There is a firestorm of controversy raging over the oil pipeline that runs across the Great Lakes....The pipeline is 60 years old, and people fear it's unsafe due to it's age( not considering it's location for the moment ), but Enbridge, the owner of the pipeline claims it's safe and can last indefinitely....What say you?
I didn't watch this video, but I saw a report on it about a year and a half ago. And the supports showed nothing left.
there was some controversy about the owners on this, can't recall what exactly it was possible fraud or scandal but There's a lot of concerns about it.
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“ When people get what they want, they are often surprised when they get what they deserve " - James Wood
Enbridge will guarantee that the pipeline will last forever, or until it fails.
When it fails their lawyers will tie everything up in the courts for 10 years while WE pay for the clean-up.
Just about as ridiculous as this, " In fact, Enbridge claims that Line 5 can be operated indefinitely, and it neither has, nor needs to consider, a plan to replace it – a position that independent experts have described as unreasonable".
Even as an oil field supporter on issues such as fracking and drilling off shore, this one seems to be a no-brainer. Only problem here, is if they were to replace it, they will probably need approval to run a new line, and may well face extreme opposition to that. One can see why they wouldn't want to chance that sort of thing happening after observing what has become of the Keystone XL pipeline. Perhaps the opposition to Keystone has come back to bite the opponents, at least those in the Great Lakes region. (????)
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Ha, good point, they usually survive by remaining under the radar, but this now has everybody's attention...they should have anticipated this and started an alternative route around the water, that way if they had any opposition they could have pointed to the water crossing and said OK we'll keep it as it is...could have turned it around....
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You want to see old pipelines - check out what is still in the ground in the oil fields of NW Pa, the home of the original oil pipeline - the Tidewater pipeline from the fields here to refineries in NJ, started in 1879. The million gallon storage tanks are still there too, after more than 100 years. Impressive the thickness of the tank shell. If the pipeline in question was built like those tanks, it is no where near to failing - yet.
Like central Michigan, this area was one big oil field. Every well had a pipe to a tank. Every tank had a pipe to a large bank of tanks. Some of those banks had a pipe to a rr spur. Wells mostly have been plugged but the pipes still remain and were never drained. Not uncommon to find them still leaking out onto the ground. I know one creek behind my house that comes out of a spring into a pool with a permanent oil slick on it. This is probably due to the abandoned well casing leaking near the aquifer, because plugging, as done in the past with wood, does not last.
But here, as opposed to the Great Lakes, oil leaks mean nothing, as the standard practice for producing wells well into the 1960's, was to separate oil and water in a tank by gravity and drain the water to an unlined pit in the ground. This was a strictly manual operation and was dependent on the well tender's eyes to know when to shut the flow off. Obviously, much oil got to the pit, and many of those are still there and still have a thick black ooze in them. Got to be careful walking in the woods around here.
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Yeah - it sure can. A spill on water is 1000 times the problem it is on land, except for the rare instance where the spill is large and confined so that is has time to sink into an aquifer, or the ground has permafrost so the oil runs to a stream/lake/ocean. Otherwise, you have NW Pa where the oil eventually breaks down over time. We have some fine woods where the old wells are located. You know the ground was saturated with oil there at one time. Fauna seems to be doing fine as well.
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Cathodic protection was probably not known when this pipeline was installed; has it been added?
Do they do ultrasonic inspections of wall thickness of the pipe? Yes, this would be difficult underwater.
Have they added electric valves that can close quickly in case of a problem? Instead of manual valves which take a significant amount of time to get closed.
Is It Safe?
Re: Is it safe?
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