Tag: Line 5

Desmog: Concerns Mount About 61-Year Old Enbridge Pipeline in the Great Lakes

Published on March 10th, 2014 by - News

Click here to read the article on Desmog

By Derek Leahy, Desmog Canada

March 6, 2014

Of the 30 million Canadians and Americans depending on the Great Lakes for water very few would guess there is an oil pipeline sitting in their drinking water supply. It is anyone’s guess if this 61-year old Enbridge pipeline, known as Line 5, is pumping bitumen from the Alberta oilsands through the Great Lakes.

U.S. pipeline regulations do not require Enbridge to make public if Line 5 is transporting bitumen. Enbridge says the pipeline carries light crude oil mainly from the Bakken shale in North Dakota. The pipeline begins in Superior, Wis., and cuts through Straits of Mackinac, where Lake Huron and Lake Michigan meet, in the U.S. to get to its end destination of Sarnia, Ont.

“(U.S.) Pipelines in general are considered a national security risk,” says Beth Wallace, a regional coordinator with the National Wildlife Federation based in Ann Arbor, Mich.

“So PHMSA is not willing to provide records of Line 5 that provide detailed information about the location, integrity or product transported,” Wallace told DeSmog Canada. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHSMA) oversees pipelines for the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The National Wildlife Federation conducted an underwater dive last year to investigate and film the condition of Line 5. The federation discovered some of the pipeline’s steel supports meant to keep Line 5 secured to the bottum of the Straits had broken. Other sections of the pipeline were covered with debris.

Line 5 To Transport Bitumen Soon, If Not Already

The National Wildlife Federation believes if Line 5 is not transporting bitumen now, it will be in the near future.

“If Enbridge is granted authority to increase capacity on the Alberta Clipper pipeline, there will be an incredible increase in the amount of heavy bitumen pushed into Superior, Wisconsin, where Line 5 begins,” Wallace says.

A U.S. decision on Enbridge’s Alberta Clipper is expected next year. Earlier this week, Enbridge announced its Line 3 pipeline will be replaced by a new pipeline with expanded capacity. Both pipelines ship oil and bitumen from Alberta to Superior, Wis.

Concerns of a Bitumen Spill in the Great Lakes

Residents of Michigan experienced the worst bitumen spill in U.S. history when Enbridge’s Line 6B pipeline ruptured, spilling more than three million liters of bitumen and oil into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River. Bitumen — the tar-like form of petroleum in oilsands —sinks in water, unlike conventional oil. Enbridge has dredged the Kalamazoo multiple times in an attempt to remove the bitumen from the river. The cleanup is still going on four years after the spill.

The environmental damage a bitumen spill can cause plus Enbridge’s spill record — estimated at eight hundred pipeline spills between 1999 and 2010 — has Canadians worried about a Line 5 rupture as well. Georgian Bay, Ontario’s most vibrant bay, makes up the eastern part of Lake Huron.

“We are very concerned about Line 5,” says Therese Trainor of the Manitoulin Area Stewardship Area Council in Manitoulin Island, Ont.

“Georgian Bay is one of the most unique ecosystems in the world. We have flora and fauna here you cannot find anywhere else. We could lose this in an oil spill,” Trainor told DeSmog Canada.

There is no land between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan to stop the Straits of Mackinac’sswift water currents from spreading an oil spill into either lake. The National Wildlife Federation estimates in its Sunken Hazard report that if Line 5 has a large oil spill it could reach Georgian Bay.

Condtions in Straits of Mackinac Make it a Terrible Place For A Oil Spill

“This (Straits of Mackinac) is a terrible place for a rupture,” says pipeline safety expert Richard Kuprewicz.

Kuprewicz, a pipeline safety expert with 40 years of experience in the energy sector, says pipeline ruptures are difficult enough to cleanup, but conditions in the Straits of Mackinac would make things much worse. Line 5 at its deepest is 90 metres underwater and the straits freeze over in the winter.

What emergency responders could do about a burst pipeline nearly 100 metres below in the either stormy or frozen straits is questionable.

