Owner disputes claim that pipeline is past its prime
The owner of a Portland-to-Montreal oil pipeline is disputing claims from environmentalists that the pipeline is too old.
The Bangor Daily News reported the group Environment Maine has pointed to a 1994 New Hampshire Supreme Court ruling over a property tax dispute between the company and Gorham, N.H., in which the pipeline’s life span is identified as 60 years. It was built in 1950.
Jim Merrill, spokesman for the Portland Pipe Line Corp., said that the New Hampshire documents were taken out of context. The life span figure, he said, refers not to the physical life of the pipeline but to its theoretical depreciation. Emily Figdor, director of Environment Maine, told the newspaper that the figure takes both physical and economic depreciation into account.
The dispute extends a battle over importation of oil sands, or tar sands, from Canada, which environmental activists warn are more corrosive than traditional crude oil and would pose a greater environmental risk. The company has disputed safety concerns over tar sands while maintaining that it has no plans or proposals in the works to reverse the course of its east-to-west pipeline to transport oil sands through Maine for export.
Concern over such a plan arose when Canadian officials granted Enbridge Inc. permission to reverse a 500-mile pipeline from an Alberta refinery to Montreal, in order to carry oil sands east.
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