By now, you’ve probably heard the news: the Michigan Public Service Commission yesterday declined to rule definitively on Enbridge’s application to re-route a portion of Line 5 beneath the Straits of Mackinac inside a concrete tunnel. Instead, the Commission reopened the case and asked Enbridge to provide additional information.

I spent part of the day reading the Commission’s order and, honestly, it’s hard to know what to make of it, other than one thing: in one way or another, this was inevitable. As I (and plenty of others) have said from day one, Enbridge’s timelines for their silly tunnel project have always been completely ludicrous (more on this in a minute).

Most Line 5 opponents have taken this as good news. FLOW’s Jim Olson, for example, calls it “a step toward victory for the public and Great Lakes.” And Oil & Water Don’t Mix applauded what they called “the Commisioners’ prudent order.” I very much understand these responses. But I confess I’m also a little torn. On the one hand, the order basically castigates Enbridge, subtly, for failing to provide sufficient evidence in support of their safety assurances or of their compliance with some basic conditions in their three agreements with the State (agreements that were essentially big fat gifts from the Michigan legislature). What measures has Enbridge taken to enhance the safety of Line 5? Did Enbridge conduct the Close Internal Survey they agreed to? What were the results of their inspection of the coatings on the dual pipelines? Where is their work plan to repair bare metal on the pipelines? The record doesn’t say; Enbridge was silent on all this and more. Why? Is this just their usual sloppiness? More disregard for state authority and the seriousness of the proceedings? Or do they have something to hide?

Whatever the case, the Commission is certainly right to call Enbridge out on this lack of information. On the other hand, the Commission’s order essentially grants Enbridge a do-over. I find this rather baffling. After all, Enbridge had ample opportunity—two full years of hearings and filings—to present their case. But, as these question marks demonstrate, they clearly failed to make a satisfactory case regarding these important safety matters. On that basis alone, the Commission should have simply denied the application, rather than giving Enbridge a second chance. This just feels to me instead like the same situation we’ve observed repeatedly over the past decade: no matter how bad their behavior, Enbridge almost always gets a free pass.

I’m also feeling some ambivalence about the focus of the reopened proceedings. That is, it is certainly a very good thing that the Commissioners are taking seriously the potential dangers and risks of the tunnel project. They’ve asked Enbridge to provide additional information regarding its leak detection systems and the potential for fire or explosion in the tunnel. Yet the implication seems to be that the Commission’s final decision is likely to turn on the answers to these questions, as if they are the most important considerations in the matter. But from the point of view of other, far more important objections to the project—namely, climate change and indigenous sovereignty—leak detection and explosion risk are neither here nor there. Even if Enbridge could somehow prove that the tunnel is 100% safe and completely risk-free (which they can’t), it’s still a terribly bad idea. The last thing our overheated planet needs right now is a billion dollar investment in new fossil fuel infrastructure. Full stop. I’m worried the Commission doesn’t see it that way.

Then again, even that point might be moot because, as I’ve always maintained, the tunnel is a chimera; it’s never going to happen anyway. This is just another of what has been and will continue to be a very long series of delays, pushing the fantasy tunnel into an ever-receding future. And that suits Enbridge just fine, since they don’t really want the tunnel either. So I guess this is the last way in which my feelings about this non-decision are mixed: on the one hand, it’s certainly better than approval. On the other hand, it doesn’t hasten us, as it should have, toward the resolution of the matter we all want to see: a final, decisive, and permanent shut down of Line 5.