Enbridge Seeks to Expand Oil Flow Without Keystone Review A Canadian company may have found a way to ship more oil across the U.S. border without becoming enmeshed in the red tape that’s tied up the proposed Keystone XL pipeline — by relying on a permit it got four decades ago. Enbridge Inc. (ENB) said this week it plans to replace a 46-year-old line from Hardisty, Alberta, to Superior, Wisconsin. The company says the $7 billion project shouldn’t trigger the type of lengthy approval process that TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone is undergoing because the construction is essentially a maintenance project to restore the pipeline’s previous capacity. Critics, including the Sierra Club, a San Francisco-based environmental group, say a new permit from the U.S. State Department is necessary, because replacing the old pipeline would allow Enbridge to ship more of the carbon-heavy fuel across the border than it can now. “Doubling the size of a pipeline that carries toxic, corrosive tar sands crude will require a full environmental review and will meet the same level of scrutiny and opposition as the other proposed tar sands pipeline projects,” said Doug Hayes, a staff attorney at the Sierra Club, in a statement. Enbridge says it is not doubling the line’s capacity — [...] newsintx/enbridge-seeks-to-expand-oil-flow-without-keystone-review/
Posted on: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 10:40:40 +0000