Enbridge handled Michigan spill like "Keystone Cops," says U.S. regulator

[mentalfloss]

Re: Enbridge handled Michigan spill like "Keystone Cops," says U.S. regulator

That is exactly how many of us felt about the government agencies involved in the aftermath of Katrina.

Except that is in a different country, under a different jurisdiction, and is a completely different type of problem.

It will also mean the collapse of the BC economy just like the last time the dippers mismanaged the province. Expect to see lots of BC license plates in Alberta and Sask. come December 2013.

Yes, it will mean the collapse of the economy. BC will become Greece!!!

 

[mentalfloss]

Re: Enbridge handled Michigan spill like "Keystone Cops," says U.S. regulator

Alta. chides Enbridge after U.S. 'Keystone Kops' comment

EDMONTON — Alberta Energy Minister Ken Hughes chided Enbridge -- the company behind the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline -- on Tuesday after a U.S. regulator compared the company's handling of the Michigan spill to the Keystone Kops.

While environmentalists quickly used U.S. National Transportation Safety Board chairman Deborah Hersman's comments as evidence the planned pipeline from Alberta to Kitimat, B.C., should be nixed, Hughes said there are lessons to learn from the 2010 Kalamazoo River spill.

"I would say the regulatory system is much tighter in Alberta than it is in the U.S. We will be looking at this to see if the government of Alberta can learn from that experience in the States," Hughes said.

"Obviously, Enbridge has much to learn."

The U.S. report identified problems in the company's Edmonton control room.

It took more than 17 hours to discover the breach that would eventually spill 840,000 gallons of oilsands bitumen, a mess that's racked up $800 million in cleanup costs, Hersman said, adding Enbridge was aware of problems with corrosion on the line in 2005.
"That is already five times the next most-costly onshore oil spill," said Hersman.

Calgary-based Enbridge was working within American regulatory system when the spill occurred.

"Their practices in Canada have been different," said Hughes.

"There will be an opportunity to speak with Enbridge at the appropriate time. It will already be clear to Enbridge that this type of a circumstance would not be acceptable anywhere in Canada," he said.

Alberta NDP environment critic Rachel Notley said the province's Progressive Conservatives are selling out Albertans if they don't take a lesson from the report. She renewed her call for an independent public review of regulatory oversight of Alberta's massive pipeline system.

"When we see repeated failures on the part of pipeline companies, both the environment and industry sustainability are put at risk," Notley said.

Enbridge spokesman Todd Nogier said the company will apply the spill's lessons to current and future operations.

"It underscores how important it is to look at our operations and we've done an exhaustive review and made a number of changes ... nobody wanted this to happen," said Nogier.

Enbridge, he said, will continue its efforts to convince B.C. residents of the importance and benefits of the pipeline.

The Kalamazoo River was re-opened to recreational use last month and wildlife has returned to the stricken area, he said.

The U.S. government has proposed a fine of $3.7 million for the spill.

Northern Gateway is being subject to a review and hearings process that's expected to last until 2013.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Politics/2012/07/10/19971827.html

 

[petros]

Re: Enbridge handled Michigan spill like "Keystone Cops," says U.S. regulator

I guess they'll have to dig a ditch for the oil to flow to it's owner who was kind enough to lend BC money for The Port Mann and other **** they should have built 30 years ago on their own.

It's a green bridge you see. it saves almost an hour on cummute times into Surrey and beyond helping reduce emissions but it's paid for by oil which is going to go through the first of many pipelines to the terminal on the west coast.

 

[mentalfloss]

Re: Enbridge handled Michigan spill like "Keystone Cops," says U.S. regulator

'Culture of Deviance' at Enbridge, Finds US Transport Safety Board

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has concluded that Calgary-based Enbridge "took advantage of weak regulations," tolerated a "culture of deviance" on safety and failed to detect and properly respond to the largest and costliest oil pipeline spill in U.S. history.

