You can’t believe anything Enbridge says (again)
It is entirely possible that the world doesn’t need one more example illustrating the headline of this post. They are legion. This blog is full of them— almost a full decade’s worth of them. And the troubling thing about this surfeit of examples, this disturbing excess, is that it doesn’t seem to matter. It appears to make almost no impression whatsoever on most of the people who are in a position to actually do something about it, the people who actually could hold Enbridge accountable for their appalling record of looking the public in the face and, without so much as a twitch, uttering rank falsehoods.
But like you, dear reader, I care about the truth. So I keep documenting these things anyway. And today I have another one that’s sort of been stuck in my craw this past week. You see, over the weekend, I was lucky enough to take part in a session at the annual Michigan History Conference organized by the Historical Society of Michigan. Beth Wallace from the National Wildlife Federation and I presented on Line 5. My talk, based upon research that I’ve been conducting (with the help of my amazing research assistant, the brilliant and tenacious Alma Dukovic) for the book I’m currently writing.
As I was putting together my presentation, I was reminded of a claim that Enbridge has often made over the course of the past few years, a claim designed to make them look like responsible stewards of the environment, like they are a corporation that cares about the Great Lakes and acts accordingly. And in this case, it’s a specifically historical claim. Here it is on the Enbridge website:
Enbridge’s Line 5 underground pipeline was built in 1953 to remove oil-carrying tanker traffic from the Great Lakes. It also eases roadway and air emissions by avoiding oil transportation by truck and rail.
And here it is in the mouth of none other than Enbridge CEO Al Monaco in the Washington Post:
And here it is– there’s even video!– coming from ubiquitous Enbridge spokesman Ryan Duffy:
Back in the 50s, there was a push to change up how oil was being moved on the Great Lakes so that it wouldn’t be in those huge oil tankers out on the water. The push was to find a way to do it safer.
Got it? Enbridge would have us all believe that the primary reason they built the Line 5 pipeline was because they just wanted to protect the Great Lakes from potential tanker spills. They would have us believe that “Line 5 was constructed with the Great Lakes and safety in mind.” They would have us believe that in 1953 “there was a push” to transport oil more safely.
Reader, this is complete bullshit. It’s greenwashing history.
I have read a lot about the history of Line 5. I’ve read countless newspaper reports about it from the 50s. I’ve read the corporate history that was written about it by an Enbridge insider. I’ve read the annual reports of the company from the era. And in all of that research, I have not seen one single word about Great Lakes safety. I haven not encountered, in any source, anyone saying that Line 5 was meant to provide a safer alternative to tanker traffic. It just didn’t happen. It’s simply not true.
The truth, instead, is pretty much what you would expect: the construction of Line 5 wasn’t a safety decision; it was a financial decision. And the reason is simple: in 1953, the real Great Lakes shipping problem was the weather. In Winter, icy conditions made the shipping channels on the lakes completely impassable. So oil couldn’t be shipped by tanker all year round. Shipping was a seasonal operation. And that meant that Enbridge’s affiliates in the oil fields of Western Canada were producing oil faster than Enbridge could get it to the refineries in Sarnia. Year-round transport via pipeline solved that problem.
But you don’t have to take my word for it. You can just listen to the Al Monaco of 1953, T.S. Johnston the President of Interprovincial Pipe Line (the precursor to Enbridge). According to the New York Times on April 2, 1953:
The completion of this extension will make it possible, Mr. Johnston said, to deliver crude oil the year ’round to Ontario. Thus the bottleneck caused by cessation of tanker operations on the Great Lakes during the Winter will be eliminated.
This was always the rationale for the construction of Line 5, repeated frequently in news and other accounts. There’s not a word about safety. Not in news accounts or anywhere else that I have seen. As usual, Enbridge is literally just making things up. So I say it once again: you cannot believe a single word Enbridge says.
In a rational world, this sort of thing would matter. It would be admissible and carry great weight in regulatory and legal proceedings, where skepticism about Enbridge’s claims and assurances should reign, but– alas– does not.