by Dan Burns

Jan 3, 2022, 8:30 AM

Enbridge’s mega-con

Well, now.

As Republican state officials insist that Canadian oil pipelines are necessary to lower energy costs for American consumers, the fossil fuel giant operating those pipelines is suddenly citing the climate crisis its products are creating as a rationale for raising those prices higher, according to new documents reviewed by the Daily Poster...

Last month, Ohio Republican governor Mike DeWine — who has raked in nearly $400,000 from fossil fuel industry donors — demanded the Biden administration keep open Enbridge’s controversial Line 5 pipeline, which runs under the Great Lakes, as a way to reduce energy prices.

But Enbridge just dropped a bombshell undercutting that argument: the firm told government regulators that climate change means its tar sands pipeline network only has nineteen years left of economic life. That assertion could allow the company to jack up the tolls that its customers pay to transport oil through its pipelines, because pipeline operators are authorized to recoup their operational costs through rate increases — and a shorter timetable means higher levies.

The episode is a spectacle of what’s been called disaster capitalism: In this case, a fossil fuel behemoth is citing the ecological crisis it is intensifying as a justification to extract more profits from consumers already being crushed by higher prices.
(Jacobin)

And that does indeed include that shiny new Line 3 replacement, right here in Minnesota.

I suppose, to be fair, I have to note that Governor Tim Walz (DFL-MN) hasn’t been out claiming that construction of the Line 3 replacement was necessary in order to reduce energy costs. (At least, I haven’t seen where he has.) He’s just almost totally avoided the whole subject, even as the horror show went on and got done.

I know that just the thought of Enbridge’s poobahs privately chortling over how they played the suckers would be enough to seriously piss me off. As a matter of fact, it does, but I’m not in a position to do anything about it. That’s not true of holders of the state’s highest executive offices. Hopefully if Enbridge does start gouging – and if you don’t think they’ll try, you don’t know anything about Enbridge – AG Keith Ellison will do something about it, even if Walz doesn’t.