On July 17, 2013 the Enbridge Company is planning to ask the Minnesota Public Utilities Committee (PUC) for a "certificate of need" to double to capacity of its Alberta tar sands pipeline, which carries diluted bitumen (dilbit), to the Superior Refinery. Mother Earth needs you to speak out on her behalf. Winona LaDuke says, "If I were a Northern land owner, I would be contacting the Public Utilities Commmision (PUC) in the next couple days, asking for caution and not a certificate of need, which will likely serve Enbridge more than any of us. There is no need for a pipeline to expand. There is plenty of need for safety, planning, and infrastructure for efficiency - not profit. Tell the PUC what you care about, and tell your tribal governments that they should take a stand and protect the water and land of Northern Minnesota." The pipeline passes through hundreds of miles of Minnesota, Red Lake, Leech Lake, and Fond du Lac Reservations. The current flow capacity is 440,000 barrels per day, and Enbridge is submitting permits to increase the flow to 570,000 barrels per day, and eventually to 800,000 barrels per day. Pipeline companies have been using the recent Lac Megantic train explosion to claim pipelines are a safer option for transporting oil. However, tar sands oil is 15 times more acidic and 7 times thicker than conventional oil, and thus 16 times more likely to breach a pipeline than crude oil. Additionally, the Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration(PHMSA) only has 110 inspectors to monitor 2.5 million miles of pipelines. The Enbridge Company alone has experienced 804 pipeline leaks since 1999. Among these Enbridge spills is the Kalamazoo, MI spill of July 2010, which gushed over 800,000 barrels (6.8 million gallons) of dilbit into the Kalamazoo River for more than two weeks, resulting in an $800 million cleanup that is not yet complete. Only 3% of tar sands oil has been drilled. Speaking about her visit to the Cree and Dene communities in the Athabasca region of Alberta where tar sands drilling occurs, LaDuke says, "expansion of the tar sands means certain destruction for the region and a huge impact on climate change." The tar sands alone are projected to produce 240 billion tons of carbon, which will be the endgame for humanity and much of life on earth.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Jul 2013 04:40:19 +0000
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