Enbridge Pipeline System Line 55 (Flanagan to Cushing). As of 2013 there were expansion plans for the pipeline system which would, if permitted and fully built, provide the capacity to transport an amount of dilbit from the Athabasca oil sands into the United States and the Gulf Coast equal to that of the Keystone Pipeline. In 1991, Enbridge's Line 3 pipeline spilled 1.7 million gallons of oil in Grand Rapids, MN. This was the largest inland spill of oil ever in U.S. history. Deliberations over construction of a new Line 3 pipeline have drawn resistance from climate justice organizers and Native communities in
Pipeline transport employee in Michigan. Although the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) has standard baseline incident frequencies to estimate the number of spills, TransCanada altered these assumptions based on improved pipeline design, operation, and safety. Whether these adjustments are justified is debatable as these assumptions resulted in a nearly 10-fold decrease in spill estimates. Given that the pipeline crosses 247 miles of the Ogallala Aquifer, or 14.5% of the entire pipeline length, and the 50-year life of the entire pipeline is expected to have between 11 – 91 spills, approximately 1.6 – 13.2 spills can be expected to occur over