Lessons learned from the oil spill: The Company

This is the third in a series of blog posts looking back at the Kalamazoo River oil spill that took place on July 26, 2011.

Like just about everybody else in town, I’d never heard the name Enbridge before July 27, when I found their name in the Enquirer’s coverage of the spill that morning and went to Wikipedia. Consulting the Internet Oracle gave me little information, other than they were based in Canada, owned the world’s largest oil pipeline, and some corporate details. I checked the listing of spills they’d experienced and saw that the largest was about 1/3 of the amount reported in the newspaper article, so I contented myself with updating their entry with the information on the spill and a link to the story, before I slung my camera and my anger over my shoulder and left for the river.

It was there, at the worksite on Jackson Street (coincidentally directly behind the the house my ex and I bought when we moved her from the Boston area) that I first saw vehicles with the logo which was about to become very familiar to all of us.

Because none of us knew anything about the company, a lot of assumptions were made and wrong information was presented. Much of that information is still considered fact, even though it is entirely inaccurate.

At the time of the spill, I was not prepared to mount an investigation of the company. Not because of lack of ability, but lack of time. The spill happened in the middle of our busy season at the Shopper News, and I had a very full calendar of events to cover. After the first few whirlwind days of press conferences, visits by the governor and regular trips to the river, which I only had time to photograph and upload to facebook galleries, and a few blog postings that only showed what was going on, but not “the rest of the story”.

It wasn’t until after the closing ceremonies of the International Hap Ki Do tournament that I began doing my homework in earnest. I started with their website, which provided me with a lot of information about the company, and I branched out from there.

And then I ran across the company’s logo in an unexpected place. On numerous vehicles parked outside Commerce Pointe, where I’d come to follow up on a tip that a team of class action attorneys had set up shop.

I wondered why they were there, but only until I saw the sign just outside the back doors.

I wasn’t sure what a “Community Center” was, but I was going to find out. The halls were filled with the Mermaid Affair exhibit celebrating the purity of water, and I marveled briefly at the juxtaposition of the company’s presence in the same building, until I found the entrance  to the Community Center.

I still find it entertaining that the new Battle Creek Enquirer newsroom is the former Enbridge Community Center. I find it so because they complained that they were not allowed entrance to the place.

I just walked right in and introduced myself. I was welcomed, given a tour of the place, and invited to come back again the next day once things were more organized.  Although it wasn’t easy to juggle my visits around my event coverage schedule, I did. Because of the constant turnover in people being rotated in and out of the Community Centers located in Battle Creek and Marshall,  I became a regular in order to develop  sources in the company. 

I learned a few important things about Enbridge during those first few days.

• Enbridge is not an “oil company”.  Their business is the transportation of energy, including natural gas and various types of oil.  They are better described as a pipeline company than an oil company.
• Enbridge is not one company.  Enbridge Inc. is based in Calgary and Enbridge Energy Partners is based in Houston.  There are other members of the Enbridge family of companies, but the two we deal with in relation to the spill are these companies.  Enbridge Inc. owns the pipeline north of the US/Canada Border and Enbridge Energy Partners owns the pipeline south of the border.

Over the next few months, I learned a lot more, and I’m still continuing to learn about the company.

Did you know that in addition to owning the world’s largest oil pipeline, they also own the world’s largest photovoltaic solar energy generation facility? You do now. It’s in Sarnia, Ontario.

My investigation was still pretty basic until a chance meeting at the Community Center with a man I’d nicknamed Dennis the Menance.  Steve Wuori, then the Executive VP of Liquids Pipelines, was friendly and receptive so I told him I was interested in finding out more about the culture of the company. He told me what the company’s culture was like, and I didn’t believe a word of it.  Nobody actually lives their company’s mission statement.

So, to get even with him for lying to me, I decided to go balls out and do a full investigation of the company, including the culture, the claims process, the history, the people and their leadership.

And I did.  Thanks to the fact that the people and their leadership took a leap of faith and trusted me with unprecedented access, and gave me whatever information I asked for.

I had the opportunity to get to know a number of middle managers and executives in the company, not just as sources, but as people. Although my friendship was faked in the beginning to engender their trust, in time it became real. This allowed me to see the character of the employees of the two companies we know as Enbridge. 