“Pardon the expression, but cleaning up and containing a Line 5 rupture in the straits would be a crap shoot,” says Wallace of the National Wildlife Federation.

There are no reports of Line 5 rupturing in the Straits of Mackinac. The 76-centimeter (30-inch) wide pipeline splits into two smaller 50-centimeter (20-inch) wide pipelines with thicker pipe walls (2.5 cm) in the straits. An external coal-tar coating minimizes corrosion on the pipeline. Coal-tar coating has had “mixed success” in the past protecting pipelines, according to Kuprewicz.

“Just because a pipeline hasn’t leaked or ruptured in the past doesn’t mean it won’t in the future. The past does not predict the future,” Kuprewicz, president of research group Accufacts Inc.,  told DeSmog Canada.

Line 5 has ruptured on land, notably in 1999 at Crystal Falls, Mich., spilling 850,000 litres of oil and natural gas liquids.

Michigan Needs To Protect the Great Lakes Commons

Liz Kirkwood, executive director of the Michigan-based Great Lakes advocacy group FLOW (For Love of Water), argues Enbridge should be required to secure permission from the state of Michigan under the Great Lakes Submerged Lands Act before the pipeline company can transport bitumen through the Straits of Mackinac.

“As a trustee of the Great Lakes, the state of Michigan is obligated to assess possible impairments to the public’s use of the Great Lakes and protect the lakes for the enjoyment of present and future generations,” Kirkwood says.

Michigan’s Great Lakes Submerged Lands Act requires companies to obtain state permits to build or modify structures in the Great Lakes. Line 5 was built in 1953. The Act came into effect in 1955.

The Pipeline in the Straits: Learning About Line 5 with Enbridge in St. Ignace

Published on February 26th, 2014 by - H2Olson, News

By FLOW intern Jonathan Aylward. Jonathan has been with FLOW since January 2014 and also works on food-related projects throughout the Grand Traverse region.

There is an oil pipeline running through the Great Lakes underneath the Mackinac Bridge. The pipeline, called Line 5, is owned and operated by Enbridge, a Canadian energy corporation. Enbridge has pumped crude oil through the less than one-inch-thick pipeline for sixty-one years along the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac. Built under Dwight Eisenhower’s administration at a time before modern pipeline regulations, Enbridge increased the output of Line 5 by 50,000 gallons per day in 2013. While Line 5’s capacity has increased, neither regulatory scrutiny nor corporate transparency have followed suit. The Great Lakes, which contain 84% of North America’s and 20% of the planet’s surface freshwater, are at a greater risk than ever.

Line 5 is part of a vast network of Enbridge pipelines that transports crude oil and natural gas liquids originating in Western Canada (mainly the Athabasca tar sands) and North Dakota around the country. Line 5 is the section that passes from Superior, Wisconsin through the Upper and Lower Peninsulas of Michigan into Sarnia, Ontario.

Enbridge put on a public presentation in St. Ignace, MI, on February 5, 2014 in response to mounting public concern spurred in part by an alarming report released in 2012 and an unsettling video released last year, both by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF). Some of the most illuminating segments can be heard and read below.

First, a quick reminder of why Michiganders should be especially wary of Enbridge’s Line 5 and its 1,900 miles of pipeline surrounding the Great Lakes.

Enbridge’s Dilbit Disaster in Kalamazoo, MI

Bitumen is the type of oil that is extracted from the Athabasca tar sands, a region of Alberta the size of New York state. It’s not normal liquid oil; bitumen is more solid than it is liquid, and it has to be strip mined or boiled to be released from the ground. It is the heaviest form of petroleum in the world, which makes it especially hazardous to transport because in the event of a spill it can sink. From extraction to refinement, it has the largest carbon footprint of any type of petroleum.