Added Sumalt: "If you are not learning from previous events, you don't have a safety culture."

NSTB board members made the statements at a meeting held this morning to "determine the probable cause and consider safety recommendations" nearly two years after Line 6B, a part of Enbridge's 1,400 mile-long mainline, ruptured in Michigan spilling more than 20,000 barrels of diluted bitumen from the tar sands.

While the gasoline-like diluent evaporated, the tarry bitumen contaminated 38 miles of the Kalamazoo River and sickened approximately 320 people, resulting in the evacuation and eventual purchase of 160 homes. Clean-up continues 23 months after the most expensive pipeline spill in U.S. history: $800 million.

The volume of diluted bitumen released (if refined into oil) was enough to take one car driver around the world 100 times.

'Treading water to manage defects'

The board found that Enbridge identified the cracks and corrosion on the 43-year-old pipeline that resulted in the rupture in 2005 but did not properly address the problem. Tools used to detect problems were also ineffective.

In fact the company identified more than 15,000 defects in 2005 along its pipelines: "They were treading water to manage these defects. Pipeline integrity wasn't very effective."

If Line 6B had been excavated and repaired then, the July 25, 2010 accident could have been prevented, said the NTSB. The company also took advantage of changes in federal pipeline safety regulations that replaced the word "repair" with the word "remediate."

'Team performance breakdown'

Once the pipeline ruptured the company failed to respond to the emergency with either adequate manpower or proper spill containment methods.

Instead of concentrating at the source of its spill, initial responders used booms nearly eight miles downstream. As a result more oil contaminated more wetlands and waterways, resulting in a $800 million clean-up or "five times more costly than any other accident."

At the beginning of the emergency Enbridge used the wrong spill technology at the wrong place and at the wrong time. "It did not have adequate response on site." Nor did local responders have access to Enbridge's response plans.

Due to a series of repeated errors in the company's Edmonton-based pipeline control room the NTSB described the entire disaster an example of an "organizational accident" due to "team performance breakdown."

In fact the company had a 10-minute rule that mandated that operators shut down a line showing a dramatic drop in pressure.

But during the Michigan leak operators systematically violated or ignored company rules as well as pipeline warning systems so many times over a 17-hour period that the U.S. regulator said the company's control room suffered a "culture of deviance."

"One of the things I'm concerned about is the lack of learning," said Chairman Hersman during a live board meeting in Washington D.C. today carried on the Internet. "Many of these things have been learned before by Enbridge."

Changes to regulations urged

The NTSB has recommended 19 changes to pipeline safety regulations for both government and industry, including six specific recommendations for Enbridge. Given that there are enough hydrocarbon pipelines in the U.S. to circle the globe 100 times, Chairman Hersman said the NTSB can expect further spills and investigations.

During a February 2012 interview with the US National Transportation Safety Board, Allan Baumgartner, the company's new control room operator, admitted that hostility, poor training, favoritism, and chronic staffing issues all played a role in the largest and costliest freshwater spill in the U.S. Midwest.

At one point one confused employee informed another Enbridge operator about problems with Line 6B and then declared, "Whatever, we're going home and will be off for few days."

Asked by investigators how long it would take to change the safety culture of the pipeline giant, Baumgartner replied:

"Well, I think our goal is to become best in industry or, you know, best in class, right. Are we there today? I don't think so. Have we made progress or taken steps towards getting there? I think we have. Will we be there in the next year or so? Probably not. We'll be in the middle of the pack someplace and it's probably multiple years before we become, you know, best in class or world class. That's our timelines, right."

Enbridge's Edmonton-based computer control centre manages some 15,000 km of pipeline that ferry nearly two million barrels of hydrocarbons a day across the continent.

Enbridge says it has made changes

Enbridge is the largest pipeline operator moving bitumen and it now transports about 13 per cent of the bitumen and crude oil imported by the U.S. every day.

Enbridge says the company has "made several changes to the structure and leadership of functional departments such as pipeline control, leak detection and system integrity."

