http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/02/16/enbridge-denies-own-report-noting-straits-oil-pipeline-losing-coating/98004652/
[links, video and images in on-line article]
Enbridge denies own report noting Straits oil pipeline losing coating
Keith Matheny , Detroit Free Press 10:06 p.m. ET Feb. 16, 2017
Officials with Canadian oil transport corporation Enbridge on Thursday
denied reports that the company's twin, underwater, 64-year-old oil and
natural gas pipelines in the Straits of Mackinac are losing their
protective coating.
A work plan filed by Enbridge with the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency last September, now available on the company's website,
references areas of "holidays," the oil and gas industry term for open
areas on pipelines where anticorrosion protective coating has fallen off
or is missing on the underwater portions of Line 5.
The twin pipelines carry up to 23 million gallons per day of light crude
oil and liquid natural gas through the Upper Peninsula, then south
through the Lower Peninsula before reaching a hub in Sarnia, Ontario.
The pipelines have been at the center of a years-long debate over
whether they should continue to operate in the Straits, given the
widespread impact a major oil spill from the lines would have on the
Great Lakes and shoreline communities.
An Enbridge spokesman said discussion of lost pipe coating in the report
was only hypothetical. But the report not only references the lost
coating openings as existing, it lists areas of the pipes where the gaps
are located and where samples will be taken.
The Enbridge "Biota Investigation Work Plan" and its references to Line
5 coating holidays was first reported by the Gaylord Herald-Times.
The Enbridge work plan was required as part of the company's
$177-million settlement with the U.S. government for the 2010 Line 6B
oil pipeline spill into the Kalamazoo River — the largest inland oil
spill in U.S. history, taking four years and more than $1 billion to
clean up — and another 2010 spill in Illinois.
The mentions of holidays in the Line 5 report were discovered by
Jennifer McKay, program director with the nonprofit Tip of the Mitt
Watershed Council, as she was on Enbridge’s site looking for other
information.
“My initial reaction was truly shocked and concerned,” said McKay, who
also serves on Gov. Rick Snyder’s Pipeline Safety Advisory Board, which
has commissioned risk and alternatives analysis studies related to Line 5.
“We’ve been told all along that the coating is in good condition.
They’ve been promoting that as one of the prevention measures to assure
there’s not corrosion on the pipeline.”
Enbridge spokesman Ryan Duffy said the report “works off some
hypotheticals.”
“Those are the areas we’re going to test,” he said. “There’s not exposed
pipe anywhere down there that we’ve ever seen, surveyed, anything like
that.”
Exposed pipe “is always something we have to watch for,” Duffy said.
“That’s why we do the cathodic protection, perform in-pipe inspections,
inspect with underwater cameras, those kinds of things.”
But the report, which is to look at the impact zebra and quagga mussels
and other aquatic organisms, or biota, may be having on the pipes,
references lost protective coating in ways that sound more
matter-of-fact than hypothetical, discussing “the limited numbers of
areas of the pipeline where there is a loss of coating around the pipe
(‘holidays’).”
“One sampling site per zone has been designated on the east pipeline,
with three of the sites coinciding with holiday areas," the report said.
"One sampling site per zone has been designated on the west pipeline,
with four of the sites coinciding with holiday areas.”
The report goes on to state, “Enbridge will retrieve representative
samples of delaminated coating from the bottom of the Straits,” to
examine the thickness of the coating and how deeply biota may have
penetrated it.
The report even includes tables laying out the specific locations of the
missing coating, where biotic samples will be taken: “Holiday south of
E01B,” “Holiday north of E76A,” “Holiday south of W35B North,” and so on.
It raises a significant number of questions, McKay said — questions
she’s asking Enbridge to answer for the Pipeline Safety Advisory Board.
“How many? Where are they? How extensive is the coating loss?” she said.
“How long have you known about it? When was it discovered? And why are
we finding out about it in a biota work plan?”
Duffy, however, maintained the company is aware of no coating loss. He
said an underwater camera inspection last summer discovered "some of the
original Fiberglas wrap from the exterior of the pipe, there was a small
piece that was on the bottom of the lakebed.
"That didn't affect the enamel coating, change anything or have any impact."
But Ed Timm, a retired Dow Chemical engineer who has been studying Line
5 in conjunction with the National Wildlife Federation, questions
Enbridge's assertions.
Timm studied exterior Line 5 inspection video Enbridge shot in the
Straits via an underwater remote-operated vehicle in 2012, shared with
the State of Michigan and obtained by a Freedom of Information Act
request by the National Wildlife Federation. "It's about 40 or 50 hours
of very boring video," Timm said.
In it, however, Timm noticed what appeared to be multiple locations
where it appears — to him, at least — that the pipeline's coating is
missing or falling away.
"I have both an engineering background and some diving history," he
said. "So I've looked at stuff underwater. I have a hard time
reconciling what I see on that video with whatever Enbridge has said
publicly, that the thing is in like-new condition. That simply is not true."
In an upcoming report by Timm on the pipelines regarding their coatings
and other potential safety issues, he includes still photos derived from
the inspection video that he believes look like areas of missing coating:
"The coating of that pipe is very compromised, and a lot of work needs
to be done to determine whether the pipe is safe because of it," Timm said.
He noted that Enbridge was also confident in the safety of its pipelines
prior to the Line 6B spill, when a 6-foot rupture caused more than a
million gallons of heavy, diluted bitumen oil to flow into Talmadge
Creek and the nearby Kalamazoo River, affecting 35 miles of the river.
The Pipeline Safety Advisory Board is expected to receive Line 5 risk
analysis and alternatives analysis reports from hired contractors by
June, and the reports will then be opened for public comment, McKay said.
McKay said the "holiday" revelations speak to an ongoing issue with
Enbridge of "a lack of transparency and not being forthcoming with data."
"Enbridge has constantly said, 'Trust us,'" she said. "That doesn't work
when we find stuff like this."
