Farmers, energy interests clash over pipeline plan

Canadian oil company may seek eminent domain power to buy rural land along a 170-mile route to a southern Illinois terminal

MERNA, Ill.


Enbridge Inc., a Canadian conglomerate, and its affiliates want to build a 170-plus-mile stretch of pipeline from just outside Pontiac in Livingston County to Patoka in Marion County that would get the oil to a Downstate terminal. It is a $353 million piece of the company’s $2.45 billion expansion push in the Midwest.

Landowners express safety concerns, citing oil spills along Enbridge pipelines in Wisconsin and an explosion that killed two welders working on a pipeline in northern Minnesota in November. Others simply don’t want to give up rights to land they say has been in their families since the Civil War.

Chicago Tribune