It also says "Enbridge believes that at the time of the accident it met or exceeded all applicable regulatory and industry standards in its operations."

After the board adopted what many consider a watershed report for the entire pipeline industry because it shifts attention solely from the physical condition of pipelines to the health of corporate safety systems, Chairman Hersman concluded with these words:

"This accident was the result of multiple mistakes and missteps made by Enbridge. But there is also regulatory culpability. Delegating too much authority to the regulated to assess their own system risks and correct them is tantamount to the fox guarding the henhouse. Regulators need regulations and practices with teeth -- and the resources to enable them to take corrective action before a spill. Not just after."

'Culture of Deviance' at Enbridge, Finds US Transport Safety Board - The Tyee

 

[petros]

Re: Enbridge handled Michigan spill like "Keystone Cops," says U.S. regulator

Does the Kimber Morgan line not bother you or just the Enbridge one cause you know about Enbridge but not Kimber Morgan??

 

[mentalfloss]

Re: Enbridge handled Michigan spill like "Keystone Cops," says U.S. regulator

'Keystone Kops' Bungling Led to Costliest U.S. Pipeline Spill

An acrid stench had already enveloped John LaForge's five-bedroom house when he opened the door just after 6 a.m. on July 26, 2010. By the time the building contractor hurried the few feet to the refuge of his Dodge Ram pickup, his throat was stinging and his head was throbbing.

LaForge was excavating a basement when his wife called a couple of hours later. The odor had become even more sickening, Lorraine told him. And a fire truck was parked in front of their house, where Talmadge Creek rippled toward the Kalamazoo River.

LaForge headed home. By the time he arrived, the stink was so intense that he could barely keep his breakfast down.

Something else was wrong, too.

Water from the usually tame creek had inundated his yard, the way it often did after heavy rains. But this time a black goo coated swaths of his golf course-green grass. It stopped just 10 feet from the metal cap that marked his drinking water well. Walking on the tarry mess was like stepping on chewing gum.
LaForge said he was stooped over the creek, looking for the source of the gunk, when two men in a white truck marked Enbridge pulled up just before 10 a.m. One rushed to LaForge's open front door and disappeared inside with an air- monitoring instrument.

The man emerged less than a minute later, and uttered the words that still haunt LaForge today: It's not safe to be here. You're going to have to leave your house. Now.

John and Lorraine LaForge, their grown daughter and one of the three grandchildren living with them at the time piled into the pickup and their minivan as fast as they could, given Lorraine's health problems. They didn't pause to grab toys for the baby or extra clothes for the two children at preschool. They didn't even lock up the house.

Within a half hour, they had checked into two rooms at a Holiday Inn Express, which the family of six would call home for the next 61 days.

The LaForges’ lives had been turned upside down by the first major spill of Canadian diluted bitumen in a U.S. river. Diluted bitumen is the same type of oil that could someday be carried by the much-debated Keystone XL pipeline. If that project is approved, it would cross the Ogallala aquifer, which supplies drinking water for eight states as well as 30 percent of the nation's irrigation water. President Barack Obama rejected TransCanada Corp.’s initial pipeline permit application in January, inviting them to reapply with an alternative route, which it has.

"People don't realize how your life can change overnight," LaForge told an InsideClimate News reporter as they drove slowly past his empty house in November 2011. "It has been devastating."
* * * *

July 25 marks the second anniversary of the nation’s most costly oil pipeline accident—a rupture that dumped more than 1.1 million gallons of heavy crude into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The spill drove 150 families permanently from their homes. The U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration proposed $3.7 million in civil fines for Enbridge on July 2. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recently cited the company for failing to properly maintain the pipeline and chastised the pipeline safety agency for weak federal regulations.

