A damning report on Enbridge Inc.'s inept handling of the 2010 crude oil spill in Michigan should kill the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline, NDP leader Thomas Mulcair said Tuesday in Victoria.
Ottawa — NDP leader Thomas Mulcair said Wednesday that Enbridge
Inc.'s Northern Gateway oilsands pipeline project should be shut down in
light of a devastating report by a U.S. agency released a day earlier.
But Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore shot back that the Quebec MP, whose party now leads the Tories in recent polls on the west coast, "doesn't understand British Columbia's priorities."
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said Enbridge officials behaved like the "Keystone Kops" during a bungled management of a massive oilsands crude spill in Michigan in 2010.
Mulcair linked the findings to Enbridge's $5.5 billion proposal, now being reviewed by a federal panel, to build two 1,177-kilometre pipelines from the Edmonton area through the Rockies to the B.C. coast.
"Northern Gateway should be stopped and the plug should be pulled on it," Mulcair told reporters in Victoria.
The NTSB report represents "the final nail" in the Enbridge coffin, Mulcair said later in a joint appearance with provincial NDP leader Adrian Dix in Vancouver.
"I've been in public administration for decades now, I've never seen anything that tough from somebody of that senior level in another country about a company," he said.
"I don't think it has made any sense to have those super-tankers going along the pristine coast and its extremely delicate ecosystems. The dangers for that kind of raw bitumen flowing along the coast is just beyond belief."
The U.S. regulator concluded that confused Enbridge employees waited for more 17 hours after an alarm was sounded to deal with a pipeline rupture.
The NTSB also disclosed that the company was aware of, but didn't take action to deal with, a cracking problem in the area of the rupture five years before the incident.
The rupture resulted in a spill of more than 840,000 gallons of oil and has so far resulted in a cleanup costing more than $800 million U.S., by far the costliest onshore oil spill incident in American history.
Continue reading here.
But Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore shot back that the Quebec MP, whose party now leads the Tories in recent polls on the west coast, "doesn't understand British Columbia's priorities."
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said Enbridge officials behaved like the "Keystone Kops" during a bungled management of a massive oilsands crude spill in Michigan in 2010.
Mulcair linked the findings to Enbridge's $5.5 billion proposal, now being reviewed by a federal panel, to build two 1,177-kilometre pipelines from the Edmonton area through the Rockies to the B.C. coast.
"Northern Gateway should be stopped and the plug should be pulled on it," Mulcair told reporters in Victoria.
The NTSB report represents "the final nail" in the Enbridge coffin, Mulcair said later in a joint appearance with provincial NDP leader Adrian Dix in Vancouver.
"I've been in public administration for decades now, I've never seen anything that tough from somebody of that senior level in another country about a company," he said.
"I don't think it has made any sense to have those super-tankers going along the pristine coast and its extremely delicate ecosystems. The dangers for that kind of raw bitumen flowing along the coast is just beyond belief."
The U.S. regulator concluded that confused Enbridge employees waited for more 17 hours after an alarm was sounded to deal with a pipeline rupture.
The NTSB also disclosed that the company was aware of, but didn't take action to deal with, a cracking problem in the area of the rupture five years before the incident.
The rupture resulted in a spill of more than 840,000 gallons of oil and has so far resulted in a cleanup costing more than $800 million U.S., by far the costliest onshore oil spill incident in American history.
Continue reading here.
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