by Jeffrey Insko | Nov 9, 2012 |
Oh boy, have we got things to write about! We were already backed up with need-to-get-to material (court hearings, telephone conversations, permitting processes, advertisements, Indiana matters– and more). But we learned and experienced so much at our first Pipeline Safety Trust conference that now we’re really in the woods. It’s going to take us a while to sort through our notes and say all that we’ve got to say. Which means, of course: a new series!
In lieu of a first entry in that series (coming up, we hope, right quick), here’s a quick rundown of some (not all) of the highlights of our conference experience (in random order):
- Mark Rosekind of the NTSB reminding everyone of how Enbridge ignored their own 10-minute rule
- Ben Gotschall (brilliant) on milk
- Kim Savage (cutting and wise) on minding your manners
- Beth Wallace (with aplomb) brooking no nonsense from TransCanada execs
- Anthony Swift on rhetoric versus reality
- Legal confabulations (way out of my depth) with Sara Gosman and Rebecca Craven
- Sharing fried alligator with Mike Watza
- Hearing Glenn Archambault’s horrifying story over a stiff drink (the only way to endure that particular tale)
- Learning about whales’ olfactory sense from an actual whale hunter, Rosemary Ahtuangaruak
- Gabe Scott reminding us that differences matter
- Deb Miller and Sue Connolly nearly exploding when Enbridge’s Denise Hamsher got defensive about Marshall
- Breakfast with fellow Hoosier native Nate Pavlovic
- Terrible Bourbon Street daiquiris with Mike O’Leary (and others)
- Carl Weimer with a face full of beignets
- Kim Savage’s (extraordinarily well-behaved) 9-year old son asking me, “Mr. Jeff, did you ever study chemistry?”
by Jeffrey Insko | Nov 8, 2012 |
We’re at the Pipeline Safety Trust conference in New Orleans. Much of the conference–including our panel at 4 pm Central time– will be webcast live. You can watch by following this link.
Here is a terrible picture of PS Trust Executive Director Carl Weimer welcoming us to the conference. You can’t tell, but it’s a packed house.
by Jeffrey Insko | Nov 5, 2012 |
Just got off the telephone with Enbridge VP Mark Sitek again. We appreciate his time and the fact that he is at least willing to face an actual landowner and hear us out; we can’t say the same about everybody at Enbridge.
With that said, with one small exception, it was an unsatisfactory conversation. If we can stomach it, we’ll try to supply a bit of detail later. In the meantime, we’ll just say that we wish Mark would read and actually reflect on this. It remains, in our view, a very serious problem.
by Jeffrey Insko | Nov 5, 2012 |
Among other things, we’re working this week on our upcoming presentation at the Pipeline Safety Trust conference, where we’re eager for the chance to talk with other landowners, regulators, and industry personnel. We’re looking forward to listening and learning. Perhaps we’ll even get a chance to meet and speak face to face with some Enbridge folks!
Of course, we’ve already spoken at some length with Enbridge Vice President Mark Sitek and we’re looking forward to a follow-up conversation or two. As regular readers know, we’ve been using that initial conversation as an opportunity to diagnose Enbridge, to try and articulate some of the underlying conditions that plague them and cause them to alienate stakeholders. We’ll likely talk about some of this in our presentation at the conference this week.
Just this morning, we were thinking about this alienation of stakeholders after reading the comments of Brandon Township Supervisor Kathy Thurman in the Brandon Citizen. Referring to a number of outstanding questions from a meeting with Enbridge representatives two months ago, Thurman said:
“Enbridge does not appear to be sincere in what they have communicated to the township. They have made statements that they will get information we have requested, but they have not produced it for us.”
Of course, we suspected at the time that Enbridge wasn’t altogether sincere– and more or less said as much in our report of that meeting. But the larger point here is that Enbridge seems to have serious problems with sincerity in general. That’s the topic of this installment in our series:
Part 4; Just tell the @&*! truth
We begin once again with one of Enbride’s stated core values: “Maintain truth in all interactions.” This, we believe, is excellent policy. We try very hard to adhere to it ourselves on this very blog. But based on our experience, this is another value that Enbridge fails to live up to. Indeed, there appears to be something deeply ingrained in Enbridge’s corporate culture that prevents them from simply being straightforward and forthright. We’re not saying that everything you hear from Enbridge is an outright falsehood. But we are saying that in far too many instances, you simply can’t take what Enbridge says at face value. And that’s a problem.