The spill happened in Marshall, a community of 7,400 in southwestern Michigan. More than 1.1 million gallons of oil blackened two miles of Talmadge Creek and almost 36 miles of the Kalamazoo River, according to the EPA’s most recent Situation Report (pdf). The EPA’s estimate of the amount of oil that has been collected exceeds Enbridge’s estimate of 843,444 gallons by 15 percent. Enbridge spokeswoman Terri Larson told InsideClimate News that the company stands by that number as accurate.

Oil is still showing up two years later, as the cleanup continues. About 150 families have been permanently relocated and most of the tainted stretch of river between Marshall and Kalamazoo remained closed to the public until June 21.

The accident was triggered by a six-and-a-half foot tear in Line 6B, a 30- inch carbon steel pipeline operated by Enbridge Energy Partners LP, a U.S. affiliate of Enbridge Inc., Canada's largest transporter of crude oil. With Enbridge's costs already totaling more than $765 million, it is the most expensive oil pipeline spill since the U.S. government began keeping records in 1968.

"This investigation identified a complete breakdown of safety at Enbridge. Their employees performed like Keystone Kops and failed to recognize their pipeline had ruptured and continued to pump crude into the environment," said NTSB Chairman Deborah A.P. Hersman in a July 10 press release. "Despite multiple alarms and a loss of pressure in the pipeline, for more than 17 hours and through three shifts they failed to follow their own shutdown procedures." Enbridge restarted the pipeline twice in that 17-hour period, pumping through oil that would account for 81 percent of the total spill, the NTSB said.

Despite the scope of the damage, the Enbridge spill didn’t attract much national attention, perhaps because it occurred just 10 days after oil stopped spewing from BP Plc's Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, which ruptured three months earlier. Early reports about the Enbridge spill also downplayed its seriousness. Just about everybody, including the EPA officials who rushed to Marshall in July 2010, expected the mess to be cleaned up in a couple of months.

What the EPA didn't know then, however, was that Line 6B was carrying bitumen, the dirtiest, stickiest oil on the market.

Bitumen is so thick—about the consistency of peanut butter—that it doesn't flow from a well like the crude oil found in most of the nation's pipelines. Instead the tarry resin is either steamed or strip-mined from sandy soil. Then it is thinned with large quantities of liquid chemicals so it can be pumped through pipelines. These diluents usually include benzene, a carcinogen. At this point it becomes diluted bitumen, or dilbit.

The National Resources Defense Council and some other environmental organizations say dilbit is so acidic and abrasive that it's more likely to corrode and weaken pipes than conventional oil. The oil industry disputes that hypothesis. Enbridge and other companies say dilbit is no different from conventional crude.

No independent scientific research has been done to determine who is right. But there is one fact neither side disputes: The cleanup of the Kalamazoo River dilbit spill was unlike any cleanup the EPA had ever tackled before. The National Academy of Sciences is conducting a research project into the “pipeline transport of diluted bitumen” that meets for the first time this week.

Instead of remaining on top of the water, as most conventional crude oil does, the bitumen gradually sank to the river's bottom, where normal cleanup techniques and equipment were of little use. Meanwhile, the benzene and other chemicals that had been added to liquefy the bitumen evaporated.

InsideClimate News learned that federal and local officials didn't discover until more than a week after the spill that Line 6B was carrying dilbit, not conventional oil. Federal regulations do not require pipeline operators to disclose that information, and Enbridge officials did not volunteer it.

Mark Durno, an EPA deputy incident commander who is still involved in the cleanup in Marshall, is among those who were surprised by what they found.

"Submerged oil is what makes this thing more unique than even the Gulf of Mexico situation," Durno said. "Yes, that was huge—but they knew the beast they were dealing with. This experience was brand new for us. It would have been brand new for anyone in the United States."

Jim Rutherford, the public health officer for Michigan's Calhoun County, said he had "no idea what I was driving into," when he rushed to Marshall the day 6B ruptured.

"We just weren't ready for anything of this magnitude,” Rutherford said. “We didn't even know the nature of the type of crude."

'Keystone Kops' Bungling Led to Costliest U.S. Pipeline Spill - Bloomberg