Environmental activists plan to ask state regulators today to order Enbridge to disclose any items not covered by its insurance policies for the controversial Line 3 pipeline upgrade in northern Minnesota. Paul Blackburn with Honor the Earth says the Public Utilities Commission required Enbridge to have insurance for oil spills, and he wants to make sure that’s the case. He says, “Enbridge’s biggest spill, which was back in 2010, cost over one billion dollars. It was about 1.2 billion dollars in clean-up costs — and even though Enbridge is a big company, that’s still a lot of money.”
Blackburn points out the state Commerce Department concluded Enbridge’s insurance excludes oil spills, “so that if there was an oil spill, insurance would not cover the costs of the spill. Now Enbridge says it does, but one of ’em has gotta be wrong.”
Enbridge argues its insurance policy provisions are trade secrets protected by Minnesota law.