Farmers want pipeline hearing

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

By BETTER FARMING STAFF

A group of western Ontario farmers wants the Ontario National Energy Board to hold a public hearing regarding a major oil producer’s application to change the flow of oil in a pipeline that crosses Ontario.
 
On Oct. 3, Calgary-based Enbridge Inc. and Enbridge Energy Partners L.P., announced plans to reverse a portion of its Line 9 pipeline in western Ontario to ship crude oil from Sarnia to Westover, near Hamilton. The pipeline runs through farmland.  Related projects will cost $120 million and are intended to transport light crude oil from Alberta and the Bakken shale in Saskatchewan and the U.S. western prairies to refineries in Ontario, Michigan and Ohio. Late 2012 is the target for the lines to be in service. The projects are subject to regulatory approval from the National Energy Board.

Margaret Vance, president of the Ontario Pipeline Landowners Association, says the group fears the reversal may rupture the nearly 40-year-old line and rather than fixing it, the company will abandon it. Farmers from Lambton, Middlesex and Oxford Counties and the Region of Waterloo make up most of the association; membership fluctuates between 150 and 188. Three pipelines run through the Vance family cash crop operation near Bright in Oxford County.

Vance says Enbridge recently abandoned 75 kilometres of pipeline in Michigan and laid a new pipeline beside it. The Enbridge line ruptured last year, spilling more than 800,000 gallons of oil into a creek that emptied into the Kalamazoo River. Vance fears that might happen in Ontario. If the line is abandoned the landowners — some of whom “were expropriated or had a right of entry against them” — fear they will be held liable for the portion on their property.

Line 9 was built to pipe oil to refineries near Montreal but the company reversed the flow in the 1990s to bring oil imports to Sarnia refineries. Vance says past hearings have revealed that the pipeline’s steel walls are thinner than normal and may be more susceptible to corrosion because of a polyethylene tape coating. Through the 1996 National Energy Board stress corrosion cracking (SCC) inquiry the “OPLA learned that pipelines with polyethylene type coating were more susceptible to SCC due to disbonding of the coating and water coming between the coating and the pipe,” Vance wrote in an Oct. 3 letter to the National Energy Board. The group is also concerned that the pipeline may be too close to the surface in eastern Ontario where topsoil is shallow.

Vance notes that the National Energy Board Act does not require a hearing before the Enbridge application is approved. And while the association wants a hearing, becoming involved is expensive. Hiring expert advice may cost several hundred thousand dollars.
Having to shell out the cash to participate is frustrating, says Vance. “We have a pipeline whether we like it or not, and then we’re supposed to reach into our pocket to defend our land.” BF