Since 1999, Enbridge has been responsible for 983 spills, the largest of which happened in Marshall, MI (near Kalamazoo, MI) in 2010. That spill, on Line 6b, was the largest on-land oil spill in US history.  About one million gallons of diluted bitumen (dilbit) leaked into Talmadge Creek, a tributary of the Kalamazoo River. The pipeline was forty years old, twenty years younger than Line 5. Enbridge has responded with negligence ever since the initial rupture:

  • The Line 6b leaked for 17 hours, and during the spill operators actually increased the pressure to release what was thought to be a blockage.
  • Enbridge monitors weren’t the ones to discover the spill; it was a local utility man that reported it to local authorities.
  • 180,000 gallons of bitumen still sits on the bottom of the Kalamazoo River three and a half years later.

The Kalamazoo spill has forced Michiganders to wake up to the interrelated threats to public health, the economy, and our environment that Line 5 poses. Pressing questions about the age and condition of the pipeline and the type of crude being pumped quickly surface.

  • After Kalamazoo, why should the public continue to entrust Enbridge as stewards of the Great Lakes?
  • Why is Enbridge using a sixty year old pipeline if their forty year old pipeline ruptured in Kalamazoo?
  • Which type(s) of tar sands oil product are shipped through Line 5?
  • Why is there a pipeline going through the Great Lakes at all?
  • Under what conditions was the pipeline approved and why is it still there?

Enbridge Comes to St. Ignace

Enbridge sent a public relations advisor and two of their engineers along with their cleanup contractor to St. Ignace to present “their side of the story” at the Mackinac County Planning Commision meeting. The room was packed with around 175 attendees. No representatives from NWF or other concerned organizations were present on the Q&A panel.

The environment was carefully controlled. Two Enbridge employees in the front row acted as a whispering counsel to the panel throughout the event. Instead of an open floor question and answer format, Enbridge opted to have the public write their questions down. Then, through an unexplained process, Enbridge proceeded to answer certain question cards. The mood shifted from respectful concern to outright frustration over the course of the hour and half long event. Many questions were left unanswered, and even more questions arose.

The Potential Disaster

1. Enbridge says 5,500 barrels (231,000 gallons) of light crude oil could leak into the Great Lakes.

Listen:

[soundcloud id=’136703886′ color=’#091571′]

Watch:

In the audio build-up to the video clip, the public relations advisor initially dismisses a question about the company’s assessment on a worst-case discharge. A minute passes (which has been edited out), and the citizen that wrote the question stands up and demands that they revisit his question. In the video, after more audience questioning, the Enbridge Engineer gives the number off the top of his head.

2. “Extremely conservative” estimate says 25 square miles could be covered.

[soundcloud id=’134804334′ color=’#091571′]

3. In the winter, “Mother Nature will dictate.”

[soundcloud id=’134804343′ color=’#091571′]

Winter ice is not the only force of nature present at Line 5’s Straits crossing that would enhance the complexity and difficulty of a clean-up. Here is an excerpt from the NWF report “Sunken Hazard” about the powerful currents in the Straits:

“The Straits of Mackinac in northern Michigan is a unique area of the Great Lakes, a four-mile-wide channel that funnels colossal amounts of water between Lakes Michigan and Huron. Powerful storm-driven currents that cause water to oscillate back and forth between the two lakes can move water through the Straits at a rate of three feet or more per second. At times, the volume of water flowing beneath the Mackinac Bridge is 50 times greater than the average flow of the St. Clair River, one of the largest rivers in the Great Lakes basin. Those currents also make the Straits one of the worst places in the Great Lakes for an oil spill. There are few other places in the lakes where an oil spill could spread so quickly.”

What’s Inside the Pipeline?

4. Question: Are there any plans to pipe tar sands through this pipeline?
Answer: “There are no plans to pump what’s known as heavy crude, and sometimes called tar sands, through that pipeline.”

