Anomalies on Line 6B hold up pipeline restart

Sitting 30 feet under the surface of the St. Clair River, and buried in 12 feet of sediment, encased in cement and gravel, lies one of two major arteries for North America’s petroleum industry — Enbridge Energy’s Lakehead Pipeline 6B.

Depending on who you speak with, the 12 inch dent discovered on the St. Clair crossing in August of 2009 is either a harmless defect, or a ticking environmental time bomb. The owner of the pipeline, Enbridge, argues the dent is a “non-injurious” defect — which is pipeline speak for unlikely to cause a leak.

Others, including federal regulators and some on Michigan’s Congressional delegation, say the dent is an environmental disaster in the making. Should the line rupture under the river, it would contaminate the drinking water supply of much of southeast Michigan with crude oil, and foul one of Michigan’s key shipping lanes.

Federal regulators on Wednesday, however, said Enbridge’s time to fix the dent and hundreds of other anomalies — or potential leak sites — on line 6B had come to an end. The company had sought, shortly before the July 25 oil leak in Calhoun county, to receive a waiver for two and half years allowing them to operate the line at reduced pressure while they tried to figure out which of those anomalies needed to be fixed and which did not.

“That [dent and the other anomalies] was a real source of concern for [regulators],” testified John Porcari, deputy secretary for Transportation before the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. “We will not extend that time [to fix the anomalies].”

Shadowing that decision was the revelation in a briefing document for the committee released Tuesday which showed the rupture in Marshall, Mich. had been the source of anomalous readings for years. But none of those readings rose to the level Enbridge says regulators would have required a dig, inspect and replace or repair order at that location.

Hundreds of similar anomalies, some more severe and others less so, have been detected on the line over the years. Some have been examined, replaced or repaired, testified Enbridge CEO Patrick Daniel, but most had not been.

Regardless, it was the dent under the St. Clair river which prompted sharp questioning from Rep. Candice Miller (R-Harrison Township).

Porcari, who had to testify because the head of the Pipeline Hazardous Materials Safety Administration had to recuse herself for ethical reasons, told the Transportation Committee that USDOT had “very substantial concerns” for years, going so far as to “summon the CEO” to Washington for an “atypical” meeting with federal regulators over the state of Lakehead Pipeline 6B.

The dent in the line in the St. Clair River, Porcari told Miller, would have a remedy in place by the end of September.

“It meets the regulation for a 60-day period to fix it,” Porcari said. “Obviously, the 60-day rule did not happen here.”

Miller shot back that company officials had told her they believed the dent had been on the line since it was laid in 1969, but was only detected this past August because of the improvement of inline inspection tools called “pigs.”

“The likelihood that dent will produce a leak is very low,” Daniel testified to Congress Wednesday, promising, once again, that Enbridge believed in safety first and foremost. He said even though the dent in the river had been determined to be “non-injurious” to the line, in an “abundance of caution” the company put the line on reduced operating pressure in August 2009 when it discovered the dent.

Miller outlined, based on meetings between her staff and the Enbridge leadership about the dent, the three possible remediations Enbridge will have to choose from by the end of the month. The first option would be to drill under the river, and replace the line from below. The second option would be to shut down the shipping lanes on the river and do a replace of the line from above and the final option would be to insert a smaller diameter pipeline inside the current line, creating a second layer of protection from leaks.

Daniel, who is a chemical engineer, said inserting the pipe inside the existing line might sound the most plausible, but it could cause problems with oil flow through the line. Drilling under the river or coming down from on top would have considerable issues including permitting, Daniel said.

“Cost is not relevant. We’ll do whatever is right,” Daniel said.

Daniel said the company was proceeding in an “orderly” manner to do digs and inspections on the anomaly sites and, where necessary, repair or replace line segments.

Rep. Mark Schauer (D-Battle Creek), who represents the area still cleaning up from the spill of a million gallons of tar sands crude oil into the Kalamazoo river and one of its tributaries, was far more blunt in his assessment of the situation.

Noting the hundreds of anomalies in the line, the fact that similar anomalous readings preceded the spill in his district and the company’s long track record of major spills and safety problems, Schauer said simply, “I have no confidence Enbridge can operate that pipeline safely.”