If the public relations industry gave achievement awards for wishful obfuscation, consideration would be due the Enbridge spinmeister who dismissed Monday’s Minnesota Department of Commerce analysis as “only one view” on permitting for the company’s Line 3 pipeline project.

Yeah, and the plain sight of a tornado-borne Kansas farmhouse flattening the Wicked Witch of the West could be considered “only one view” that, ding-dong, she be dead.

Commerce’s recommendation against a certificate of need for the new pipeline — and its recommendation that the old and troubled Line 3 be mothballed — is based on its conclusion that no new pipeline capacity is needed to ensure “future adequacy, reliability and efficiency of energy supply.” Key findings as laid out in a department summary:

• Refineries in Minnesota, Wisconsin and elsewhere in the Upper Midwest are operating at “high levels of utilization, which indicates both they are not short of physical supplies of crude oil, and that they have little room to increase total crude runs.”
• An independent analysis of fuel consumption trends — significantly at odds with Enbridge’s application — shows that “Minnesota demand for refined products appears unlikely to increase in the long term.”
• Enbridge has already achieved new transport capacity with a clever and controversial exploitation of its Line 67, “equivalent to Enbridge’s stated need to increase capacity on Line 3.”

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Minn Post – Ron Meador – 09.13.2017

Posted by Nelson Bailey