Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer ordered a Canadian energy company to shut down an oil pipeline long targeted by activists despite fuel shortages brought on by the cyberattack on the nation’s largest pipeline.
“These oil pipelines in the Straits of Mackinac are a ticking timebomb, and their continued presence violates the public trust and poses a grave threat to Michigan’s environment and economy,” Whitmer’s office said in a statement about the pipeline.
Whitmer gave Enbridge, the company that runs the pipeline known as Line 5, until Wednesday to shut down amid fears that it could spill any day. Enbridge, however, said the pipeline has been in operation for 67 years and has not once had a leak, though a different Enbridge pipeline did spill nearly a million gallons of oil into the Kalamazoo River in 2010.
The company said it has been “working to tunnel beneath the lake bed to further improve the safety of the pipeline” after it was hit by boat and anchor cables in recent years.
The move comes as the East Coast grapples with gas shortages brought on by a cyberattack on the nation’s largest pipeline, the Colonial Pipeline. The attack on the Colonial Pipeline was “the most significant and successful attack on energy infrastructure we know of in the United States,” according to an expert.
Emergency declarations have been declared allowing fuel to be transported by road to the states most affected by the pipeline’s shutdown, with four states already experiencing gas shortages.
Shutting down Line 5 was one of Whitmer’s key campaign promises in her bid to become Michigan’s governor, with the pipeline’s location in the Great Lakes being a source of controversy and scorn from environmentalists.
Enbridge has so far defied Whitmer’s order, continuing to operate the pipeline despite repeated warnings from the governor’s office that doing so “constitutes an intentional trespass” and that the company’s “unlawful” defiance of the governor’s order would be “at its own risk.”
“If the state prevails in the underlying litigation, Enbridge will face the prospect of having to disgorge to the state all profits it derives from its wrongful use of the easement lands following that date,” Whitmer said in a letter to the company.
I really hope Canada thumbs their nose at Bruce Jenner
He doesn’t own Canada , they should remind him of that
Justin Trudeau and Bruce Jenner in the same room – Ewwwwwwwww…. Yuckie !!
That idiot doesn’t realize she has no authority to shut down a pipeline. She is truly stupid and evil, a dangerous combination.