They are an open and forthright bunch, with a strong commitment to community and a volunteer spirit. My kind of people.

An example of how astonishingly transparent and  trusting they are is that I have had unsupervised access to the very last person they should have allowed me (or any other reporter) anywhere near without what’s known as a “handler”-someone on the staff whose job is to deal with the media and the public.  Their CEO and President Pat Daniel, who is seen below surrounded by my colleagues in print, radio and television.

Admittedly, the first time was an accident, the staff person who was to accompany him overslept and missed a community event that I arranged for him to take part in, a “coffee” hosted by Calhoun County Commissioner Jim Haadsma. After the event, I had my first one-on-one with the gentleman from Canada. Although I didn’t exactly warm up to him that first day, in time we became friends.

Yes, I said “I arranged”.  Before I got unsupervised access to him, he gave me the unheard-of privilege to put events on his calendar, which nearly caused his handler to have a stroke when he offered it to me.  I nearly had one too, but I jumped at the chance.  And then I started spiking the punch and getting to know him, along with my friends and family whose punch got spiked.

My Progressive friends have very interesting views on corporations.  They see them as evil entities, filled with greed and bent on destruction.  They don’t think well of the CEO’s who run them. They don’t think they should be allowed large salaries or corporate jets.

The people who believe these things, I’ve found, have never worked for a large corporation. In many cases, they haven’t even worked for a small one. I have.  Which is why I don’t agree with my Progressive friends when it comes to their opinions of corporations.  They are not based on real-life experience in the trenches of the corporate world where full-contact office politics are the norm.  Or on the understanding of how much a corporate jet can save in travel costs.

I assumed (and we all know what assume does) that Enbridge Inc. and Enbridge Energy Partners were no different from any other corporation I’ve worked for.  I learned that they are not.  Steve Wuori didn’t lie to me.  They do live their corporate culture. They are unusual companies, with an unusual culture and unusual employees and leadership.

I also learned a lot about their CEO.  I’d made some assumptions about him, too, which were in agreement with how my Progressive friends sterotype CEO’s.  Like them, I’d never had the opportunity to find out what someone in that posistion was really like.  I learned another valuable lesson about the company over time:  I was very wrong about him until I began to extrapolate what he was like from the characters of the people who worked for him. I was right. 

He is a truly remarkable individual, who led the company through a crisis, trusted the last person he should have trusted, and proved to be a stellar leader.  This is one of the reasons that I wrote my book.  I wanted people to be able to see what I saw from my unique angle. It is my memoir and my story, but it is also the story of the company, and a rare portrait of a corporate leader handling serious adversity.  Although he is a very down-to-earth man, it has been a truly humbling and awe-inspiring experience for me.  And he was nice enough to write an afterword for me.

And then the day came early this spring when Pat showed up at the Brownstone for a meeting with me, accompanied by Steve Wuori, and made me an offer.

I didn’t have to think about it, I’d already decided that if I was ever going to go back to my old career specializing in Internet Communications in the corporate world, there were only two companies I’d ever work for.  And both of them are known as Enbridge.

It was because of what I learned about the company, the people, the leadership and their CEO that I accepted his offer and joined the Enbridge Inc. Social Media Team as a contract consultant.

I am truly blessed because of my investigation into the company, I ended up with great friends, and a great job for a great company run by a great man.

Laura Adams

Lessons learned from the oil spill: The Community

This is the second in a series of blog posts looking back at the Kalamazoo River oil spill that took place on July 26, 2011.

As a member of one of the communities affected by the oil spill, I learned a lot about my friends, my neighbors, and myself  through our reactions to what happened.  Each of us has our own story.

Depending on our character and personality, we responded differently. One of my friends became a very vocal protester, others succumbed to hysteria. Some were penitent as they realized that they too were culpable because of our culture’s enormous appetite for hydrocarbons.

I responded according my character and personality.  I was angry, murderous and vengeful.  Although I work very hard at “love thy neighbor’, it means overcoming my foul, hateful temper.  Continuously.  I have a bad habit of responding first with fury, then I remember that my motto is, “don’t get mad, get even.”

