In the middle of a very public battle over Line 9, Enbridge quietly won approval to expand flows in a parallel pipeline that is more than half a century old. The company appears to have misled the National Energy Board with claims of pre-consultations with landowners, First Nations and municipalities such as Hamilton that didn’t actually occur.
The application to increase flows in the company’s Line 7 from Sarnia to Hamilton was submitted to the NEB on June 5 of last year, and approved on October 28. The current volume in the 56-year-old pipeline is 147,000 barrels per day. The NEB approval allows it to be increased to 180,000 bpd which the company says will be achieved by adding drag reducing agent – the same method they hope to use to increase Line 9 flows.
The application specifically states that Enbridge had notified “potentially affected parties” more than two weeks prior to June 5, but that group appears to have been quite limited. It didn’t include the City of Hamilton, Six Nations or most of the farmers whose land is crossed by Line 7, despite widespread public controversy about Enbridge’s parallel Line 9 application.
The blockade of Highway 6 where Line 9 crosses it in Flamborough took place on May 5, exactly one month before Enbridge filed its Line 7 application. Two weeks later the NEB announced that 59 intervenors would be allowed to participate in the Line 9 hearings, and more than 100 others were granted permission to submit written comments including the city of Hamilton and numerous other municipalities.
The day after the Line 7 application was filed, there was a noisy demonstration in Hamilton about Line 9 and Enbridge’s funding of the local police force. Two weeks after the application, the company’s Westover pumping station was occupied by peaceful protestors who held the site for six days before being removed by police.
City council began watching the Line 9 application in the summer of 2012, just after the company got approval to reverse the flow direction in a portion of the pipeline. There were delegations from both citizens and the company before council in the fall of 2012. Council asked the federal government to require a full environmental assessment of the process, and joined a municipal liaison group led by Toronto to investigate the Line 9 proposals and develop a response.
When the NEB opened a two-week window in early April 2013, the city applied for permission to submit a letter of comment. But the city was not notified by Enbridge about the Line 7 application launched two months before that early August submission.
The only written comment received by the NEB came from the Ontario Pipeline Landowners Association who unsuccessfully called for a public hearing. The OPLA July 5 letter says the pipe is used to carry bitumen – the aspect of the Line 9 application that touched off a storm of protest that included two occupations and a highway blockade.
OPLA also charged that Enbridge inaccurately claimed that owners of farms through which the pipeline passes were informed in advance, and that even the OPLA only found out about it a month after the application was filed and hadn’t been able to find any of their members along the pipeline who had been notified.
That’s quite different from statements in Enbridge’s written application a month earlier.
“[Enbridge] can demonstrate that it has provided, at least 14 days prior to filing its application with the Board, notice to all potentially affected parties of its intention to file an application to the Board for approval of the project,” reads the June 5 document. “All potentially affected landowners and/or tenants have been consulted and there are no outstanding concerns.”
A similar claim is made with respect to municipalities – “all potentially affected municipalities have been consulted and there are no outstanding concerns” – but city of Hamilton staff say they were not notified so the company could have no way of knowing if they had “outstanding concerns”.
The Enbridge application also states that all First Nations were consulted but the NEB noticed the company only identified six of the eight who “have asserted traditional territory in the project area”. Enbridge responded to the NEB with assurances this was not necessary.
“The scope and scale of the proposed project did not warrant consultation or notification to the Haudenosauneee Development Institute or the Metis Nation of Ontario.” The company went on to promise to “engage” with these nations “should either of those groups identify itself as being potentially affected by the project”, but didn’t offer to notify them of the company’s plans.
The NEB approved Enbridge’s Line 7 plans in late October and rejected calls by the OPLA to require hearings on the Line 7 project. The changes to the pipeline flow are expected to occur this year.