Independent investigators yesterday called for an overhaul of federal pipeline regulations that they blamed for failing to monitor the company behind 2010's 800,000-gallon Michigan oil spill -- but whether the probe will have any effect on environmentalists' campaign against the Canadian oil-sands crude that pipe carried remains an open question.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) blasted Calgary, Alberta-based Enbridge Energy Partners LP, which brings more imported crude to America each day than Saudi Arabia or Mexico, for detecting the corrosion-related cracks that caused the Michigan spill five years before its pipe ruptured but failing to fix the problem. Yet what critics of oil-sands crude say is an increased risk of pipeline failure due to the fuel's heavier, more viscous nature was nowhere in NTSB's diagnosis of the spill's causes.

Internal corrosion, the most common concern cited by environmental groups pushing to stop oil-sands crude pipelines such as TransCanada Corp.'s Keystone XL, "was not a factor" behind the 2010 disaster, NTSB stated.

The absence of concerns specific to Canadian oil-sands crude, a sizable but dwindling share of which is extracted by surface mining, did not stop opponents of expanded development from finding elements of the cutting NTSB report to help make their case.

Natural Resources Defense Council international program director Anthony Swift seized on the board's withering criticism of existing emergency response plans for pipeline operators. NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman lambasted the company's response as "completely ineffective," likening Enbridge employees to "Keystone Kops" in a subtly relevant pun.

"The NTSB found that federal regulators are not taking their obligation to approve spill response plans seriously," Swift wrote in a blog post yesterday, noting that the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) declined to address the cleanup challenges of oil-sands crude in a study of the fuel's transportation risks that Congress required last year (Greenwire, June 27).

"Without specific knowledge of how tar sands behaves when spilled, it will be impossible to correct the deficiencies in spill response planning which increased the cost and damage of the [Michigan] tar sands spill," Swift added.

The rupture of Enbridge's Line 6B, which crosses the district of House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), went unnoticed for 17 hours before oil flow through the pipe was shut, according to investigators. At $787 million in cleanup costs, it is the most expensive onshore oil gusher in U.S. history, Hersman said yesterday.

PHMSA, an arm of the Transportation Department, said in a statement that NTSB's findings support the "multiple violations of federal pipeline safety regulations and lack of a safety culture at the company" that led it to slap a record-high $3.7 million fine on Enbridge last week.

The company may contest that penalty, however, and is beginning to double crude oil capacity on the pipeline at issue with minimal government oversight (E&E Daily, July 10). Enbridge plans to review NTSB's report "to determine whether any further adjustments are appropriate" but defended the "detailed internal investigation of this incident" that led to "numerous enhancements" of its safety systems, liquid pipelines president Stephen Wuori said.

During the meeting where it unanimously approved findings and recommendations stemming from its inquiry, NTSB displayed a slide of the lone truck carrying oil-cleanup boom that constituted the extent of Enbridge's immediately available resources to combat the spill.

Even after PHMSA conducted a post-accident audit of the company's public awareness programs, NTSB investigator Paul Stancil said that "staff remains concerned about the lack of specific information pipeline operators have given response officials."

U.S. EPA and local employees involved in the Michigan cleanup have said the volume of crude that sank in waterways after the 2010 rupture proved a unique challenge for which they were unprepared. NTSB recommended that PHMSA bring its emergency response planning requirements in line with EPA's and the Coast Guard's, blasting Enbridge as "not sufficiently focused on source control" and untrained "in the use of containment methods," but it did not elaborate on the impact of the specific fuel type that leaked.

Still, that the words "oil sands" did not cross NTSB members' lips does not mean unconventional crude producers can breathe easily following yesterday's report. The board, known for its record in securing the government adaptation of more than 80 percent of its recommendations, nudged PHMSA to take a page from the offshore oil industry after the 2010 Gulf of Mexico spill and make principles of process safety management part of its regulatory approach.

"It's probably time for PHMSA to take on the broader safety management concept," NTSB member Earl Weener said. "Integrity management only goes so far."

Hersman went further, warning that the Michigan spill and a fatal 2010 natural gas rupture in California would not be the last disasters to come before her board unless pipeline companies took a harder look at the safety of their operations.

"With more than 2.5 million miles of pipeline running through this country, enough to circle the Earth 100 times, we have to ask, 'Are these companies representative of others?'" she said. "If the answer is yes, we can expect to be back here again discussing the same issues with a different company. The only unknowns are when, where and how much damage."

"As promised and in response to the NTSB's recommendations to PHMSA related to the Enbridge Line 6B failure, we will continue to take a hard look at internal operations, make improvements, and hold operators accountable when they violate our regulations and put our communities and the environment at risk," PHMSA spokeswoman Jeannie Layson said in a statement.