Canadian regulator secretly ordered gas companies to reduce gas flow

OTTAWA - Safety concerns about potential ruptures along two major oil and gas routes prompted Canadian regulators to order the operators to reduce pressure on the pipelines travelling underground through some of the largest cities in western and central Canada.

The orders from the National Energy Board were never made public and came in the aftermath of a major Enbridge crude oil pipeline rupture and spill in Michigan last summer, as well as a series of leaks and spills in Quebec and Ontario along the route of a gasoline pipeline owned by Trans-Northern Pipelines. The latter pipeline brings jet fuel to Montreal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, as well as gasoline to service stations in Ottawa, Kingston and the Toronto region.

Three months after the Enbridge accident in Michigan, the National Energy Board, which was monitoring the U.S. investigation, quietly ordered a 20 percent pressure reduction on Enbridge's Line 2 Canadian pipeline, which links Edmonton to Superior, Wis., along sections that contained pre-1970s flash-welded pipe.

"The Board had noted a correlation between these sections and 'cracking related incidents' on Enbridge's Canadian system," said a federal report from October, released by Natural Resources Canada through access to information legislation.

"The Board has given Enbridge two months to provide an up-to-date integrity status report on cracking on its system; four months to re-analyze its cracking inspections, do integrity inspections and file an independent report."

The document, obtained by Ottawa researcher Ken Rubin, also said the Alberta-based company would be required to file short-term and long-term integrity improvement plans and would not be allowed to increase the pressure in its system without permission from the board.

National Energy Board spokeswoman Carole Leger-Kubeczek confirmed that the order to reduce pressure was still in effect since the regulator had found that the company's "hazard identification practices" were not consistently reliable. She said that Enbridge would not be allowed to return to full operations until it demonstrated "the adequacy and effectiveness of its programs in preventing cracking incidents from occurring."

She said the information about the board's orders would have been made public to anyone who made a specific inquiry, but that it was not posted because” the board did not have adequate resources to publish these types of decisions on its website.”

How Detroit Free Press got PHMSA’s records for Enbridge Line 6B

DETROIT, Mich. - In an article entitled “It's hard to evaluate how good a job pipeline regulators do” in the Sept. 26 Detroit Free Press, Tina Lamm discusses the difficulty in getting federal records on pipeline inspections – and, once you get them, how difficult it is to tell whether or not the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) is doing an adequate job.
Michigan relies on federal regulators to oversee state oil pipelines.

The article notes that basic descriptions of significant pipeline accidents and enforcement actions against companies are available on the PHMSA Web site at http://primis.phmsa.dot.gov/comm.

But the key to preventing accidents is inspections - and those records are only available by request.

After a five-week wait, the Free Press got 2,000 pages of PHMSA's inspection records on Enbridge Energy Partners' pipelines under the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), but it had still not gotten inspection records it requested for other companies in Michigan.

The Enbridge records showed spills on pipelines where the company had tested and found flaws, but determined no repairs were needed.

Lamm’s story notes that Jeff Alexander of Muskegon has spent five months trying to get oil and gas pipeline inspection records for four northern Michigan counties from state and federal regulators, on behalf of Anglers of the Au Sable. The 700-member group has been concerned about the safety of Enbridge's Line 5, which carries more oil per day than Line 6B near Marshall, which ruptured in July.