The 20,000-barrel spill last month at a Tesoro Corporation’s pipeline in North Dakota went undetected until a farmer came across it in his field. Three years ago, a rupture In Enbridge Corporation’s oil pipeline near Marshall, Michigan spilled 843,000 gallons, becoming the nation’s most expensive onshore oil spill. (Oil was carried 35 miles downstream on the Kalamazoo River.) Enbridge, the largest transporter of Canadian crude to the U.S., already knew of cracks in its pipeline; it didn’t react to the rupture for 17 hours after it was discovered. Over the past three years, 96 pipeline incidents have caused 41 fatalities, 200 injuries and $400 million in property damage, according to government data. Yet government regulators still haven’t produced promised rules to compel operators to detect such leaks. If all this doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the construction of TransCanada Corporation’s Keystone XL Pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico -- the last portion of which the Obama administration is still weighing -- it shouldn’t. The Administration should nix it, unless or until we know oil can be transported more safely than it has been.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Oct 2013 16:23:55 +0000