A ramble through our archives will reveal plenty of examples. But here is a quick rundown on some of them:
- Statements and promises from ROW agents far too numerous to recount.
- When asked by a reporter at the small-town Tri-City Times about the sudden appearance of pipes near Capac, Enbridge spokesperson said they were for integrity work on Line 5. We found that explanation suspicious. And it was. Manshum later provided a different explanation.
- In one of their recent ads, Enbridge claimed that “landowner representatives” (ie, ROW agents) are our “neighbors.” But as far as we know, only one ROW agent working with landowners on this project has ever resided in Michigan. All the rest are from out of state.
- Enbridge spokesperson Jennifer Smith recently claimed that Enbridge pays compensation for “disturbance and inconvenience.” We were led to believe by our ROW agent that Enbridge does not pay for these things.
- Lands and Right-of-Way Project Manager Doug Aller said that he would call me. He has never called me.
Individually, perhaps any one of these things can be explained away or, in some cases, forgiven: ROW agents are misinformed or under pressure; Manshum just didn’t know what was going on in Capac; Doug Aller is a very, very busy guy; advertisements always shade the truth a little. Nevertheless, the fact is that all of these (arguably) little things– placed alongside plenty of big things– add up. They accrue. And taken cumulatively, they exhibit a pattern of behavior– a pattern that would cause anyone to wonder and worry.
So what does all of this have to do with Mark Sitek? We are not going to claim that he did not speak truthfully with us. We still think our conversation with him was conducted (mostly) in good faith. However, we do think that parts of our conversation illustrated the culture we described before: a culture that for some reason finds it hard just to be forthright. Let us explain.
One of the more interesting moments in our conversation was when I raised the issue of reactivation of the old pipe. This is (possibly) another example of an instance where one can’t quite be certain about Enbridge’s statements. Back in September, we heard four different representatives tell the Brandon board of trustees that they knew of no cases where Enbridge had reactivated an idle pipe. But then it took us no more than an hour or two to find three examples— one featured prominently on Enbridge’s own website. So were the Enbridge reps just not telling the truth? We don’t know. But we are left wondering.
An any rate, Mark was much more straightforward about the matter than almost anyone we’ve ever heard. He eventually conceded– after a while, not right away and with some reluctance– that it is possible they could use the deactivated pipe in the future, though they have no current plans to do so. In fact, he said Enbridge has the legal right to use that pipe.
Now, we don’t much care for that answer. I don’t want that pipe ever to be used again. But it is the truth. And we respect the truth. The problem, we pointed out to Mark, is that nobody EVER says that. The only thing anybody from Enbridge ever says about that question is “we have no plans” to put it back into use. And when they say that, they just sound evasive, less than truthful, certainly not forthright. Yet they seem to have no sense of this whatsoever. They seem unable to grasp the simple fact that people would much rather be dealt with truthfully and straightforwardly, even if the news is bad, than be dealt with evasively and misleadingly.
The same holds for the matter of the indemnification language we’ve discussed so many times before (most recently here). Mark disagreed with us about the meaning of that language (that may be the subject of a later post), though we maintained that its net effect was corrosive to relations. But when we suggested that Enbridge stop shopping that language to landowners, Mark expressed concern about what the “storyline” would be– that is, he was worried that changing that practice would simply allow people to say, “see, Enbridge admits that it’s been doing wrong.”
Yet that reply is the whole problem we’re describing here. Mark’s primary concern in this case was not with repairing relations with landowners, with doing what’s right, with confronting the truth of that indemnity language, with making changes that might benefit everybody. Rather, his concern was with Enbridge’s public image.
What he seemed not to understand– what Enbridge, in general, seems not to understand (just witness their series of recent ads)– is that this relentless devotion to its public image is precisely (paradoxically) the cause of its poor public image. Saying you’re a good neighbor isn’t the same as being a good neighbor. Saying you treat people fairly isn’t the same as treating people fairly. Saying you value the truth isn’t the same as just telling the @&*! truth.
by Jeffrey Insko | Nov 4, 2012 |
Three weeks ago in an ad published in the Detroit Free Press (and elsewhere), Enbridge promised:
over the next four weeks we will use space in this newspaper to share project updates and to address some of [the public’s] questions. . .