[soundcloud id=’134804329′ color=’#091571′]

This was the first question selected by Enbridge in the Q&A segment. Enbridge openly reports on their website that they are piping several types of tar sands oil through Line 5, mainly the product called synthetic crude, and not the heavier dilbit. Bitumen from the Athabasca tar sands becomes transportable in two ways: it’s either diluted with other chemicals to create dilbit, or it is partially refined at an upgrader facility in Alberta and mixed with chemicals to create a lighter product called synthetic crude. This document on Enbridge’s website reports “Light Synthetic” as one of four groups of products piped on Line 5, and this other Enbridge document lists the specific products that are commonly shipped through Line 5. All of the Light Synthetic products are derived from tar sands bitumen, and some of the “Light & High Sour” products are as well.

5. Question: What procedure does Enbridge have to follow if they change their mind and want to start shipping tar sands?
Answer: “It’s complicated, let me come back to that.” She didn’t.

[soundcloud id=’134804330′ color=’#091571′]

Again, Enbridge is already shipping a variety of tar sands crude products through Line 5. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), the federal pipeline regulatory agency, treats all crude oil the same despite the fact that spill consequences vary by type and product. Enbridge can pump anything that classifies as crude oil or natural gas liquids through their pipelines, from conventional light crude oil to dilbit. On page three of this document from Enbridge’s website, it says that even if a product is not marked as permissible or existing for a specific pipeline (e.g. dilbit in Line 5), transporting it would simply “require prior authorization from Enbridge”. It appears that pipeline companies do not even have to document changes in batches or the chemical composition of its current products.

6. Line 5 currently pipes low density crude oil and natural gas liquids in 10,000 barrel batches.

[soundcloud id=’134804328′ color=’#091571′]

540,000 barrels pass through Line 5 per day.

7. Most of the product comes from the Bakken Shale in North Dakota.

[soundcloud id=’136693110′ color=’#091571′]

Over half of the products listed on Enbridge’s website that pass through Line 5 can be traced to the Athabasca tar sands’ region. Here is the link again.

Kalamazoo River Spill

8. All oil floats, but some oil floats better than other oil.

[soundcloud id=’134804332′ color=’#091571′]

The 180,000 gallons of bitumen on the bottom of the Kalamazoo River demonstrate otherwise.

9. All questions that mention the Kalamazoo River spill were rejected.

[soundcloud id=’134804331′ color=’#091571′]

Enbridge says Lines 5 and 6b are ”two different lines that do different things”, so all questions that mention the spill are rejected.

The Condition of Line 5

10. Enbridge inspects for dents, cracks, and wall thickness. Line 5 under the Straits has no dents and good wall thickness.

[soundcloud id=’134804341′ color=’#091571′]

11. In 2012, Enbridge documented hundreds of “abnormalities or cracked features” on Line 5.
[soundcloud id=’134804342′ color=’#091571′]

12. “They don’t build it like this anymore.”

[soundcloud id=’134804335′ color=’#091571′]

13. “The seamless pipeline under the straits is in fact seamless.”

[soundcloud id=’134804336′ color=’#091571′]

At this point in the event, the word seamless had been used a lot.

14. The pipeline is welded every 40 feet. The seamlessness of the pipeline is referring to the side-seam.

[soundcloud id=’134804338′ color=’#091571′]

For an hour and a half, the audience pondered how it was possible to make, transport, and install a 5-mile long seamless pipeline. The question was finally answered near the end of the meeting. An Enbridge engineer clarified that the each pipeline piece is welded to the next section every 40 feet, and that the “seamless pipeline” is referring to the lack of a side-seam.

15. “There were no regulations that had to be met when that line was built,” but Enbridge looked it over in 2004 and concluded that Line 5 to par.

[soundcloud id=’134804340′ color=’#091571′]

16. People got angry that Enbridge didn’t answer all their questions at a public meeting about Line 5.

[soundcloud id=’134804344′ color=’#091571′]

For audio and video transcripts, click here.

TRANSCRIPTS: The Pipeline in the Straits: Learning About Line 5 with Enbridge in St. Ignace

Published on February 26th, 2014 by - News

Want more? Here are the transcripts of the clips from the February 5 Enbridge meeting with Mackinac County officials and the public regarding the expansion of the Line 5 oil pipeline that is, in part, submerged underwater at the Straits of Mackinac in the Great Lakes.

