The Enbridge Alberta Clipper pipeline (Line 67) runs from 1600-kilometres from Hardisty, Alberta to Superior, Wisconsin on Lake Superior.
Winona LaDuke writes in the Duluth News Tribune, “As Enbridge asks the state Public Utilities Commission to increase the allowable volume in its Alberta Clipper pipeline, northern Minnesota might want to take notice. The current flow is 440,000 barrels per day. Enbridge is submitting permit applications to increase that flow to 570,000 barrels and, eventually to 800,000 barrels a day.”
She notes, “On April 24, there was an oil spill in Viking, Minn.; 600 gallons of oil was spilled from Enbridge’s Clipper Line 67. In late March, the Pegasus pipeline in Mayflower, Ark., gushed 800,000 gallons of oil into a suburb. Both the Pegasus and the Alberta Clipper pipelines transport tar sands oil, or diluted bitumen; it’s acidic and requires higher temperatures for transport. Tar sands oil is 15 to 20 times more acidic than conventional oil and up to seven times thicker. Higher temperatures and high acidity in any pipeline make for a bad combination. Added is that bitumen has more quartz in it, and there is pipeline corrosion potential.”
LaDuke concludes, “If I lived along the pipeline, I’d contact my legislator, my chamber of commerce, my home insurance salesman, and local real estate companies and start asking some questions. And I’d be pretty concerned about that Enbridge proposal.”
In late-February, an encampment and blockade was established near the town of Leonard in northern Minnesota in opposition to Line 67. The Nizhawendaamin Inaakiminaan (We Love Our Land) blockade is led by the Red Lake Nation and fully supported by the Ogalala Sioux Nation, Chief Bill Erasmus of the Dene First Nation, and the Indigenous Environmental Network.
In 2009, Council of Canadians energy and climate justice campaigner Andrea Harden wrote, “On August 20, the US state department granted a permit allowing Enbridge to build the US portion of the Clipper pipeline bringing tar sands crude from Alberta to Wisconsin and the US midwest. Approving the Clipper pipeline was the wrong choice.” The Council of Canadians opposed the Alberta Clipper with an action alert that year.
For more, please read:
Enbridge pipeline expansions are not the way
VIEW: Detroit Free Press opposes Alberta Clipper expansion, shipments on Lake Superior
UPDATE: Blockade challenges Enbridge Alberta Clipper pipeline
