Canada’s National Energy Board is ordering pipeline operators to post their emergency-response plans online before October 1. The much-criticized federal energy regulator says it is the first in North America to impose the requirement.
“The decision affects all pipeline companies regulated by the [NEB], with a few exceptions for small systems,” Alberta Oil reports, although “companies will be allowed to omit information that might compromise the pipelines’ protection or personal safety and security.”
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According to its website, the NEB regulates 73,000 kilometres of pipelines in Canada, mainly larger-diameter main transmission lines. Another 767,000 kilometres are provincially regulated. Last year, the agency released an interactive map locating a total of 642 “incidents” since 2008, 45 of them major, in pipelines it regulates.
“The NEB continues to set a very high bar for transparency and openness,” CEO Peter Watson asserted in releasing the decision. “Canadians deserve to have this important information.”
“They also deserve to know that the NEB provides strict regulatory oversight of pipeline safety and environmental protection through the entire life of every NEB-regulated pipeline,” Watson added, evidently attempting to rebut an accumulation of criticism from inside and outside the agency that it has become captive to the industry it oversees.