Anger clouds reason, making it hard to think rationally.  Anger also part of the path to the dark side, just past fear. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.  Letting go is just kind of difficult. 

At the first press conference, I got some targets for my hatred, which happened to be Pat Daniel, the CEO and President of Enbridge Inc., and Steve Wuori, now President of Liquids Pipelines for Enbridge Inc.

At the second press conference, I gave them nicknames so I didn’t have to even think of them by name.

I joke about it now, but I hated those two so much that I actually prayed for God to smite them with giant lightning bolts. Clearly God knows better to listen to me when it is just my anger talking.

Obviously, I got over it.

I’m good at getting angry, I’m not as good at staying angry.  And I don’t like being angry.  I’m so much more effective when I’m rational than irrational. 

So, after a couple of weeks of rage, I got over my anger and moved along the pathway to healing myself from what had happened.  I moved on to bargaining, which manifested itself in a very particular way-investigating the company, which involved considerable deception to make sure nobody found out what I was up to. Try that when you are frothing at the mouth angry.

I went through depression after that, and that’s when I decided to write my book.  It really helped me to work through things.  It was therapy. As a result, I eventually came to accept not only what had happened, but the people who had come into my life and become value friends as a result of it.

As a result of what happened, some really remarkable people have come into my life, I’ve picked up few new skills, and become an unusual ambassador. I’ve also gotten a new job with a company that is very different from most.

I’ll never be happy about what had happened, but at some point you must accept that you cannot undo the past. Monitoring the stories of a number of other spills over the past year, I have learned a lot about the industry.

As a result of what I learned, as a member of this community I am thankful that of all the companies for our community to have had to deal with under the circumstances of a pipeline incident, the companies we are dealing with with are Enbridge Inc. and Enbridge Energy Partners.  Compared to ExxonMobil and some of the other companies who have had spills, including the recent incident involving the Yellowstone River, we local residents have been treated extremely, unbelievably well. 

Admittedly, there are people who are going to hold grudges against the company forever, but Enbridge Inc. and Enbridge Energy Partners have gone way beyond what appears to be the norm in that industry to respond to the spill and to us.  Don’t take my word for it, do your own homework and you’ll see the same thing I did.

All you can do is learn to live with the past. If you want to torment yourself with anger over it, that is always your choice.  Good luck with that.

I also learned about another choice.  It is up to us whether crises and disasters bring out the best in us or the worst in us.

The volunteers who sprang into action after the oil spill and the recent devastating storm, chose to let these things bring out the best in them.  The angry people, of which I was once counted as a member, let it bring out the worst in us. 

If someone had told me a year ago, when I was consumed with rage and hatred for Steve Wuori and Pat Daniel that this morning I would have started my day with Pat, having a friendly as well as serious meeting over coffee at the Griffin, in what has become a routine for his visits here, not only would I not have believed them…I’d have punched them. Hard.  With a brick. Seriously.

But, it’s true.  Somehow, in spite of all the reasons it should not have happened, the CEO of the major player in the energy industry responsible for the spill and a small-town reporter and disgruntled local resident found some common ground and became friends.  That is a rare thing.  And I consider his friendship a blessing. I have learned a tremendous amount from him. Especially about leadership.

And it all started with him asking my help in getting to know the community better.  It also gave me the chance to get to know him better and find out what sort of person he is.  He is a remarkable individual and someone I have come to respect greatly.  Part of that is due to his commitment to community here and everywhere else the company does business.

You don’t think I could be friends with anyone who isn’t a Village Thinker, do you?

Laura Adams

Lessons learned from the Oil Spill: The Media

This is the first in a series of blog posts looking back at the Kalamazoo River oil spill that took place on July 26, 2011.

The day after the oil spill was the day the community found out what happened.  I’d only been working for the Battle Creek Shopper News for 3 months.  I’d been reporting community news here on the Village Thinker for a couple of years before that, but I was entirely unprepared for my first big news event.  But then, I specialize in community news: local festivals, community events, live music and church happenings.  Otherwise known as “soft news”.

On July 27, 2010, I was scheduled to attend and cover the Michigan Prisoner Re-Entry Initiative’s annual luncheon at noon.

At 4:00, I attended my first press conference. 

 Welcome to hard news.

