Minnesota regulators on Thursday ordered a broader search for the best pathway to build a major new crude oil pipeline across the state.
The 3-2 decision by the state Public Utilities Commission was a setback for Enbridge Energy, which wants to build the $2.6 billion Sandpiper pipeline through northern Minnesota to carry North Dakota oil to a terminal in Superior, Wis., that feeds refineries across the Midwest.
The commission ordered further study of the environmental benefits and negatives of six entirely different pipeline routes proposed by critics of Enbridge's project. As proposed, the pipeline would cut through the headwaters of the Mississippi River and a vast area of northern rivers, lakes and wetlands.
"The commission stood up for Minnesotans who love their lake country," said Richard Smith, president of the Friends of the Headwaters, a Park Rapids-based group formed last year to oppose the pipeline through that area.
The six alternate routes, proposed by that group and others, slice from west to east across the state on pathways farther south. Most follow existing pipelines or major highways.
The PUC decision to look closer at them doesn't end consideration of Calgary-based Enbridge's preferred route. That Z-shaped path runs east from the North Dakota border into Clearbrook, Minn., where Enbridge owns a major oil terminal. Then it turns south toward Park Rapids following existing crude oil pipelines, and finally heads east to Superior.
Regulators ordered the state Commerce Department's environmental analysis unit to study the environmental implications of the six all-new routes. One of the alternatives, along an existing natural gas pipeline, had been endorsed last month by the PUC for further study. Proponents of the reroute proposals say they will largely avoid the state's lakes region.
But Enbridge says those pathways would be longer, more costly and potentially pose their own environmental risks. Most of them don't end in Superior, where Enbridge intends to deliver oil.