A Bloomberg New Service article that is profoundly biased attempts to smear and denigrate the Rover Pipeline, claiming it is “wreaking environmental havoc” and that the project “has racked up more environmental violations than other major interstate natural gas pipelines built in the last two years.” There is no doubt Rover has had its problems, the most infamous being a 2 million gallon drilling mud spill in a wetland near the Tuscarawas River (see Rover Pipeline Accident Spills ~2M Gal. Drilling Mud in OH Swamp). However, in their zeal to smear Rover, the Bloomberg smarties include a chart comparing Rover with other pipelines, showing the total number of “noncompliance incidents.” Rover, far and away, has the most total number of such incidents–104 to date. However, it’s also the longest pipeline in the comparison. The longer the pipeline, the more chance there is for problems to happen. Just like the longer a new road is, the more problems there will be when building it. When you run the numbers (as MDN has, see below), you find that when you look at how many “noncompliance incidents” there are per mile of pipeline installed, Rover has a better record than most of the others! Thank you Bloomberg for helping us understand just how much BETTER Rover is than many other pipeline projects…
