A Canadian federal review has revealed that the Northern Gateway project will require substantial protection.
The new proposed endpoint for the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project is the Douglas Channel in, and the latest insurance news estimates show that the pipeline will require nearly $1 billion in coverage.
A joint federal review has released its 199 draft conditions despite the fact that the pipeline has not yet been approved.
The Gateway pipelines have not yet received their approval, but the project is already making insurance news headlines as a joint review panel has proposed 199 different conditions that must be met as a part of the review process. The Northern Gateway Pipelines are a subsidiary of Enbridge Pipelines Inc.
The latest insurance news estimates say that $950 million in total liability coverage will be needed.
The panel’s insurance news proposal has stated that this coverage will be required for any damage that could result from the project, as well as for remediation. This would also include access to a minimum of $100 million inside of 10 days of a large oil spill from the pipeline, in order to provide the required funds to cover the costs that would arise right away, as the claims are still being processed by insurers.
According to the panel’s insurance news statement “The publication of potential conditions is a standard step in the hearing process that is mandated by the courts”. It underscored that this does not mean that any decision has been made to give approval to the project in the first place.
There is a deadline of the end of May for the parties that are involved in order to either comment or to make proposals for more conditions as an element of the written final arguments. Some of the conditions state that the company would be required to perform research on heavy oil behaviors, such as that of diluted bitumen, which is a molasses like product that will travel through one of the two project pipelines.
The pipelines involved in this insurance news would stretch all the way from Bruderheim – located near Edmonton, Alberta – to a Kitimat, British Columbia, tanker port. The first pipeline would be carrying the bitumen, while the second will transport natural gas condensate, which would be used for the dilution of the bitumen.
