Michigan spill prompts federal probe of Energy Transfer pipelines’ safety
A 600-gallon crude spill in Sterling Heights, Michigan, led federal regulators at the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration to order Energy Transfer to inventory repairs across all 20,000 miles of its hazardous liquids pipelines nationwide. The failure occurred at a 2010 repair sleeve on a 59-year-old pipeline, the same type of fix that failed last year on another Energy Transfer line and contaminated a Pennsylvania neighborhood's drinking water.
Energy Transfer could not locate original records for the failed sleeve, nor for 11 others along the same pipeline, and was separately missing records for four sleeves on the Pennsylvania line. PHMSA issued the order without advance notice, citing risk of serious harm; Energy Transfer has requested a hearing and declined to answer questions, pointing reporters back to the agency's own paperwork.
Last year, after Energy Transfer and its chairman donated $25 million to a pro-Trump PAC, PHMSA had backed off a narrower records-scrutiny proposal for the Pennsylvania pipeline. The agency is now ordering a broader version of that same scrutiny across the company's entire network, though it has declined to make public the Pennsylvania records already submitted under a prior order, citing an ongoing investigation.
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