Enbridge and Alberta Are Getting Lambasted

Enbridge's tower in Edmonton. via.

The news holes that Rob Ford, Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Nigel Wright filled over the weekend were probably a welcome relief for Enbridge and everyone involved in tar sands PR.  Because the public generally tunes out over long-weekends, most people won’t have heard (over crack-smoking and resignation stories) that some Enbridge employees got kicked out of a northern B.C. First Nation’s territory on Thursday, and that on both sides of the Ontario and Michigan border people are none-too-pleased about Detroit being used as a dumping ground for a nasty tar sands byproduct .

Although Enbridge is probably getting used to taking heat from all sides regarding recent pipeline fuck-ups and concerns about future pipeline fuck-ups, it’s been a rough spring in the press even by the energy giant’s standards. And while it’s easy to focus on the corporation’s struggles, it’s hard to overlook their pipelined relationship with the province of Alberta, who over the past couple of weeks, have been having an equally impossible time trying to sell the tar sands as “clean” and “ethical.”

As far as the Northern Gateway pipeline goes, it seems that Enbridge may have been lowballing (like, sinker down and away in the dirt lowballing) in their risk assessment of spills along the B.C. coast.  While they surmised that a potential spill may only occur every 250 years, a report released two weeks ago by Simon Fraser University has dramatically different predictions. Using a comprehensive and respected risk assessment model—the United States Oil Spill Risk Analysis—Dr. Tom Gunton, director of the School of Resource and Environmental Management at SFU, predicts that the likelihood of a spill is over 90% and occurring every 10 years rather than every 250.  In total, the study predicts Northern Gateway oil spills to be 31 times more frequent than the numbers Enbridge has presented using their own data.

While the degrees of variation in these numbers might lead one to conclude that Enbridge isn’t exactly being honest about future safety concerns, it was also reported that they haven’t even been keeping standards up to par on existing pipelines.  The National Energy Board has revealed that Enbridge isn’t complying with safety regulations at 117 of 125 pump stations across the country.  These offences include not having sufficient backup power to operate emergency shut- down systems.  And at 83 of these pump stations, emergency shut-down systems don’t even exist. I can’t help but picture cartoons: a loud siren, a voice repeating “Spill Detected, Spill Detected…” while a Homer-esque Enbridge employee runs around frantically looking for a big red button that isn’t even there.

Enbridge’s excuse for this oversight is conveniently naïve, essentially saying it’s all been an error of interpretation. However, the backup power regulation has existed since 1999 and the emergency shutdown button has been required since 1994. These safety omissions only came to light in 2011, with NEB inspections of pump stations on Enbridge’s now controversial Line 9 pipeline (which has also been in the news this spring).  But should a company that claims to go above and beyond safety standards really need to be reminded that an emergency oil spill shutdown button might be a good idea?

The tar sands that fill Enbridge’s pipes and the province they gurgle out of has also been getting panned. When a former Vice President calls your boast of a natural resource “an open sewer,” it might be time for Alberta to take an honest look in the mirror.

Climate change crusader Al Gore was in Toronto this month speaking at Ryerson University and definitely wasn’t following the rule of ‘if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.’ He blasted the tar sands along with Alberta and Canada’s attempts to portray this as in any way clean or ethical. “There’s no such thing as ethical oil” he said. “There’s only dirty oil and dirtier oil.” Minister of Natural Resources Joe Oliver has tried to rebut, saying Gore is ranting hyperbolically and should really “better inform himself”.

To make matters just a little worse for Alberta Premier Alison Redford and her oil-vendor buddies, B.C. Liberal leader Christy Clark (who has said that British Columbia doesn’t need Alberta), was re-elected Premier Tuesday. Although Christy might be a better look for Alberta (and for Joe Oliver and the Feds) than NDP candidate Adrian Dix would have, Alberta and Enbridge’s uneasiness about B.C.’s approval of a pipeline is very tangible.

Enbridge’s PR department and Alison Redford’s communications office must be banging their heads against the wall to try and come up with some new messaging on these issues. They’ve recently announced a revamp of their energy regulator to try to promote a cleaner image, but they’ve named a former president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and 15-year veteran of natural gas coroporation, Encana, as their chairman. Not exactly the brightest choice for a re-brand that is supposed to be leaning towards environmental responsibility.  The guy has oil lobby written on his forehead.

At a certain point, it’s impossible to dress up as anything else: it’s dirty oil. And while you might be able to turn that dirt into gold, you can’t show people dirt and tell them it’s water. It might make you rich, but it won’t make you clean.

Follow Dave on Twitter: @ddner

Previously:

Northern Gateway Pipeline: What the Hell Is Going on with the Northern Gateway Pipeline?

Enbridge's Sketchy Pipeline Reversal Plan Affects Most Canadians

Native Leaders Are Telling Enbridge to Go Fuck Itself