Over the next few months I learned a great deal about the energy industry. I also learned some hard lessons about hard news. 

I learned that you have to be careful when you publish a story, because even though you have the facts, you may not have all the facts, or one of those facts may change.  All it takes is one datapoint to change and the whole story changes.  It is vital to publish follow-up stories that keep the story correct.

I’ve also learned that it is true that people believe what they hear first.  Even with follow-up stories, that doesn’t always change.  There are people who still believe that the MSDS for the oil in the pipeline said that there was supposed to be a mandatory 1000 foot evacuation area around the spill site, even though Jared Werskma of Channel 3 corrected that mistake when he investigated the story.  There wasn’t even any excuse for that mistake to be made, because the site plan on the EPA’s web site, dated July 29, 2010, contains the MSDS for the oil in the pipeline.

It’s clear there is still some confusion, as evidenced in a comment made on an article published by the Enquirer on July 24, by a user who sounds very authoritative, but is wrong on all counts:

“Actually it would be impossible to pump Bitumen through the pipeline that ruptured as it is not heated. Bitumen is liquid asphalt which needs to be at least 250 degrees to be liquified and able to be pumped. What was in the pipeline was a residual fuel oil used in industry.”

Bitumen is not heated to the point of becoming a liquid in order to be transported through a pipeline. That doesn’t even make any sense, because it would mean that the entire length of the pipeline would need to be maintained at a steady temperature of 250 degrees-even in the middle of a Canadian winter. It is diluted, usually with condensate which is liquified natural gas.  What was in the pipeline was “Cold Lake Blend”: bitumen, diluted with condensate. 

I don’t know where the user came up with the rumor of it being a residual fuel oil used in industry, but there have been a number of residents who have come up with statements like that over the past year.

 I also learned that the media will create drama in order to improve their stories appeal to audiences.  I watched them as they intentionally played up the supposedly villainous nature of the company, and the innocent victimhood of some local residents.  This culminated in CBS News lying to one of the corporate spokespeople about the contents of a letter sent to the company by a government agency. 

I learned along with that lesson that bias is okay when it is against those who have been cast as the villains of the drama, but the minute you try and be fair and balanced and tell the other side of the story through their eyes, things are said.  But it’s okay for reporters to dress up as oil spill cleanup workers and mock the entire story.  I don’t agree with that.  I prefer to tell the rest of the story.

I also learned that media can be very sloppy and lazy when it comes to accuracy and doing their homework.  Admittedly, not everyone has the opportunity to invest large amounts of time in learning about a company and an industry, but if after a year they still haven’t learned that Enbridge isn’t an oil company…But then most of them also haven’t learned that although there is one pipeline, there are two companies.  Enbridge Inc. is based in Canada and it owns the pipeline north of the US/Canada border. Enbridge Energy Partners is based in Texas and it owns the pipeline south of the border.

It can be a little confusing as I’ve met people with titles at both companies, coupled with the fact that the person who stood up and served as the face of the company was Pat Daniel, the CEO of Enbridge Inc., not either of the Principal Executive Officers of Enbridge Energy Partners.  I’ve learned he’s just that sort of person.

The main lesson I learned is that I prefer reporting soft news to reporting hard news, although I do like a good soft angle on a hard story, such as the stories I wrote about the DeafLink Culture and Communications  club touring the oil spill sites, the family evacuated to McCamly Plaza hotel who adopted the Korean Hap Ki Do exhibition team, and the Undercover Boss story about the anonymous man named Steve who was the receptionist at the Battle Community Center, when he wasn’t serving as an Executive Vice President of Gas Transport for Enbridge Inc, or the Principal Executive Officer for Enbridge Energy Partners.  He’s now the CEO of a gold mining corporation and his replacement was one of the people who processed claims for residents last year.

My favorite thing, though, is investigation.  I spent months investigating Enbridge Inc. and Enbridge Energy Partners. I’ll be discussing that in a later post in this series. 

Laura Adams

Canada caught in the act of Photoshopping ministers together

Usually sharp-eyed bloggers catch countries like Syria or North Korea altering photos badly.  Leaders will not cast shadows or will appear to float.

