Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Canada energy regulator lax on pipelines: watchdog

Canada energy regulator lax on pipelines: watchdog

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Canada's appetite regulator has unsuccessful to make adequate checks to safeguard tube operators repair reserve problems unclosed during their comforts and keep puncture procedures adult to date, a country's Commissioner of a Environment and Sustainable Development pronounced on Tuesday.

In a news to Parliament that raises critical questions about a reserve of relocating dangerous products by pipelines and along highways, Commissioner Scott Vaughan also pronounced a federal sourroundings ministry has been messy in enforcing regulations and delayed to understanding with shortcomings in training of officers.

Vaughan expelled a news as a National Energy Board and

environmental regulators ready to control hearings into Enbridge Inc's C$5.5 billion ($5.3 billion) Northern Gateway Pipeline to a Pacific Coast from a Alberta oil sands. The plan is against by environmentalists and many aboriginal groups, partly due to fears of tube ruptures and oil spills along a track and in coastal waters.

The NEB regulates 71,000 km (44,000 miles) of oil and gas pipelines in Canada, some-more than half of them reduction than 30 years old, though scarcely a third built between 30 and 50 years ago. More than 12 percent are some-more than half a century old.

The commissioner singled out as deficient a board's correspondence verification, or creation certain that regulated pipelines and other comforts are being bound once problems are identified.

He remarkable that 29 of a representation of 45 correspondence activities had identified problems with systems and processes directed during ensuring safety, tube firmness and environmental protection. In 93 percent of those, Vaughan found no justification that a house had followed adult to make certain a concerns had been addressed.

"As a consequence, we have resolved that a house has not exercised a pivotal component of regulatory monitoring: ensuring that identified weaknesses have been corrected by a regulated companies," he wrote.

In addition, a news pronounced another NEB responsibility, creation certain companies' procession manuals for emergencies such as oil spills and gas leaks are adult to date, is also lacking.

It forked out that usually 3 of 30 manuals complicated contained justification that deficiencies had been communicated to a companies and usually one showed that a regulator had checked to make certain that problems had been corrected.

Vaughan also criticized deficient coercion of environmental laws by a sovereign sourroundings method and what he referred to as "significant shortcomings" in a training of sourroundings officers to understanding with offences.

"We resolved that a coercion module was not good managed to sufficient make correspondence with a Canadian Environmental Protection Act ... and safeguard that threats to Canadians and their sourroundings from wickedness are minimized," he wrote.

($1=$1.03 Canadian)

(Reporting by Jeffrey Jones; Editing by Peter Galloway)


News referensi http://news.yahoo.com/canada-energy-regulator-lax-pipelines-watchdog-223823793.html Also On shopping

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