For four years MCEA fought Enbridge Energy’s proposals to greatly expand its pipeline infrastructure through Minnesota to deliver high-carbon tar sands crude oil to the Midwest.  Enbridge’s expanded pipelines not only put Minnesota’s prairies, farmlands, wetlands, and streams at risk, they carry the world’s dirtiest fuels responsible for emitting unprecedented amounts of global warming pollution.

Fuel from the tar sands in Alberta, Canada, comes with enormous environmental costs. The process to extract a barrel of tar sands crude oil takes three to five times more energy than that to get the same amount of conventional crude oil. It also involves destructive strip mining techniques that devastate Canada’s boreal forest and peatlands, eliminates important carbon sinks, and endangers wildlife.

Enbridge’s expansion involved the construction of three separate pipelines and required federal as well as state approvals.  As a result, MCEA’s advocacy resulted in multiple legal challenges at both the state and federal levels.  Claims focused primarily on the failure of state and federal regulators to take the required hard look at the environmental consequences of the project before issuing permits.  In addition to pointing to the devastating consequences of increasing access to high-carbon tar sands crude, MCEA challenged whether Enbridge had carried its burden to demonstrate that Midwest demand for crude necessitated the build-out.  MCEA also challenged the route for one of the pipelines, noting that it was constructed through a rare and protected calcareous fen (a peat wetland).

Our legal challenges, both state and federal, failed, and in 2010 Enbridge completed construction of its expansion.

But MCEA’s work on the tar sands helped to educate both the public and regulators about the environmental impacts of this fuel as well as the impacts to Minnesota’s resources from pipelines and pipeline spills and leaks.  In addition, our work was a precursor to efforts by our neighbors to the west who recently won a delay and re-routing of the project Keystone XL pipeline, another expansion designed to carry tar sands crude from Alberta to the Texas shores. 

MCEA Documents

Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief in the US District Court for the Northern District of California San Francisco Division

Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief in the County of Ramsey District Court

Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief in the County of St. Louis District Court

Amended Complaint in the County of Clearwater District Court

First Amended Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief in US District Court District of Minnesota

Media

"Opponents line up against proposed Canada oil pipeline," Minnesota Public Radio, April 22, 2008

“New oil pipeline across Minnesota approved,” Star Tribune, November 25, 2008

“Groups suing over Canadian tar-sands pipeline,” Minnesota Public Radio, September 3, 2009

Outside Documents

Pictures of strip mining for tar sands

The Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Enbridge

Tar sands environmental information from the Pembina Institute  

An overview of tar sands by the Bureau of Land Management

Keystone XL

US Department of State Keystone Pipeline Project