Vermont environmentalists are sounding the alarm: Groups such as 350.org, the National Wildlife Federation and the Natural Resources Defense Council are warning that new Canadian regulatory filings suggest a Canadian oil company may have plans to transport tar sands oil through Vermont to the Maine coast.

The Canadian company Enbridge Oil applied in November to the Canadian National Energy Board to reverse the flow of oil on a pipeline between Ontario and Quebec. The reversal would provide a route for exporting tar sands oil from the Canadian west. Environmentalists suspect that it’s just a matter of time before Enbridge looks to the Portland Montreal Pipe Line, which cuts through a corner of the Northeast Kingdom on its way to Maine, to extend the route for tar sands oil.

VTDigger.com is taking a detailed look at these concerns — which, so far, Enbridge denies: 

Enbridge spokesman Graham White said the purpose of the company’s move to reverse the pipeline is to bring “Canadian light crude to Canadian refineries.” He said the company would be better served by focusing on its Canadian refining processes instead of exporting tar sands oil to foreign ports.

“The economics [of exporting through the East Coast] just don’t make sense, quite frankly,” White said.

But that doesn’t comfort David Stember, 350.org’s tar sands campaign coordinator for the eastern region. “It’s obviously to their advantage not to show their hand until they need to,” Stember told Seven Days late last week. “That’s strictly a process of trying to minimize the damage.” 

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Kathryn Flagg was a Seven Days staff writer from 2012 through 2015. She completed a fellowship in environmental journalism at Middlebury College, and her work has also appeared in the Addison County Independent, Wyoming Public Radio and Orion Magazine.

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