We’ve been thinking a bit about regulatory matters today— and oh! have we got a lot to learn–as we try to get to the bottom of Enbridge’s seemingly unverifiable claim that certain features of the new Line 6B exceed certain federal regulations (which features and which regulations? Enbridge prefers not to say…).

But this put us in mind of some things we heard and learned at the Pipeline Safety Trust conference earlier this month. As we’ve said before, we spent much of that conference being reminded of how much we don’t know about so many things. We also learned, in a couple of instances, that we’re a little naive. For example, the Friday morning keynote address at the conference was delivered by Cynthia Quarterman, chief Administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), the federal regulatory agency responsible for oil pipeline safety and oversight. As it turned out, that morning we were sitting with our friends Beth Wallace and Robert Whitesides, who mentioned to us in passing that Ms. Quarterman, prior to her appointment to PHMSA, worked for a Washington D.C. law firm and represented oil industry companies including– are you ready?– Enbridge. We did not know this. Which, to be honest, made us feel a little silly.

But back in 2010–when we were nothing more than a gleam in the eyes of our pipeline safety parents– Quarterman, not surprisingly, found herself on the business end of a lot of sharp criticism after the Marshall spill for her ties to Enbridge. In fact, she recused herself from all Enbridge-related matters, no easy task when Enbridge-related matters were among the most urgent matters with which her agency had to deal. Needless to say, such an intimate relationship between industry and regulatory officials does not engender a lot of confidence, especially in this particular case:  you’ll recall that the NTSB report on Marshall is every bit as critical of PHMSA and its “inadequate regulatory requirements” (among other things) as it is of Enbridge and its particular failings and failures.

All of this may well place in context (for us, anyway) one of the more head-scratching, perhaps even inflammatory, remarks of the conference. In a “briefing” on PHMSA’s current activities, another PHMSA official, associate administrator Jeff Wiese, cited the following as two of the “environmental” challenges facing his agency:

  • Terribly under-informed populace highly dependent on a fossil fuel fed, overly lean, energy supply chain
  • Growing public intolerance to risk – but highly rate sensitive

It’s safe to say that this didn’t sit that well with the citizen advocates at the conference. In fact, for a listener disinclined to give Mr. Wiese some benefit of the doubt (we’re on the fence about this), one might easily see this as an expression of some contempt for the public– ignorant, mindlessly addicted to fossil fuels, and cheap. If we’re being honest, it reminds us a bit of the sort of contemptuous attitude toward ordinary landowners we’ve seen on more than one occasion from Enbridge representatives: Joe Martucci, for instance, at a Groveland Township meeting shifting in his seat impatiently and sighing as landowners express reasonable concerns, then reminding us all (again) that cars use oil.

Wiese’s remarks are also reminiscent of Enbridge insofar as they appear to shift a portion of the blame for his organization’s failures on to others. In fact, we thought much of Wiese’s presentation demonstrated the same tendency we’ve seen from Enbridge to avert its gaze when shown a mirror. Or perhaps we’re just a bit too sensitive on the point: judge for yourself.

As we said at the beginning, we’re still learning when it comes to these regulatory matters. And we don’t know that much about either Cynthia Quarterman or Jeff Wiese, so we don’t want to be unfair. But it doesn’t inspire much hope to learn that the two organizations most responsible for the disaster in Marshall (Enbridge and PHMSA)– the two organizations we all have to rely on to ensure there won’t be another Marshall– have such a close relationship. Nor does it help when they appear to exhibit the same troubling set of attributes.