Schauer: Enbridge violated federal reporting regulations

MARSHALL — U.S. Congressman Mark Schauer said Wednesday that Enbridge Energy Partners violated federal regulations when it didn’t notify federal officials in a timely manner about a leak that dumped an estimated one million gallons of crude oil into the Kalamazoo River and a tributary.

“This whole response was delayed a critical two hours and as a result, the company violated federal regulations,” Schauer said at an afternoon press conference.

Schauer pointed to federal regulations which require a pipeline operator to notify the National Response Center of an incident. Those regulations say the company must notify the NRC “at the earliest practicable moment following discovery of a release of hazardous liquid or carbon dioxide.”

But Enbridge CEO Patrick Daniel has consistently said his company responded within the regulatory time frame. He said the time frame was two hours.

That information is backed up by a Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration Advisory Bulletin dated August 30, 2002. That document reads in part:

“Because an operator is required to make a telephonic report at the earliest practicable moment following discovery, an operator normally provides the first telephonic notification one to two hours after it discovers an incident on its pipeline.”

The timeline of the incident provided thus far by the National Transportation Safety Board contradicts the two hour time frame Daniel claims.

Schauer released updated information from the NTSB at the press conference. Based on that information, Enbridge was notified by telephone by a Consumers Energy employee of seeing oil at 11:16 a.m., July 26. The 9-1-1 logs indicate that Enbridge employees located in the Marshall area began deploying containment equipment, including booms and skimmers, at 11:33 a.m.

The NRC report shows Enbridge did not call that emergency line until 1:33 p.m. and that the incident time was reported as 11:45 a.m.

Enbridge maintains that an employee at the Enbridge headquarters in Edmonton, Alberta called the NRC line at 1 p.m. but was placed on hold. The time the employee was placed on hold has varied from 20 minutes to 30 minutes.

Under the regulations Schauer pointed to, pipeline operators experiencing an incident are required to report basic information, such as the name of the company, the person from the company making the call, injuries or deaths associated with the incident and “all other significant facts known by the operator that are relevant to the cause of the failure or extent of the damages.”

Daniel argues that this phrase requires his company to make an assessment and estimate in relation to the amount of oil released. But the 2002 Advisory Bulletin has this to say:

“Some hazardous liquid operators do not provide an estimated product release amount when reporting an incident to the NRC. OPS (Operations Section Chief) recognizes the difficulty in estimating spill amounts, especially if the release is underground or into water. However, OPS’s and NTSB’s response to the incident may depend on the reported spill size. OPS and NTSB may not investigate a ten barrel spill and may perform an onsite investigation of a 20,000 barrel spill. To get this critical information, OPS is asking the NRC to request operators to provide an estimate of the spill amount. If an estimated amount is not provided, NRC assumes, for emergency notification and response purposes, that a major spill has occurred. Therefore, if the operator does not provide a spill estimate, NRC will enter a default spill estimate of 1,000 barrels. OPS will be notified of all spills over 500 barrels and any spill over 100 barrels that impacts water.”

Enbridge spokeswoman Terri Larson declined to comment on this, citing the ongoing NTSB investigation.

Even before Enbridge had confirmation from a Consumers Energy employee that there was visible oil at the pipeline, the command center knew something was wrong.

As Messenger previously reported, the Edmonton command center initiated a scheduled shut down of the Lakehead Pipeline 6B at about 5:56 p.m on Sunday, July 25. Two minutes later, the NTSB says, the center noticed a pressure alarm and shutdown of the Marshall pump station. Officials in Edmonton attributed this to the normal operations of the line.

However, based on information released Wednesday by Schauer, which came from the NTSB, at 4:26 a.m. Monday morning Edmonton officials started the line back up. But as previously reported, they had problems with the startup and responded by “troubleshooting” the problem.

Schauer says that the Enbridge employees called in mass balance analysts to review the information the sensors on 6B were returning. During this time, employees “repeatedly turned on and off” the pipeline. Schauer’s timeline information also indicates the company employees tried increasing the pressure on the line.

At 7:52 a.m. on Monday, the Edmonton control center shut the line down and closed the valves located at either end of a three mile stretch of the line. It has remained closed since.

Schauer says the NTSB investigation has verified that at 9:49 a.m., an Enbridge employee from Marshall went to the site and “reports that readings are at zero,” and that the employee “doesn’t see anything.”

Starting at 9:26 p.m. on the evening of Sunday, July 25, the 9-1-1 center in Calhoun county began receiving calls about a strong smell of natural gas. Those calls, Scauer says, continued through Monday.

While fire officials from both the Marshall Township and the City of Marshall departments responded, along with an employee of the Michigan Gas Utility company, none were able to verify a cause of the leak. Their equipment indicated that there was no natural gas leak.

An incident report signed by the Marshall Township Fire Chief says firefighters thought the smell was more like oil than gas, while the utility company employee thought the smell was coming from a Clark Gas Company storage facility.

“I don’t know where that employee walked,” Schauer said. “Thank God for Consumers Energy.” EPA has said the site where the rupture occurred and where the heaviest contamination can be found is about five acres in size. It is also some distance from Talmadge Creek.

Enbridge officials declined to comment on this timeline, saying that it would violate their agreement as a party to the NTSB investigation. Parties to an investigation are prohibited from discussing issues and information that are part of the investigation.

Schauer argues that the delay in notifying the National Response Center as the oil was “bleeding into our waterways” was critical and that earlier notification might have reduced the amount of oil released and the distance it ultimately spread.

Ultimately, Schauer says the issues and concerns raised by the timeline reflect on the safety and integrity of the company’s entire pipeline system.

“All this points to a system failure,” Schauer said. “It took an employee from another company … to report a visible problem.”

Daniel, Enbridge’s CEO, disputes that statement.

“Our pipeline is safe,” says Daniel. “We have a very strong safety record.”