This time it wasn’t some oppressive totalitarian regime (North Korea is the Best Korea!) but peaceful Canada that tried fooling readers with a picture of two of their ministers allegedly sharing a laugh that’s clearly shopped.  I can tell by the pixels and from seeing a few ‘shops in my time.

The offending picture appeared on the CBC website:

Joe Oliver, minister of natural resources, right, and Ron Liepert, Alberta minister of energy, share a laugh before the start of their meetings in Kananaskis, Alta., on Tuesday. (Jeff McIntosh/Canadian Press)

What makes this obviously photoshopped is:

1. The light is wrong for them to be out in the bright sunlight of the background image, and both of them are lit differently from each other. 

2. There is a weird black shadow between the shoulders of the two men, that’s an artifact of the editing process.  Someone made a mistake when removing the man in the suit from his original background

3. The men aren’t in the same scale, unless the man in the red shirt is very oddly proportioned. Although no taller than the other man, his head is obviously twice the size of his.

4. They both look like cardboard cutouts.

Here is a picture from the Vancouver Sun of the two men that was taken together the same day as the photo above, showing that their heads are the same size.

Federal Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver and Alberta Energy Minister Ron Liepert presented a national approach to energy in Kananaskis Village Tuesday, emphasizing a focus on streamlined regulation that promises to help advance major projects to boost Canada’s energy exports.
Photograph by: TODD KOROL, REUTERS

Remember children, just because you can do things in Photoshop, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.  You may not be able to tell, but somebody else will.  And lulz will be had.

Laura Adams

Not all spinoffs are succesful

For every Laverne & Shirley, there is a Joanie Loves Chachi.

My Focus on Energy blog has been rolled back into the Village Thinker. 

Although the energy industry has been very interesting lately, not only did the spinoff blog not attract enough traffic to justify its existence as a separate entity, but the traffic I did attract was either looking for a place to spread their own message, or they were trolls.

I’ve reposted the Comment Policies page, and I will repeat here that I will not approve any comments that are off-topic, ad hominem attacks, or anything else that violates the rules of appropriate online conduct.  And for anyone looking to use my blog as a way of spewing their lies, propaganda, or anything else, the answer is no, start your own blog.

I’ll be doing some housekeeping, but energy related pieces will be filed under the category “Focus on Energy” going forward.

Laura Adams

Enbridge to replace additional sections of Line 6B in 2011 and 2012

Enbridge Energy Partners, L.P. announced additional capital investments today, to replace portions of its Line 6B pipeline system that spans from Griffith, Indiana, through Michigan to the international border at the St. Clair River. This program will include replacement of approximately 75 miles of the pipeline in various locations in Indiana and Michigan, at an estimated cost of $286 million. These costs will be recovered through the Facilities Surcharge Mechanism (“FSM”) that is part of the systemwide rates of the Lakehead system.

Earlier this year, the Partnership completed the replacement of 14 segments, totaling 9,000 feet,of Line 6B in southeastern Michigan and installed a new segment of pipeline under the St. Clair River, which will be operational by late June.

his latest investment includes the replacement of five miles of pipeline immediately downstream from two pump stations in Indiana, three pump stations in Michigan, and replacement of 50 miles of pipeline downstream of the Stockbridge station and delivery terminal northwest of the Detroit metro area. Subject to regulatory approvals, the new segments of pipeline will be installed in 2012 and will be staged to be placed in-service in consultation with, and to minimize impact to, refiners and shippers served by Line 6B crude oil deliveries.

The $286 million expenditures are in addition to the $210 million integrity expenditures on Line 6B recently announced by the Partnership for the year 2011, of which $175 million will be recovered through the FSM.

Kalamazoo River to begin the process of reopening

I spoke to a local source (not someone from Enbridge) today and the Kalamazoo River will be partially re-opening soon.  Not the entire river, and there will be some limitations, including:

-airboat traffic will still be a hazard so not all areas cleared will be open for boating while the cleanup is still ongoing

-some areas that have been cleared for opening because they have been determined to be free of contamination, such as Historic Bridge Park, will not be accessible right away until the newly planted grass is established and the parking lot is replaced. 

Laura Adams

Advice Dog spinoffs: What is this, I don’t even

 I found this in the foul depths of the Interewebs today.

