With the Paris climate talks fast approaching, President Obama can point to many achievements in the fight against climate change. His administration has enacted stringent fuel efficiency standards for vehicles, proposed regulations on carbon emissions from the electrical sector, and reached a bilateral climate agreement with China. The president has also committed to weighing the climate impacts of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. Because Keystone XL would unleash a flood of high-carbon tar sands extraction, the president should ultimately reject the project.
But while the president’s scrutiny of Keystone XL is well-received, he faces another tar sands pipeline controversy brewing in the Midwest, thanks to his own State Department (the same agency that has repeatedly been criticized for allowing the oil industry to write the Keystone XL environmental review). With public attention largely focused on Keystone XL, the State Department is quietly allowing a major expansion of the Enbridge tar sands pipeline system.
The State Department first approved Enbridge’s Alberta Clipper pipeline in 2009, running from Canada’s tar sands through Minnesota and on to Superior, Wisconsin. However, the State Department permitted Enbridge to import only 450,000 barrels per day (bpd) of tar sands crude on the line, and made clear that any capacity increase would require a new permit and new environmental impact statement. Enbridge’s plan to expand Alberta Clipper to 800,000 bpd was no secret at the time, but Enbridge insisted that had no formal expansion plans for the State Department to review.
In 2012, Enbridge surprised no one when it announced its plans to increase Alberta Clipper’s flow of tar sands to 800,000 bpd. The State Department was forced to initiate a new permitting process to analyze the impacts of operating the pipeline at the higher volume and pressure, the risks of much larger oil spills, and the additional climate-polluting tar sands extraction that the expansion would allow in Alberta.
As the public process moved forward, Enbridge grew increasingly anxious, and devised a duplicitous scheme to expand Alberta Clipper without waiting for the State Department’s permission. Enbridge would build a new border-crossing pipeline just a few feet away, divert the higher flow of Alberta Clipper tar sands oil to the new line just before it reaches the U.S.-Canada border, and then divert the oil back to Alberta Clipper once inside the U.S.
You may be asking: Wouldn’t Enbridge also need a State Department permit for this new pipeline? According to Enbridge, building the new line was just routine “maintenance” of a 1960s-era pipeline called Line 3, also located in the same right-of-way. Enbridge claimed that the Line 3 permit, while clearly prohibiting any change in operation beyond what was proposed in 1968, did not not expressly limit the pipeline’s capacity as the Alberta Clipper permit does.
Enbridge boldly claimed that the State Department’s jurisdiction is limited to only the border crossing, and was therefore powerless to stop Enbridge from exploiting vague language in the old Line 3 permit to start pumping 800,000 bpd of tar sands crude through Alberta Clipper.
There are many glaring problems with this scheme. The State Department’s longstanding review process requires it to consider all aspects of pipeline proposals in deciding whether they would serve that national interest, not just the physical installation of steel pipe at the border. That includes issues of supply and demand among U.S. refineries, the risks of oil spills and other environmental impacts along the length of the pipeline, and the climate impacts of the project. Enbridge’s plan would make a mockery of that review process, as the increased tar sands flow would already be occurring.
Furthermore, the permits for both Alberta Clipper and Line 3 prohibit any change in operation without State Department review. Enbridge’s scheme is a major operational change, the impacts of which the State Department has never reviewed. Line 3 was never meant to accommodate heavy tar sands crude oil, as no substantial amounts were being shipped by pipelines in the 1960s. In fact, Enbridge acknowledged in a letter to the State Department that it devised this new operational plan only after what it called an “unforeseen [Alberta Clipper] permitting delay at the Department of over a year.”
Enbridge operates its cross-border pipelines at the permission of the State Department, and the permits expressly allow the Department to revoke, terminate, or amend that permission at any time. The State Department should have made it clear that it takes the national interest determination seriously and informed Enbridge that it could not expand Alberta Clipper until the agency reviewed the proposal and determined that it was in the national interest.
Instead, the State Department caved. Following a series of private meetings with Enbridge, the Department bowed to industry pressure and went along with Enbridge’s plan.
In the face of Big Oil’s dirty tar sands expansion plans, the Great Lakes region has become the latest focus of the growing movement against dirty fuels. On June 6, a diverse coalition of over 5,000 citizens, including many prominent indigenous and environmental leaders, marched on the capital in St. Paul, Minnesota, to take a stand against the many tar sands infrastructure proposals in the region. It was the biggest march against tar sands the Midwest has ever seen. Many of these same groups, including the Sierra Club, have joined together in a legal challenge against the Enbridge expansion in federal court. And on June 18, more than 60 environmental groups sent a letter to President Obama urging his administration to put a halt to this illegal tar sands expansion.
The president must demonstrate real leadership in addressing climate change. The president’s firm stand on Keystone XL is commendable, but it risks being undermined if his administration is simultaneously approving other tar sands projects behind closed doors. The Alberta Clipper and Line 3 expansions should be subject to the same climate test the president wisely outlined for Keystone XL.