Ensure Line 5 keeps running until reroute completed in 2026, Enbridge asks U.S. judge

WASHINGTON –

The firm that operates Line 5 is asking a U.S. choose for a measure of certainty that its controversial cross-border pipeline will not be shut down earlier than it may be rerouted round an Indigenous band’s territory in Wisconsin.

Calgary-based Enbridge Inc. needs district court docket Judge William Conley to make clear his earlier order that the pipeline be eliminated inside three years from land that belongs to the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa.

New court docket paperwork filed Friday, described as “requests for clarification,” cease in need of formally asking Conley to remain any shutdown orders till after Enbridge has accomplished efforts to detour Line 5 round band territory.

But they do argue that the corporate has made a legitimate argument that the pipeline needs to be allowed to proceed working, with Bad River receiving a share of the earnings, till the reroute is completed.

“Enbridge respectfully maintains it has presented legal authority to delay any injunction until the reroute is operational, thereby avoiding any loss of service and resulting substantial harm to the public,” the doc says.

“The court has the authority not to issue, or to stay, any injunction order to coincide with the reroute becoming operational to ensure that the public interest remains protected from substantial adverse consequences.”

The band has been preventing Enbridge in court docket since 2019, saying the corporate now not has permission to function on its land. Conley has given the corporate three years from the date of the order to complete the reroute.

Enbridge additionally needs to substantiate whether or not that clock began June 16, or if the three-year timeline begins from the date of Conley’s last judgment, which remains to be to come back, pending revisions and clarifications.

The firm says the tempo of the reroute undertaking relies on when the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completes the allowing and approval course of, anticipated in 2025.

The band has stated it isn’t happy with Conley’s order, which additionally included a profit-sharing system and a US$5.1-million again cost, courting to when permission for the pipeline was discovered to have expired in 2013.

Bad River attorneys say three years is just too lengthy, given the danger of a catastrophic rupture in a key Lake Superior watershed, and the monetary penalty too small to forestall Indigenous sovereignty from being additional violated sooner or later.

Conley concluded earlier this month {that a} rupture of Line 5 on Bad River territory would “unquestionably” meet the definition of a public nuisance beneath federal regulation.

But he is lengthy been reluctant to order a shutdown, citing the danger of dire financial penalties, lingering gas shortages within the Midwest, Ontario and Quebec and a long-lasting scar on Canada-U.S. relations.

Enbridge has already detailed its plans to interchange the 19-kilometre stretch of pipe in query with a 66-kilometre detour for Line 5 round Bad River territory.

But the corporate has additionally stated it disputes Conley’s discovering that the corporate is trespassing and that it intends to enchantment the choice, and can also search a keep of the order pending that enchantment.

Talks between Canada and the U.S. have been occurring for months beneath the phrases of the Pipeline Transit Treaty, a 1977 settlement that successfully prohibits both facet from unilaterally closing off the circulate of hydrocarbons.

The dispute grew extra pressing again in April, when heavy spring flooding washed away vital parts of the riverbank the place Line 5 intersects the Bad River, a meandering, 120-kilometre course that feeds Lake Superior and a posh community of ecologically delicate wetlands.

Environmental teams name the 70-year-old pipeline a “ticking time bomb” with a doubtful security file, regardless of Enbridge’s claims on the contrary.

The neighbouring state of Michigan, led by Attorney General Dana Nessel, has additionally been waging battle on Line 5, fearing a leak within the Straits of Mackinac, the ecologically delicate waterway the place the pipeline crosses the Great Lakes.

Line 5 carries 540,000 barrels of oil and pure gasoline liquids day by day throughout Wisconsin and Michigan to refineries in Sarnia, Ont.

Its defenders, which embody the federal authorities, say a shutdown would trigger main financial disruption throughout the Prairies and the U.S. Midwest, the place it offers feedstock to refineries in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

It additionally provides key refining services in Ontario and Quebec, and is significant to the manufacturing of jet gas for main airports on each side of the Canada-U.S. border, together with Detroit Metropolitan and Pearson International in Toronto.

This report by The Canadian Press was first printed June 26, 2023.