It is a forced meme Advice Dog spinoff referencing the Northern Gateway pipeline controversy.

It is wrong on so many levels. 

But it’s going to take some explaining to show why and how it is so wrong and on what levels.

In the beginning, there was a picture of a puppy named Boba Fett, and in the summer of 2008 last Thursday someone put a rainbow background behind the puppy’s head and put two pieces of unrelated advice on the image (this is called an image macro, btw) and posted it to /b/ on 4chan and lo, the Advice Dog meme was born.

It was original content  only for as long as it took the members of the forum to fire up the nearest photo editing program and put new bad advice on the image and post them.  Five minutes, tops.

In order to speed up the process, someone with some skillz created the Advice Dog Meme Generator, which allowed people to just visit their website (www.memegenerator.net) and type in the desired text and instantly create their own.

It didn’t take long for the spinoffs to be created, each a piece of original content for one shining moment before adding to the heap of unoriginal crap.  Some of the spinoffs proved at least or even more popular than the original.  Each spinoff has their own personality.

Philosoraptor asks those deep and meaningful questions we all seek the answers for.

Success Kid is always #winning.

Foul Bachelor Frog is living the dream.

Socially Awkward Penguin, there’s a little of him in all of us.

Youth Mentor Bear spends his life avoiding Chris Hansen.

Courage Wolf is Advice Dog on steroids.

Insanity Wolf is Courage Wolf on crack.

Y U NO Guy notices those things that just don’t quite make sense and wants to know why.

Hipster Kitty doubts your indie cred and listens to vinyl while drinking PBR.

(You have no idea how long it took to find clean versions of all of these memes).

My facebook friends will recognize my recent avatar: Scene Wolf

And many, many, more.  In fact, they continue to proliferate like maggots on rotting meat, fouling up the tubes with their unoriginal and unfunny content. 

I admit to adding to the problem.  I created a few from existing images, and also made one or two of my own spinoffs, most recently Advice Honey Badger. I never forced them, though. I prefer that they not be mainstream.

And that brings us back to Chill Out Lemur. He’s a new meme (not yet mainstream enough for Know Your Meme) and thinks you are overexcited and wants you to be cool and chill out.

And somewhere in Canada…where milk comes in bags, someone went to memegenerator.net and created a Chill Out Lemur meme telling the people who are  protesting against Enbridge to chill out.

And that’s just wrong on levels.

Srsly.

Yes Men net a bigger fish with latest “prank”

Although often viewed as “merry pranksters”, the Yes Men have a habit of targeting the media and making them look like idiots in order to get their message out.  As part of their hoaxing the media procedure, they build very authentic looking fake websites, which integrate links to the real websites they are spoofing.

Most recently, the Canadian media was targeted in an anti-pipeline anti-Enbridge campaign, which caused a couple of waves of stories to be posted on a group of affiliated newspaper sites across the country as the reporter realized he’d been tricked, and then received a new set of false information.  In that case it was only one reporter, who was syndicated across multiple newspapers, who got caught.

Because you can’t actually get rid of something that’s been posted online because of the fact that it gets archived, they’ve published the stories on their own website, happily crowing about their victory over the media.

Enquirer reporter Sarah Lambert made some snarky comments in her blog about the quality of journalism in the Great White North, “The media is supposed to be a beacon of truth for the public, not an enormous version of the childhood game telephone. First rule of journalism, people: Never, NEVER regurgitate a press release without at least talking to someone! But maybe they do things differently up in Canada…”

Their latest campaign included sending the Associated Press a fake story about General Electric deciding to repay a multi-billion dollar tax refund to the Dept. of Treasury in response to criticism.

According to the Associated Press, “The fake release, which was emailed to the AP, included a GE logo and a link to a website designed to look like GE’s website. The AP published a 90-word story based on the release. Thirty-five minutes later, AP withdrew the story and advised its customers that the story was a hoax.”

The story proliferated far more widely than the anti-pipeline story, not surprisingly because wire copy from the AP is utilized by a great many news outlets (including our own Enquirer) to provide non-local news coverage, and is assumed (hmmm…) to be fact-checked, well-written, and reliable.  In other words, “a beacon of truth for the public”.