(RUSH TRANSCRIPT AND STATEMENTS SIC)

1. Enbridge says 5,500 barrels (231,000 gallons) of light crude oil could leak into the Great Lakes.

[soundcloud id=’136703886′ color=’#091571′]

One of our residents would like to know, if there is a, um, break, uh, leak, in that 3 minute period from a 20 inch line at 300 pounds per second, what are we looking at, how much oil or volume would be lost to the on site?
Um, you know, I’m going to be completely honest, we talked about how to address this question, and the bottom line is we can speculate all day on worst case scenarios, what I can tell you, and I’ve tried to show you are all of the different safety mechanisms we have in place to ensure that hopefully we don’t have any incidents, but if we do, we work with our Osrow, and the Coast Guard, and all these other places to ensure that we contain it as quickly as possible, and return it to, um, return it back to the state in which it was. And, there’s more questions, you know, related to , um, who is going to pay for it, and of course we do assume that responsibility, um. What materials do you have in the straits? We talked about that. We have stuff on both ends of the straits, with boom, and our people that live and work here. Um, this a an um, I found this kind of interesting: are you planning for the Madrid earthquake? I can tell you that, um, not necessarily Enbridge, nor osrow =, but i can tell you from my past life that the Madrid earthquake is practiced every year by the department of defense, so that’s a homeland security issue and they are dealing with it. (huh?–crowd.)
Simple math problem about the oil spill–crowd
Compensations to businesses would be the same to county and private residents.
Sorry, you didn’t exactly answer my question with quantity. And, surely you know how much is flowing through just like if i spill a 2 cup, uh pale of water i know how much spilled. so, if there was a breach, what would be the release, because you know the quantity right?
Blake: Well, ok, we’d call that a worst case discharge.
Repeat the question!
Jackie: the question is how much is oil is in the pipeline between the two places in which we can isolate it
After the two minute shutdown
After?
There’s 3 minutes before you totally shut down, you said that earlier. So let’s take the worst scenario of 3 minutes of oil flowing at 100%. Like you said, that’s a simple math problem.
Yeah, that’s a simple math problem. Ok, uh, it’s uh, like, without the automatic shutoff system, it was like 15000 barrels, and then when we installed the automatic shutoff system, that cut it down to like 5,500 barrels, but it’s at a pressure, like i showed you, the pressure is like say 150 psi, or less, and i imagine if those valves shut, it’s going to be less, because they wouldn’t shut unless it was less. And we’ve talked about this, so, we have to give them a figure, and it’s on volume, so the very worst case, and it’s very unlikely, is 5,500 barrels. But, you know, one thing that was interesting, some of our engineers were saying, that the water pressure at the bottom of the straits is almost that much, so. not like we are actually going to open and it up and find out what happens, but there’s a good chance that there’s gonna be water going in at one point and holding the oil in. and the oil wants to float up, and it goes down like this. So I really doubt that even close to even a percentage of that would even leak in a scenario.

2. “Extremely conservative” estimate says 25 square miles could be covered.

[soundcloud id=’134804334′ color=’#091571′]

So, the first one, given the shutdown response stated, what is the volume of discharge during the time frame stated? That was answered right? Ok, what is the surface area that would result? 5,500 barrels? I’m sorry, I don’t have this exact calculation ready for you, but if anybody needs it, but if anybody needs the exact number, uh, predictive number, we can talk about it, but it’s substantial, very substantial, a figure, and I’m probably very low estimating it, 25 square miles, to figure something like that.

