Editor:
Enbridge clearly shows its cynical bottom line when it comes to paying its executives bonuses. Pat Daniels, Enbridge CEO, is to receive $1.3 million dollar in bonus on top of his base salary, stock options, retirement benefits, saving plans, perquisites (payments in addition to a regular salary) and medical and dental coverage. This is given to him in spite of his company’s biggest oil spill in the American Midwest, (1 million gallon of sticky tar sand oil in a tributary of the Kalamazoo River last July) and potential criminal charges for his company for having repeatedly refused to fix identified defects on the line.
Last August, the US Department of Transportation (DOT) fined Enbridge $2.4 million for violations of federal pipeline safety regulations for an incident on Nov. 28, 2007, in which two Enbridge employees were killed. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration’s investigation found that Enbridge failed to safely and adequately perform maintenance and repair activities, clear the designated work area from possible sources of ignition, and hire properly trained and qualified workers.
Enbridge’s lack of ethics and integrity is in line with similar companies like Transocean, the owners of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig which blew up in the Gulf of Mexico a year ago, killing 11 workers and spilling 200 million gallon into the ocean. Transocean gave its top executives bonuses for achieving the “best year in safety performance in our company’s history” ! BP is doing the same thing awarding more than $150,000 to two of their top executives while Tony Hayward, former BP executive, received an $18 million severance package.
It seems, for oil executives, the more you spill, the more you destroy, the more you cheat, the more you get …. The rest of us then have to live with the catastrophes they cause. If the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline project is allowed to go through, we’re likely to be next. Watch for what their CEO will get after they destroy our rivers and our coast…
Josette Wier,
Smithers, B.C.
