Line 5 pipeline: ‘Energy security’ at stake as Wisconsin decision looms, Canada says | 24CA News
Canada’s embassy in Washington says it’s “extremely concerned” in regards to the destiny of the Line 5 cross-border pipeline.
A court docket listening to Thursday in Wisconsin may decide whether or not the pipeline, owned and operated by Enbridge Inc., is allowed to proceed working.
“The energy security of both Canada and the United States would be directly impacted by a Line 5 closure,” the embassy mentioned in an announcement.
“At a time of heightened concern over energy security and supply, including during the energy transition, maintaining and protecting existing infrastructure should be a top priority.”
The Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa says spring flooding has heightened the danger of a rupture and it needs a federal choose to close the road down.
A strongly worded assertion from the embassy says doing so would endanger greater than 33,000 U.S. jobs and US$20 billion in financial exercise.
Canada argues that Line 5 is a crucial vitality conduit throughout the U.S. Midwest and an financial lifeline for Albtera, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec.
The Indigenous band fears a rupture would foul not solely a key watershed on its territory, but in addition the waters of Lake Superior.
Canada has already invoked a 1977 pipelines treaty with the U.S. in each Wisconsin and Michigan, the place Michigan’s lawyer basic can be in court docket making an attempt to get the pipeline shut down.
Talks underneath that treaty have been ongoing for months, with the most recent session going down final month in Washington.
“Canada invoked the treaty’s dispute settlement provisions because actions to close Line 5 represent a violation of Canada’s rights under the treaty to an uninterrupted flow of hydrocarbons in transit,” the embassy mentioned.
“If a shutdown were ordered because of this specific, temporary flood situation, Canada expects the United States to comply with its obligations under the 1977 Transit Pipelines Treaty, including the expeditious restoration of normal pipeline operations.”
Spring flooding has washed away important parts of the riverbank the place Line 5 intersects Wisconsin’s Bad River, a meandering, 120-kilometre course by means of Indigenous territory that feeds Lake Superior and a posh community of ecologically delicate wetlands.
The band has been in court docket with Enbridge since 2019 in an effort to compel the pipeline’s proprietor and operator to reroute Line 5 round its conventional territory — one thing the corporate has already agreed to do.
But the flooding has turned a theoretical danger into a really actual one, the band argued in an emergency movement final week, and desires the pipeline closed off instantly to forestall disaster.
“There can be little doubt now that the small amount of remaining bank could be eroded and the pipeline undermined and breached in short order,” the band’s attorneys argued.
“Very little margin for error remains.”
Line 5 meets the river on Indigenous territory simply previous a location the court docket has come to know because the “meander,” the place the riverbed snakes backwards and forwards a number of occasions, separated from itself solely by a number of metres of forest and the pipeline.
At 4 places, the river was lower than 4.6 metres from the pipeline _ simply 3.4 metres in a single specific spot _ and the erosion has continued in current days at an “alarming” charge, the movement mentioned.
In one case, so-called “monuments” put in to measure the losses present that the place there was greater than 10 metres of riverbank in early April earlier than the flooding started, solely 3.7 metres remained as of final Tuesday.
“Significant erosion is continuing as of the filing of this motion, and the evidence strongly suggests that further bank loss could be substantial and result in exposure and rupture of the pipeline.”
Wisconsin district court docket Judge William Conley will hear oral arguments on the movement Thursday. It’s not clear when he’ll resolve whether or not to grant an injunction that might require Enbridge to close down the pipeline and purge its contents.
Enbridge has described the movement as “truly outrageous” and pointless: “There is no pipeline safety issue and certainly no cause for alarm.”
© 2023 The Canadian Press
