How Canada’s pipeline watchdog secretly discusses “ticking time bombs” with industry
The National Energy Board waited eight years after U.S. regulators raised the alarm about substandard materials, finally issuing an emergency safety order in February. At least one Canadian pipeline with defective materials blew up during that period.
Newly-released federal documents show that Texas-based Kinder Morgan and Alberta-based Enbridge are both looking into the use of defective parts purchased from Thailand-based, Canadoil Asia, that recently went bankrupt. But the companies were not immediately able to say where they installed the dodgy parts. It’s a problem that also struck Alberta-based TransCanada, which had defective materials in its own pipelines, including one that blew up in 2013.
NEB finally orders safety review of substandard parts
The review emerged from the emergency safety order issued last February by Canada’s National Energy Board (NEB) when it launched a crackdown on companies using shoddy parts in their pipelines. This crackdown followed a series of failures and warnings that date back to at least 2008 when U.S. regulators noticed that the industry was using substandard materials in pipelines that were cracking apart during testing.