The national debate over ownership of oil pipelines now has a local twist with Enbridge’s announcement that it is selling its controversial Line 10 that runs across rural Hamilton from Westover to the United States. Councillors want to know what that means for future maintenance and other city agreements with the company including the promise to forever maintain decommissioned parts of the recently expanded pipe.
The sale of Line 10 to a US refining company with limited pipeline experience was revealed in a “notification of future assignment of permanent pipeline crossings” sent by Enbridge to last week’s city council meeting. The notice has alerted the city to the sale of the 143 km pipeline to United Refining Company (URC) and to the requirement that the purchase be approved by the National Energy Board – a regulatory process that is expected to start later this year.
Enbridge struck a deal with URC in the summer of 2014 that gave both companies the right to force a sale, but didn’t inform council when it sought support for expansion of Line 10 from a 12-inch to a 20-inch pipe. When over a year ago pipeline opponents with the Hamilton 350 Committee alerted councillors to the potential sale Enbridge officials denied any knowledge of it.
Ken Hall, the company’s “Senior Advisor of Public Affairs, Eastern Region” told council in March 2015 that he had “been working on the Line 10 replacement project for about two and a half years.” But when Winona councillor Brenda Johnson asked him about the 2014 deal with URC, he indicated it didn’t exist.
“I can tell you I’m not aware of any plans for Enbridge to sell ownership of Line 10,” Hall stated. “We will continue to operate this pipeline and maintain it. That includes both the active and the decommissioned pipeline.” Pressed further by Johnson, Hall stated: “There is no deal with URC that I’m aware of.”
In the same meeting, Hall assured the city that Enbridge would take care of the old 12-inch pipeline that was being replaced by a 20-inch pipe: “Enbridge is responsible for our decommissioned pipe. We are responsible for all costs of that decommissioned pipe.”
City staff recommended council take no action on the Enbridge notice at last week’s council meeting, but ward three councillor Matthew Green pushed through a motion to override that recommendation. Green got unanimous endorsement that a staff report be provided on the sale “on what impacts it might have as it relates to city agreements and/or easements and/or disruptions”. The motion also directs that Enbridge be asked “to come and give us an update” on the planned sale.
About 35 km of Line 10 lies within city boundaries and much of its right-of-way is shared with a second Enbridge pipeline (Line 11) that feeds the Exxon-Mobil refinery in Nanticoke. The company notice makes no mention of how that complication will be addressed when Line 10 is sold to URC.
The American buyer operates a refinery in Warren Pennsylvania and over 350 convenience store and gas retail outlets under the brands Kwik Fill, Red Apple and Country Fair. It also runs a trucking business in New York and Pennsylvania and an asphalt terminal in Alabama.
Several local organizations have opposed the expansion of Line 10 and have joined with others across the country standing against the Kinder Morgan trans-mountain pipeline across British Columbia. Hamilton 350 Committee has held two recent pickets against Kinder Morgan, and has two more planned for Thursday May 3 – at noon outside MP Bob Bratina’s office on Centennial Parkway and at 3 pm at Filomena Tassi’s on Main West. Some local activists also expect to join a 9 am rally at a Liberal MP office in downtown St Catharines.
Climate change and respecting indigenous rights are driving local and national pipeline concerns. If the Line 10 expansion is fully utilized it will add the equivalent of 12 coal-fired power stations to Ontario’s greenhouse gas emissions. The much larger Kinder Morgan proposal would cross lands of over 100 indigenous nations and result in annual emissions more than one-fifth of Canada’s current total.
Prime Minister Trudeau’s offer to invest public money in this floundering project has Liberal MPs also facing opponents of government bailouts. Revelations last week that approval of the project was “fixed” by ordering federal regulators to okay it have added more fuel to British Columbia’s argument that the pipeline poses unacceptable pollution risks to both its coastline and the hundreds of streams it crosses.