3. In the winter, “Mother Nature will dictate.”

[soundcloud id=’134804343′ color=’#091571′]

Next question: May Day, May Day May Day, it’s January 21, 2014, -18, -40 below wind chill, ice is 4 feet htick, oil leak alarms start sounding at 3 locations under the Straits of Mackinac. What are you, Enbridge, and the US Coast Guard going to do about it?
How soon will you have the critical response personal on site, and time to stop the leak. We’ve talked a lot about winter operations, and it should be very clear to everyone that it is a much more difficult type of approach. Now, from a response perspective, we have two ways to access oil under the ice. If it’s thick enough, we can walk out and start drilling holes to get to it. So if this oil spill of one of these 3 leaks that is proposed here, occurs near shore, then we’re going to go out from shore and start doing that. How quick can that happen? First boots on the ground, our first partner companyy is here in St. Ignace, Mackinac Environmental, that provides some assessment, then we start rolling personnel in. And equipment in. As we saw in my slide, we have a 6 hour mainframe model, and a 12 hour time frame model. Now, we need to put a lot of boots on the ground to do that, and to give you an idea of what i would conceive of an operation like that, we’re talking about 100’s of people having to be mobilized in 6-12 hours, so we’re prepared in our planning standards to achieve those kinds of concepts, but to answer the question, in the winter, mother nature will dictate, we need those kinds of resources, and it will complicate it that way, that’s the reality of it.

4. Question: Are there any plans to pipe tar sands through this pipeline?
Answer: “There are no plans to pump what’s known as heavy crude, and sometimes called tar sands, through that pipeline.”

[soundcloud id=’134804329′ color=’#091571′]

Are there any plans to pipe tar sands through this pipeline? As I said earlier, um, Line 5 is a light crude, um, pipeline, there are no plans to, um, pump what’s know as heavy crudes, and sometimes called tar sands through that pipeline. There are no plans to pump, um, heavy crude through Line 5.

5. Question: What procedure does Enbridge have to follow if they change their mind and want to start shipping tar sands?
Answer: “It’s complicated, let me come back to that.” She didn’t.

[soundcloud id=’134804330′ color=’#091571′]

If you decide at some point to change what you…to pipe tar sands oil through the straits, what procedure do you have to follow? I’m going to come back to that one because..it’s complicated. Let me come back to that one.
There was a question that she was asked that she said she would defer. I’d like to hear the answer to that question. “She’s ended answering the questions” She deferred that question, she said she would answer it!

6. Line 5 currently pipes low density crude oil and natural gas liquids in 10,000 barrel batches.

[soundcloud id=’134804328′ color=’#091571′]

Blake Olson – Enbridge Engineer: “Mixtures of petroleum, does that flow through this pipe? Well, It’s light density crude oil and natural gas liquids, that’s what flows through the pipe. Uh, they’re batched in like 10,000 barrel batches, and they have different names by who produced them and from where they came, but they are basically the lighter density oil. Line 5 is designed for piping that type of fluid. If we were to switch to heavy crude, we would have to change a lot of things on the pipeline, including all the pumps and whatnot. That’s all, I guess, I can explain, petroleum dense…light density oil and natural gas liquids, which is raw propane and butane.”

7. Most of the product comes from the Bakken Shale in North Dakota.

[soundcloud id=’136693110′ color=’#091571′]

Where does that product come from? Our light crude comes mostly from the Bakken.

8. All oil floats, but some oil floats better than other oil.

[soundcloud id=’134804332′ color=’#091571′]

The question here was: Does all oil float? Well, all the oil has, you know, a density less than water, so it should float. Uh, The, uh, light crude oil has lower density than the heavier crude oil service, and this is the light oil, so, uh, it floats better on line 5 than, it, uh, maybe on the heavier oil lines. But it all floats.

9. All questions that mention the Kalamazoo River spill were rejected.

[soundcloud id=’134804331′ color=’#091571′]

There were a lot of questions here about Kalamazoo. Line 5 and line 6 are two different lines that do different things I’m not going to get into discussing Kalamazoo here today. We’ve learned a lot from it. “It’s still not cleaned up” We’re in the process of finishing that.

10. Enbridge inspects for dents, cracks, and wall thickness. Line 5 under the Straits has no dents and good wall thickness.

