Read this story in TheTyee.ca by Andrew Nikiforuk on the big pay raises Enbridge executives received following the most costly pipeline spill in North American history. (July 12, 2012)
Just months after Enbridge caused the costliest onshore pipeline spill in U.S. history, the board of directors for Calgary-based Enbridge rewarded senior executives with pay raises in 2010.
According to Enbridge’s 2011 “management information circular” the company’s 12 directors voted to raise their own annual retainers by $30,000 and increased compensation for CEO and president Patrick Daniel from $6 million to $8.1 million in 2010.
Stephen J. Wouri, president of liquid pipelines, also saw his income increase from $1.9 million to $2.7 million in 2010. In fact all executives received substantial raises.
Earlier in 2010, on July 25, an Enbridge pipeline carrying diluted bitumen ruptured, pouring the toxic mixture for 17 hours into the Kalamazoo River near Marshall township in Michigan. The two-year clean-up has cost $800 million.
“The Marshall incident was factored into the 2010 short-term incentive awards for all of the named executives,” said the circular.
A year after the disaster the Enbridge board again upped compensation for five senior executives under a short term incentive program that increased their pay by “$4,571,730 including $2,396,000 to the president and chief executive officer.” The company says that it has a “pay for performance philosophy.”
‘Failure’ by Enbridge management cited by US investigators
An investigation of the July 2010 spill released Tuesday by the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found that corporate neglect fueled by a “culture of deviance” on safety issues at Enbridge caused an “organizational accident” that was preventable.
The NTSB, an independent federal agency that studies the causes of accidents, said that weak and underfunded pipeline regulators played a role in the spill too.
The company’s response to the pipeline rupture from the control room to spill containment was so chaotic and unfocused that the NTSB chair Deborah Hersman compared Enbridge’s negligence to the bungling of the Keystone Cops.
Read more: http://thetyee.ca/News/2012/07/12/Enbridge-Executives-Pay-Raise/