The The National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday faulted Enbridge Energy's management of its Line 6B for causing a 2010 oil spill but also criticized the nation's top pipeline regulator for weak oversight -- a move that a pipeline safety advocate and environmentalists think could impact future pipeline projects.
"NTSB's investigation casts an incredibly poor light on Enbridge and oversight," said Anthony Swift, a lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Enbridge's Line 6B ships heavy sour crudes from Griffith, Indiana, to Sarnia, Ontario. About 20,000 barrels of heavy crude spilled into the Kalamazoo River in July 2010 near Marshall, Michigan.
The NTSB identified pipeline corrosion as the probable cause of the oil spill. Enbridge had an "insufficient margin of safety" that compounded mistakes, NTSB investigator Matt Nicholson said. The US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration "did not require Enbridge to excavate [pipeline parts] with injurious pipeline defects," Nicholson said.
Enbridge initially misinterpreted signs that Line 6B had not ruptured. In addition, the company did not have an adequate oil spill response plan, he said. Had the company deployed adequate equipment to respond to the spill, "the amount of oil could have been reduced," he said.
"We believe that the experienced personnel involved in the decisions made at the time of the release were trying to do the right thing. As with most such incidents, a series of unfortunate events and circumstances resulted in an outcome no one wanted," Enbridge CEO Patrick Daniel said in a statement.
NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman criticized lax government regulations and regulatory oversight for contributing to a climate where "the fox is guarding the henhouse."
"Regulators need regulations and practices with teeth," she said.
Swift said NTSB's finding "raises the specter of systemic problems" throughout the pipeline industry.
"The NTSB is once again clearly arguing that PHMSA needs to start proactively enforcing strong pipeline regulations," Swift said.
The board's findings could put "a lot of public scrutiny" on Enbridge's new proposals to expand the capacity of its Lakehead System crude oil mainline between Neche, North Dakota, and its terminal in Flanagan, Illinois, and on other pipeline projects including TransCanada's much-disputed Keystone XL, Swift said.
"Many of these problems are systemic with the pipeline industry at large and the tar sands operator in particular," Swift said.
The $400 million Lakehead System project includes expanding the Alberta Clipper crude pipeline, also known as Line 67, from 450,000 b/d to 570,000 b/d, between the Canada-US border and Superior, Wisconsin, Enbridge said in a statement. The Southern Access crude pipeline, also known as Line 61, will be expanded between Superior and Flanagan from 400,000 b/d to 560,000 b/d.
"It is clear that some of the basic foundations of pipeline safety need to be re-examined based on the findings of the Enbridge failure and other failures in the past couple years," Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, said in a statement.
"Hopefully ... it won't take another million gallons of oil into another river, or another neighborhood to be destroyed like in San Bruno, California, for industry and regulators to wake up and seriously rethink and rewrite the basic system of pipeline safety in this country and the way that safety is verified by government," the trust said.
