Companies hired to design, build oil pipeline tunnel

TRAVERSE CITY, » Enbridge Inc. said Friday it has hired companies to design and build a disputed oil pipeline tunnel beneath the channel linking Lakes Huron and Michigan, despite pending legal challenges.

The Canadian company is forging ahead with plans to begin construction work next year on the tunnel, which would replace twin pipes that have lain across the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac in northern Michigan since 1953.

State Attorney General Dana Nessel is appealing a Michigan Court of Claims ruling last October that upheld an agreement between Enbridge and former Republican

Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration to drill the tunnel through bedrock beneath the straits. The case is before the state Court of Appeals, which declined to put the lower court ruling on hold while considering the matter.

Nessel, a Democrat, also has filed a separate lawsuit seeking to shut down Enbridge’s existing Line 5 pipes.

But the company believes its success in court thus far creates “a path forward,” spokesman Ryan Duffy said.

“We feel like it’s time now for Enbridge and the state to work together and keep the project moving,” he said.

Enbridge, based in Calgary, Alberta, planned Friday to provide a status report to the Mackinac Straits Corridor Authority during a meeting in St. Ignace, Michigan.

The panel was established by the law that approved the tunnel agreement.

Great Lakes Tunnel Constructors, a partnership between Jay Dee Contractors Inc. of Livonia, Michigan, and the U.S. affiliate of Japan-based Obayashi Corp., will build the tunnel.

Arup, a multinational engineering company based in London, will design it, Enbridge said in a statement.

Line 5 each day carries 23 million gallons of crude oil and natural gas liquids used for propane between Superior, Wisconsin, and Sarnia, Ontario.