Enbridge Is Leading A Successful Oil Spill Cleanup

By Kathryn Wilson

The company is building jobs and moving quickly to right its wrongs.

Last week, 840,000 gallons of oil spilled into Michigan's Talmadge Creek, which feeds into the larger Kalamzoo River. Enbridge Inc.'s 30-inch pipeline, which carries about 8 million gallons of oil per day from Indiana to Ontario, suffered an underground malfunction.

Steve Wuori, executive vice president of Enbridge Liquids Pipelines, said today on a conference call that Enbridge, the Environmental Protection Agency and other government agencies have sent about 730 people to clean up the area. Those 730 people are using 79 vacuum trucks, 19 tanker trucks, 43 boats and more skimmers on the water to gather oil. Add a few news reporters and politicians to that mix, and you've got an accidental economic boom.

"It's a fortunate blessing in an unfortunate situation," said Diane Larkin, director of the Marshall Downtown Development Authority. "Across the board, sales are way up."

Sales are up, and oil is down. Wuori added that Enbridge has collected 10,000 of the 19,500 barrels spilled.

“We are pulling volumes out of the marshy area adjacent to the pipe spill site,” he said. “The containment phase is mostly over, and now the focus is on cleanup.”

Mark Durno of the EPA says that will take months unlike the Deepwater Horizon spill, which critics are estimating effects lasting 20 years.

Logo courtesy of Enbridge Inc.