The biggest oil and gas pipeline company in Canada is breaking National Energy Board safety rules at 117 of its 125 pump stations across the country, but Enbridge says it's not to blame.

Enbridge was ordered by the Canadian energy regulator to disclose whether or not it had backup power to operate emergency shut-down systems in the facilities that keep oil flowing through its pipes. The company told the NEB only eight of its pump stations complied with the board's backup power system regulation.

On top of that, Enbridge disclosed that 83 of its pump stations were missing emergency shut-down buttons.

A European Union plan to label crude from the Alberta oil sands as dirty is unfair and could damage Canada's bid to find new export markets, the Canadian resources minister said at the start of a mission to lobby against the idea.

As part of a plan to cut greenhouse gases from transport fuel, the EU's executive commission has developed a Fuel Quality Directive that would single out oil from Alberta's tar sands as more polluting than conventional crude.

Canada, whose oil sands are the world's third-largest proven reserves of crude, strongly opposes the move.

Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver, speaking at the start of a week-long trip to Paris, Brussels and London, said the directive should be changed to ensure it does not discriminate against crude from the oil sands.

A mid-level appeals court says New York municipalities can use local zoning laws to ban the use of hydraulic fracturing to drill for natural gas.

The four-judge appellate division panel ruled unanimously Thursday that state mining and drilling law doesn’t trump the authority of local governments to control land use.

The case of Norse Energy Corp.’s challenge to a ban in the Tompkins County town of Dryden has been closely watched by industry hoping to drill in New York’s piece of the Marcellus Shale formation and opponents of the technology known as “fracking.” Environmentalists fear drilling could threaten water supplies and public health.

Exxon Mobil Corp's near 70-year-old Pegasus oil pipeline leaked a small amount of crude into a residential yard in Ripley County, Missouri on Tuesday, a month after the same pipe spewed thousands of barrels of crude in Arkansas.

A resident notified the company of the spill after spotting a patch of oil and dead vegetation seven miles (11 km) south of Doniphan in the southeast of the state, Exxon and state officials said on Wednesday.

About one barrel of crude leaked and the cleanup is "close to completion," an Exxon spokeswoman said.

 

Tuesday's spill occurred 200 miles north of Mayflower, Arkansas, where about 5,000 barrels of crude spilled from the Pegasus pipe into a residential area on March 29, prompting a giant clean-up operation that is still ongoing.