I found this story on associatedcontent.com, which also includes a video aired by the Financial News Network. “GE uses a series of foreign tax havens that the company says are legal that helped lead to a large tax benefit for the 2010 tax year.The Fairfield, Connecticut based company said it plans to phase out tax havens over the next 5 years and said it will create one job in the U.S. for each new job it creates overseas.”

The story of how they fell for the Yes Men’s hoax has also proliferated widely.

And it all goes to show you, that regardless of Ms. Lambert’s commentary on the state of the media in Canada, we do things exactly the same in the US as they do there.  Only on a grander scale.  More than one reporter fell for this story.

Laura Adams

Corporate confusion causes reporting error

Although the news isn’t good, there was inaccurate information published by the Enquirer today.  It has also appeared on other news outlets as well.

They said, “Enbridge, Inc., the company responsible for the 843,000-gallon Kalamazoo River oil spill last July, reported a net loss for the first time in at least five years.”

And I was confused, because I’ve been going over each quarter’s income statements, downloading all the documents and listening to their CEO and other members of their leadership team explain them.  And I saw no losses.  In fact, Enbridge Inc., is about to split their stock (2 for 1) and has been enjoying double-digit growth, and paying healthy dividends to stockholders.

And they posted a link to the 2010 Annual Review of Enbridge Energy Partners.  Derp.

That’s when the light went on.  I’ve learned much about the corporate structure of Enbridge over the past months.  And the whole thing is really confusing.  Especially when you get into the executive leadership team.

I have learned that Enbridge isn’t a single corporate entity. 

Enbridge Inc. (NYSE: ENB) is based in Canada and they own the Canadian part of the pipeline. 

Enbridge Energy Partners, (NYSE: EEP) is based in Houston, TX, and they own the American part of the pipeline.  They are an indirect subsidiary, and their financials are separate from the parent company.  There is also Enbridge Energy Company (US), and Enbridge Energy Management (NYSE: EEQ).

 Which is why my collection of business cards from my various contacts in the US and Canada all have the same logo, but not the same business name.  Lyle works for Enbridge Pipelines Inc., based in Edmonton, Alberta, but a number of other people work for Enbridge Energy Company, based either in Superior, WI or Houston, TX.  Pat Daniel’s card says that he works for Enbridge Inc., based in Calgary, Alberta.

It gets even more confusing because some people have more than one title with more than one company. 

To simplify, there are two basic companies, let’s call them Enbridge Canada and Enbridge US.  Enbridge US is the subsidary company responsible for the oil spill which posted the net loss for the first time in at least 5 years. Enbridge Canada (more properly known as Enbridge Inc.) is the parent company which did not post a net loss for this year. 

Although it can be reported accurately that Enbridge Inc. is responsible for the oil spill, depending on how you look at it, especially as it was the CEO of that business entity who took responsibility for the spill, it cannot be accurately reported that Enbridge Inc. reported a loss.  That company reported a net income for the year of nearly a billion dollars.

This may seem like a lot of overly pedantic nitpickery, something I”m notorious for.  However, it’s more than that. 

If the media is not careful and inaccurately reports the profits or losses of a publicly traded company, it can adversely affect their stock price as well as their reputation.

Especially if a media outlet (WTVB in Branch County in this case) makes a statment like, “The stockholders can’t be happy, but for the first time in 5 years, Enbridge Incorporated lost money last year. After spending nearly 600 million on the cleanups to remediate the massive oil spill in Calhoun county, and a smaller cleanup in Romeoville, Illinois, the firm wound up 137 million dollars in the red.”

That’s actually worse, because although that particular line item may be “in the red” (a negative amount) and therefore negative for that year, it doesn’t mean that the company itself (Enbridge Inc. or Enbridge Energy Partners) is “in the red”.   

I know it’s difficult to understand, this is why when I first saw this story, I emailed the media contact attached to the information released to explain the numbers to me, and review the corporate structure with me to make sure that my information was correct and accurate.  Thanks to Larry Springer, and apologies to Mr. Maki for not being in the office when you two called me back.

Laura Adams

P.S. None of these entities is an  ”oil company”.  According to Larry, they are best described as “energy transportation companies”, although they do engage in power generation, which is all greener energy (wind, solar, fuel cell and geothermal).