enbridge Energy Limited Partnership ruptured near Marshall, Michigan, gushing 20,000 barrels into a creek and the Kalamazoo River.

Under the direction of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Enbridge cleaned up about 18,000 barrels and kept the oil from flowing into Lake Michigan. The EPA considers the spill the worst in the history of the Midwest.

Less than two months later, another Enbridge line burst in Romeoville, Illinois, about 30 minutes’ drive south of Chicago, spilling more than 7,500 barrels of crude.

Also in 2010, an Enbridge line broke near Neche, North Dakota, with 3,700 barrels contained on the company’s right-of-way near a highway.

Still, the company claimed it had a 99.99-per-cent safety record that year.

The U.S. provides pipeline accident data freely online but the equivalent data are not publicly available in Canada.

The National Transportation Safety Board, however, does provide details on some incidents:

September 2009, near Odessa, Sask. About 1,100 barrels of crude oil leaked from a crack in a section of Enbridge pipe in densely-vegetated marsh. Most was recovered.

April 2007, near Glenavon, Sask. A rupture in a section of pipe through a wetland area on a farm leaked about 6,200 barrels, of which all but 480 barrels were recovered.

Original Article
Source: Ottawa Citizen