Killing Line 5 would only drive home need for fossil fuels
This seems like a bad week to be in the pipeline business. On Friday, a cyberattack shut down the American Colonial Pipeline network, which carries 2.5 million barrels a day of diesel, gasoline and jet fuel to 14 states. A criminal gang called “DarkSide” is accused of holding data for ransom; it is not clear whether Colonial paid up, but the company expects to “substantially” restore service by the end of this week.
By then, however, another major pipeline could be shut down, not by extortion, but by government fiat. Michigan has ordered the closure of Enbridge's Line 5, a pipeline carrying nearly half of the light crude oil, light synthetic crude oil and natural gas liquids consumed in Ontario and Quebec.
If this happens, “There will (also) be a shortterm spike in pricing … of six to eight cents a litre,” according to Vijay Muralidharan, a senior consultant with the Kent Group, which studied the closure. According to the Ontario government, 4,900 jobs in Sarnia, Ont., a city of 71,500, would also be directly jeopardized by the pipeline's closure.
Line 5 also supplies 55 per cent of Michigan's propane supply. Its light crude powers the auto industry, which has aggressively lobbied against its shutdown. The Steelworkers Union has also issued a last-minute plea for the 300 refinery jobs that would be lost — along with the estimated 33,000 total jobs that could vanish in Michigan and Ohio.
This matters little to Michigan's governor, Gretchen Whitmer. She has called the 65-yearold pipeline a “ticking time bomb.” A portion of it runs across the Straits of Mackinac, connecting Lake Michigan to Lake Huron; should a spill occur, it would arguably devastate the local ecosystem, including water and wildlife.
Last November, in response to calls by Indigenous and environmental groups, Michigan revoked a 1953 easement allowing Enbridge to run the pipeline across the straits, and ordered it to shut down the pipeline by May 12. This, despite the company receiving approval to reroute the pipeline through a tunnel under the Great Lakes, to be completed by 2024. (Enbridge notes the line has never spilled in the straits and believes the new concrete tunnel will drastically reduce the risk of that ever happening.)
Enbridge has vowed not to shut down the pipeline unless ordered to by the courts. Multiple governments at the state, provincial and federal level are trying to mediate a diplomatic solution. Should they fail, Canada could invoke the 1977 Transit Pipelines Treaty between Canada and the U.S., which states that “no public authority in the territory of either party shall institute any measures … which would have the effect of, impeding, diverting, redirecting or interfering with in any way the transmission of hydrocarbon in transit.”
Canada's attempts to prevent the shutdown have not gone down well with Indigenous communities. Recently, Anishinabek Nation Grand Council Chief Glen Hare stated, “It is upsetting to see that the Government of Canada will pick and choose which treaties to uphold based on convenience and profit, rather than in good faith for the health, safety, and well-being of all inhabitants of these lands.”
Anti-pipeline advocates conveniently fail to mention, however, that the risk will simply be displaced to other inhabitants along the highways and rail lines that criss-cross both countries. Shuttering Line 5 would require an additional 800 tanker cars and 2,000 trucks a day to move petroleum products to market. This would not only produce more emissions, but risk potential derailments and spills. It is a perfect example of “not in my backyard” environmentalism.
The reality is that there is no way to replace the energy source provided by Line 5 overnight, if ever. Environmentally friendlier alternatives are not currently available on the same kind of mass scale, and plunging businesses and millions of homeowners into energy poverty will do nothing to sway hearts and minds to the anti-pipeline cause. As fellow Postmedia columnist Licia Corbella points out, it could well do the opposite and open the eyes of Central Canadians to the importance of fossil fuels. Paradoxically, that could make this a good week for the pipeline industry after all.