It’s been a bad week for Enbridge.

By now, I assume you’ve seen the news: Enbridge disclosed to the state on Thursday that they’ve discovered serious but unexplained damage to an anchor supporting a segment of Line 5. Apparently it was bad enough that Enbridge shut the line down briefly. The governor sent a letter requesting more information but before the ink was even dry on that letter Enbridge started the line up again, prompting a second stern letter from Governor Whitmer. As of this writing, no one really knows what happened.

This news comes on the heels of the announcement, which I wrote about on Friday, that the EPA fined Enbridge more than $6 million dollars for safety violations related to the 2017 consent decree. Unsurprisingly, Enbridge offered up a whole bunch of lame excuses for their lack of compliance with some very simple rules.

It also comes on the heels of a rather extraordinary letter published in the Detroit News by Enbridge’s Great Lakes Director of Operatons Mike Moeller. Of course, the letter has nothing interesting to say at all. What makes it extraordinary is the sheer number of bromides Moeller (or the PR shill who wrote it for him) is able to pack into a short letter to the editor. It trots out every hackneyed phrase (“indomitable resolve”! “unwavering focus”! “hard work [and] determination”) its authors could think of and then, just when you start to feel queasy, they add some platitudes about “resilience” and “forg[ing] strong connections with the communities in which we operate” and Michigander’s “spirit in the face of adversity”– a spirit Moeller apparently finds “inspiring.” Gag.

This sort of clichéd prose, as any reader can tell instantly, is the hallmark of insincerity. And ordinarily, I wouldn’t even bother commenting on yet another pointless assemblage of vapid phrases from Enbridge. But the juxtaposition of Moeller’s letter with the other Enbridge news of this week provides a striking reminder of something else everyone else knows but that can’t be repeated often enough:

That despite all their public relations claptrap about “critical infrastructure” needs, all their hollow talk about their commitments to Michigan, and all their unconvincing assurances about “operational and environmental safeguards,” Enbridge really only cares about one thing: pumping as much oil through their pipelines as quickly and for as long as they can to make as much profit as possible. Period. That’s it.

So if that means treating landowners, communities, and local officials shabbily, so be it. If that means withholding information of pipeline defects from the state or dragging their feet to fix those defects, so be it. If that means treating “administrative” matters as an afterthought, so be it. And if that means thumbing their nose at a Governor rightly concerned about the revelation of a potentially dangerous situation and hastily starting Line 5 up again despite her calls that they proceed with caution and transparency, then so be it.

Update (6/23): In response to the re-start and disregard of Gov. Whitmer’s request for a full investigation, Attorney General Dana Nessel has filed a Court motion seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction pending more information. Nessel also released a statement:

To date, Enbridge has provided no explanation of what caused this damage and a woefully insufficient explanation of the current condition and safety of the pipeline as a result of this damage…We cannot rely on Enbridge to act in the best interests of the people of this State so I am compelled to ask the Court to order them to.”

As I’ve said before, Nessel gets it. She knows very well what everybody else knows: Enbridge is never going to change. They literally can’t. They can’t even if the individuals who work for the company, like Mike Moeller, honestly would like to. That’s because Enbridge exists only to do one thing and they’re going to keep doing that thing until someone tells them they can’t. The only interest they’ll ever act in favor of is their bottom line. That’s why it’s long past time for the Governor, who thankfully supports Nessel’s latest action, to continue to pretend there’s an amicable solution to the Line 5 problem. It’s long past time for her to finally take decisive action.

At this point, there is really only thing to ask of Enbridge: just spare us the bullshit.