After a roughly three-year wait for a critical state permit, Enbridge’s Great Lakes Tunnel and Pipe Replacement project for its Line 5 pipeline across the Straits of Mackinac in Michigan has taken a step forward. The Army Corps of Engineers’ permits for the tunnel project would seem to be the only major obstacle standing in the way of construction, but there may well be more challenges ahead. Like a few other oil and gas projects — namely, Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) and Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) — Line 5 has become entangled in controversy, including local opposition worried that a spill would irreparably damage their surroundings and spoil the state’s natural resources. In today’s RBN blog, we take a closer look at the Line 5 project, its next steps, and the opposition it continues to encounter.
In operation for some seven decades, the 645-mile Line 5 (green-edged yellow line in Figure 1 below) can haul up to 540 Mb/d of light crude and NGLs like propane from Canada (with some volumes coming from the Bakken). It’s part of Enbridge’s sprawling Mainline/Lakehead system, which supplies liquids, either directly or indirectly, to refineries and petrochemical plants in Eastern Canada and the U.S. Midwest to make an array of consumer fuels and other products. Line 5 was built to remove oil-carrying tanker traffic from the Great Lakes and Enbridge says the system has averted the need for thousands of tanker trucks and hundreds of rail cars that would otherwise have to traverse Michigan to reach their destinations.
Figure 1. Enbridge’s Line 5 Stretches from Superior, WI, to Sarnia, ON. Source: RBN
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