Holes too big to fix were poked in TransCanada’s narrative that its Keystone XLtar sands pipeline will be the safest pipeline ever built. And questions were raised about how the pipeline company’s financial dealings are set up duringPublic Utilities Commission hearings in Pierre, South Dakota this week where state regulators are tasked to decide if the company is capable of following the rules the state set when the original Keystone pipeline permit was granted in 2010.
A team of lawyers representing Native American tribes and the grassroots group Dakota Rural Action took the upper hand during the proceedings as they tried to have a TransCanada executive’s testimony impeached. The proceedings took on a circus-like atmosphere when TransCanada was unable to prevent lines of questioning it didn’t like.
The commissioners seemed unsure of its own procedures. At one point, Commissioner Gary Hanson expressed frustration that he was having trouble drawing a distinction between TransCanada’s evidence and its advertising statements.
The testimony of TransCanada’s key witness, Corey Goulet, president of Keystone Pipeline Projects, turned out to be an important centerpiece of the hearing.
In pretrial testimony filed by Goulet, he stated the company would have no problem meeting the Commission’s amended conditions.
However, TransCanada’s promises to build safe pipelines have been called into question with several high-profile incidents involving its existing pipelines, particularly the corrosion problems with the Keystone 1 pipeline.
A TransCanada ‘root cause analysis’ document, made available online by DeSmog on Tuesday, shed troubling light on the external corrosion encountered on the Keystone 1.
‘ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS’ DOCUMENT CREATES HEADACHES, QUESTIONS FOR TRANSCANADA
When Goulet was questioned about the significant corrosion discovered on the Keystone 1 pipeline in Missouri in 2012 — when the pipeline’s wall had corroded in one spot to the thickness of a dime — he downplayed the incident, claiming that none of the defects were close to rupturing.
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