[soundcloud id=’134804341′ color=’#091571′]

The monitoring efforts and inline inspection: the inline inspection tools in our sophisticated electronic vehicles move inside the pipe along with the oil, they obtain detailed measurements in the pipeline condition, they’re look at, these are three of the different types: they look at corrosion or wall thickness of the pipe, that’s how they can tell that the pipe is still the same thickness. They also look for dents in the pipe. And they look for, uh, cracks in the pipe. And the, uh, data, at the end of last year, the new data shows that the wall thickness is still almost an inch thick, and it also shows that there’s no dents on any of the straits.

11. In 2012, Enbridge documented hundreds of “abnormalities or cracked features” on Line 5.

[soundcloud id=’134804342′ color=’#091571′]

Based on Enbridge 2012 documents, hundreds of abnormalities or cracked features have been documented on line 5, and these abnormalities, they say, are similar to 6b which ruptured and caused that largest inland heavy sands spill. And uh, so, what, specific measures is Enbridge taking to remediate these abnormalities on the pipeline through the straits? Well, that’s what I was talking about, that;s what we’re doing; we beefed up the whole division that works on those, and we keep, just, and then, of course the straits piping, we’re running the tools, and we’re not finding any indications. So, uh, it’s because, that’s the thickest pipe we have in our whole system in all of North America. They just over-designed the whole straits crossing, that special seamless pipe.

12. “They don’t build it like this anymore.”

[soundcloud id=’134804335′ color=’#091571′]

Hello, thank you for coming. Ok, Enbridge, uh, strives for a safe delivery of liquid petroleum, and transport. The seamless steel pipe is a very robust design, it’s, you, we really have to give credit to the engineers that designed it, it’s really built to last. It’s really one of those stories where “they don’t build it like this anymore”. The, uh, pipeline is nearly 1 inch thick of steel, the two 20-inch lines.

13. “The seamless pipeline under the straits is in fact seamless.”

[soundcloud id=’134804336′ color=’#091571′]

Um, there’s a question about seams, the pipeline, the seamless pipeline under the straits is in fact seamless.

14. The pipeline is welded every 40 feet. The seamlessness of the pipeline is referring to the side-seam.

[soundcloud id=’134804338′ color=’#091571′]

Ok, just a clarification probably: how is a pipeline 5 miles long created without any seams. And, as you can see on the pipeline, there’s a different process to make a seamless pipe than there is to make a regular piece of pipeline. A regular piece of pipeline you take a flat piece of metal, it get’s rolled and folded, it gets welded, kind of like your pantleg, you’ve got a seam going down your pant leg, and that’s the side seam. As far as that piece of pipe it’s more continuous, there’s a whole different process that produces a seamless pipe. Now, there are joints in the pipe, so to be clear on that, the pipe did come out in 40 foot sections, so they are welded every 40 feet along there, there’s a butt welded to a joint, but there’s not a seam going all the way down there.

15. “There were no regulations that had to be met when that line was built,” but Enbridge looked it over in 2004 and concluded that Line 5 to par.

[soundcloud id=’134804340′ color=’#091571′]

A question that is a 2 part one: if teh pipeline were to be installed today, how would it differ from the way it was designed originally? Would it be done differently to meet design requirements? For example would a double walled pipe be required?
Just a little history, I used to work for the Minnesota office of pipeline safety, so I was trained with PHMSA, and so I got a pretty good background on the requirements. This pipeline going across the straits was built before PHMSA existed, so there were no regulations that had to be met when that pipeline was built. Now that said, Enbridge went back in 2004, went back through all the orignial design calculations just to double check how it was built and if it was still built to an acceptable standard today, and it was far in excess of what PHMSA requires.

16. People got angry that Enbridge didn’t answer all their questions at a public meeting about Line 5.

[soundcloud id=’134804344′ color=’#091571′]

Um, we’ve exceeded the time that the commission has allowed us, we hope we’ve answered your questions. (Audience angry yelling) I realize that. I’m sorry, this is going to end, if you want to have your question answered after this session by Enbridge employees, uh…we could go on for hours but uh, this is what was sessioned…(audience yelling)