And for two weeks, they (sort of) delivered on that promise. That is, they did use space in the newspaper–they just didn’t use it all that well and they didn’t really address any questions. Instead, they gave us more marketing spin and predictable sloganeering.
But what the ads lacked in actual informational value, they more than made up for in instructiveness. We thought the ads pretty effectively demonstrated the disconnect between Enbridge’s words and actions— the same disconnect we’ve been describing for months. And to be honest, we’ve really enjoyed slicing and dicing the ads. They’ve become the highlight of our Sunday mornings of late.
So you can imagine our disappointment when we came home with our Sunday edition of the Freep only to search the paper in vain for this week’s ad. Evidently, Enbridge has abandoned that strategy– which means they only made it two out of the four weeks they promised. We’re still hopeful that they’re just taking a break, perhaps because of this week’s elections. In the meantime, we’ll try to find something else to do with ourselves.
by Jeffrey Insko | Nov 1, 2012 |
Lately, we’ve been thinking our way through the conversation we had a week ago Wednesday with Enbridge Vice President Mark Sitek. Rather than providing a transcript from memory of that conversation, we’ve touched upon some of its highlights to try and understand– even to diagnose– the malady that plagues Enbridge (in our view). So far, we’ve discussed Enbridge’s insularity and the difficulty they seem to have looking at matters from the point of view of others– obviously, those two things are related.
In our third installment, we will consider another related trait: the trouble Enbridge seems to have taking accountability for its actions.
Part 3: Taking Accountability (more…)
by Jeffrey Insko | Oct 28, 2012 |
You would think at this point we would cease to be surprised at Enbridge’s baffling public communications. Yet they continue to astound us. That is certainly the case with the latest ad they’ve published in the Detroit Free Press. They appear to be utterly incapable of presenting even the most basic information without misleading or dissembling. But we’ll say this much: at least they’re consistent.
(more…)
by Jeffrey Insko | Oct 27, 2012 |
Yesterday, we launched our new series centering upon the telephone conversation we had Wednesday with Enbridge Vice President Mark Sitek. We’re using that exchange as an opportunity to try and diagnose and account for the condition that causes Enbridge to act in ways that alienate landowners and the general public (not to mention other stakeholders). In the first installment of the series we discussed Enbridge’s defensiveness, its tendency to portray itself as unfairly victimized. The basic thesis of that post was two-fold. We suggested that (1) it’s absurd for the party that wields all the power, has all the resources, and nearly always gets its way to pose as the victim; and (2) that such a pose is the result of an extreme insularity that prevents Enbridge from seeing things from a broader perspective. For that matter, we suggested at the very end of our post, Enbridge seems to have trouble adopting any perspective other than its own narrow one.
In this our second installment, we’ll take up that last point, which is all the more important because it is one of Enbridge’s stated core values. As part of their commitment to “Respect,” Enbridge states that its employees will “take the time to understand the perspective of others.” This, along with their other values, is what Enbridge describes as “a constant beacon by which we make our decisions, as a company and as individual employees, every day.”
Part 2: Understanding the Perspective of Others (more…)
by Jeffrey Insko | Oct 26, 2012 |
As we’ve mentioned, on Wednesday we had an extended telephone conversation with Enbridge Vice President for Major Projects Execution Mark Sitek; he’s the VP who signed the “letter” that appeared in lots of newspapers a couple of weeks back. Mark struck us as a good man, easy to talk to, and a good listener. We’re grateful he took the time to speak with us–especially since so many other folks at Enbridge– like spokesperson Jennifer Smith and Lands and Right-of-Way Project Manager Doug Aller— are clearly ducking us.
As you can imagine, there is an awful lot to report from the conversation. We think we learned some important things from the experience and we confirmed for ourselves some other impressions we’ve had about Enbridge for a while. So instead of just providing a summary of our conversation, we thought we’d focus on what was instructive about the exchange and attempt to extrapolate from it some general lessons– touching upon details of the conversation as we go. (more…)
by Jeffrey Insko | Oct 25, 2012 |
Busy day at work today. But we’ve been thinking (brooding) a lot about how to write about the long telephone conversation we had yesterday with Enbridge Vice President Mark Sitek. We think we’ve figured out a strategy that we will be helpful, fair, appropriately detailed (cuz we know you want the goods), and revealing.
That means, of course, a new series! So early tomorrow (we hope):
Part I: Insularity and Perspective
