Fortunately for Viking residents and the area’s wildlife, it appears that this accident was contained before it became a full-blown disaster like the one in Arkansas: even so, around 600 gallons of oil are estimated to have contaminated the area. The line that burst goes by the boring-by-design name “Line 2,” but the adjoining “Alberta Clipper” pipeline is also a crucial element of this story. DeSmogBlog has more:

The Viking pump station also receives oil from the Alberta Clipper (aka Line 67 pipeline) that carries heavy crude oil and tar sands bitumen from the Alberta tar sands region south from Hardisty to Superior, Wisconsin and refineries in the midwestern United States. It is unclear whether the product that spilled was tar sands-derived diluted bitumen.

Animal rehabilitation workers clean oil from a goose’s wings after the 2010 Enbridge spill (Photo: US Fish & Wildlife Service/MI DNRE)

The Alberta Clipper is already enormous — carrying nearly 20 million gallons daily to Midwest refineries — but it’s currently under review for a truly giant expansion that would double its capacity and make it the biggest tar sands pipeline in the United States. That’s right — bigger than Keystone 1, Keystone XL, or the Northeast pipeline, capable of pumping 37 million gallons of tar sands oil every day through the Great Lakes region.

You may be asking yourself, “Enbridge, huh? Why is that name so familiar?” Let’s just say this isn’t the company’s first brush with fame: while producing our report Importing Disaster, we discovered that Enbridge was responsible for more than 800 spills in the US and Canada between 1999 and 2010, totaling almost seven million gallons of oil. The biggest of these, of course, was the Kalamazoo River disaster in 2010, when a pipeline linked to the Alberta Clipper burst and sent over a million gallons of tar sands coursing through the community of Marshall, Michigan. That cleanup effort has taken almost three years and nearly a billion dollars, but the Environmental Protection Agency says that it’s still not finished and recently told Enbridge to get back to work to dredge more oil out of the river.

As NWF’s Beth Wallace has detailed, Enbridge isn’t particularly interested in improving its safety record:

Rather than focus on safety and cleanup, Enbridge is recklessly moving ahead with plans to expand their pipeline network in the Great Lakes region and the Northeast, and to double down on high carbon fuel that is proving nearly impossible to clean from Michigan’s waters.

With this latest leak on their resume, it’s fair to ask what more the company can do to earn anything but a slap on the wrist. A good first step would be for the US State Department (the agency in charge of the Alberta Clipper permit) to broaden their study to Enbridge’s entire Great Lakes pipeline system, because expanding Alberta Clipper means that whole system will be exposed to a massive increase in oil volumes — and with it, an even higher chance of disaster.

Hundreds of species were imperiled the last time an Enbridge pipeline burst in the Great Lakes, and we can’t afford a repeat. Speak up for wildlife threatened by Enbridge’s Midwest expansion plans — tell the State Department to stop Alberta Clipper!

Learn more about the Enbridge pipeline boom at NWF.org.

Success, according to Winston Churchill, “is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” By that definition the oil pipeline giant Enbridge, Inc. is surely among the most successful companies in the world today. Enbridge is still picking up the pieces from the one of the biggest industrial accidents in U.S. history, 2010′s million-gallon tar sands spill into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, a debacle that led to record fines and the dubious honor of national name recognition (ask Exxon’s Valdez team how that feels). And now it’s becoming clear that the company is trying to expand its empire from the Midwest to Texas and the coast of Maine, with several projects in the works that could blow rival TransCanada Corp’s “Keystone XL” pipeline project out of the water by comparison.

Enbridge’s Tar Sands Frankenstein

We’ve already taken a look at Enbridge’s covert plans in New England and the Great Lakes region, but they’re jumping into the ring in the Midwest and Texas, too: Enbridge is trying to rig up a network of pipelines to send 35 million barrels per day (about the same amount as KXL) from Canada to the Gulf coast. When you factor in their proposed Northern Gateway pipeline (22 million gallons per day across sensitive habitat in western Canada), Enbridge could increase its tar sands capacity by over 100 million gallons per day, sending the toxic sludge East, South, West, and on around the world.

Map: US Department of State/Peter LaFontaine

Lena Moffitt over at the Sierra Club sketched out Enbridge’s “connect-the-dots” approach, which makes it easier for the company to dodge regulators and avoid a knock-down, drag-out fight like the one TransCanada is in over Keystone.

First, Enbridge is trying to expand the “Alberta Clipper” pipeline, which brings tar sands oil from mines in Alberta across the U.S. border to Wisconsin. Second, they would connect the Alberta Clipper to “Line 61,” which runs from Wisconsin to Illinois. Line 61 would link up to the “Flanagan South” pipeline (which isn’t built yet, but Enbridge is working feverishly to get permitted) that runs from Illinois to Oklahoma. And last, the “Seaway” pipeline would carry that oil from Oklahoma to Houston, TX, where it could be refined and shipped overseas for billions in profits.

The zig-zag route cuts through North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, placing an enormous section of the United States at risk for a spill—including the Mississippi River and hundreds of other waterways.

Enbridge Expansion Vs. Keystone XL

How does this project stack up against the other monster tar sands pipeline? Both top out around 35 million barrels per day, but the Enbridge project has nearly 700 miles more pipe, all of which is prone to leaks and spills.

 Keeping the Monster At Bay

If Keystone XL is the “zombie pipeline” that won’t die, it’s pretty clear the Enbridge expansion is the “Frankenstein” of tar sands. The patchwork, 2,600 mile pipeline is right out of a mad scientist’s dream. (photo: Riccardo Cuppini/flickr)

Fortunately, we can still prevent Enbridge from building its tar sands monster. National Wildlife Federation and other groups are working to prevent the Alberta Clipper expansion, which we believe needs a presidential permit from the U.S. State Department. And we also have a chance to shut down the Flanagan South pipeline before it starts, by building opposition in Kansas, Illinois, and Missouri, where the governors and state agencies can step in. This campaign is in the opening stages, so keep an eye out for news on how you can get involved.

We started off with a quote, so let’s end on one, too—this time from everyone’s favorite Midwestern billionaire, Warren Buffett:

Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.

The United States desperately needs to stop patching leaks.

Urge the U.S. State Department to thoroughly review the risks of tar sands pipeline projects.