Opponents of Enbridge's proposed pipeline across northern Minnesota on Thursday petitioned the state utility regulator to reconsider its approval of the $2.6 billion project, citing the recent collapse of the Canadian oil industry.
The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission reapproved the new Line 3 in February, a do-over vote necessary because an appellate court shot down the PUC's blessing of the project's environmental impact statement, or EIS. The PUC later approved a retooled EIS.
Enbridge's new pipeline would replace its aging Line 3, transporting crude from Alberta to Superior, Wis.
Environmental groups — Friends of the Headwaters, the Sierra Club, Honor the Earth and Youth Climate Intervenors — filed for Line 3 reconsideration, as did the Red Lake and White Earth bands of Ojibwe and the Minnesota Department of Commerce.
The Commerce Department, which also opposed the PUC's first Line 3 approval in June 2018, said the commission failed to adequately determine the accuracy of Enbridge's long-term oil demand forecasts.
The environmental groups and tribes made the same claim, but brought in new arguments based on the oil downturn caused in part by the coronavirus pandemic. While the oil industry is enduring trouble around the world, Canada's relatively high-cost oil sands have been hit particularly hard.
"It is not at all clear that either oil demand or North American oil production will rebound any time soon, or even whether they ever will return to pre-pandemic levels," Minnesota-based Friends of the Headwaters said in its reconsideration petition. "We are now in a different world."
Calgary, Alberta-based Enbridge, in a statement, said Thursday's filings reiterate many of the same issues the PUC has previously rejected, including the idea of an inadequate demand forecast.
