Readers of major newspapers in B.C., Alberta and Ontario this week may have noticed a full-page advertisement placed by Calgary-based Enbridge.
The statement from the oil giant emphasized the company's "99.999 per cent" pipeline safety record and its commitment to preventing oil spills.
While Enbridge maintains the ad was not a direct reaction to negative publicity it has received in recent months, some critics view it as an effort to win over those opposed to the company's proposed Northern Gateway project.
Enbridge's pipeline safety record has been attacked by environmental advocates, politicians and the media due to several spills from its pipelines in the U.S.
It is likely no coincidence that a prominent industry group staged a separate news conference Thursday in Ottawa to pro-mote an existing program aimed at making pipelines safer and more environmentally sound.
Mike Hillman, a former B.C. Liberal party campaign manager and a former public affairs consultant, said the Enbridge ad indicated the company may be trying to "play catch up" with those opposed to Northern Gateway.
If Enbridge was trying to garner support for the project, it should have made the company's pipeline safety statistics more apparent to the public sooner, Hillman said.
"If, in fact, you have an exceptional record and you have qualities that are in fact very real, then there's no reason why those things shouldn't be known to people much earlier in its existence," he said. "By bringing out those things now, by the sounds of it, to counter some of the reactions to their project in B.C and to also recent incidents that have happened, it's a bit of catch up."
University of British Columbia social marketing professor Darren Dahl said the ad, a writ-ten statement by the company's president Al Monaco and chief executive officer Pat Daniel, might be an attempt to move public sentiment by giving out information that Enbridge feels is more accurate.
"If you asked someone 10 years ago about pipelines, they probably had no opinion or they're like, 'Yeah they're wellmanaged,' " Dahl said.
"But because of the high stakes of the [Northern Gateway] proposal, and there has been some pipeline incidents in past years that has caught the media's attention, people don't have the same neutral or positive attitude . . . towards pipelines."
The company's executive vicepresident of western access said the ad was not a direct response to negative publicity.
"We're just trying to assure the public that we do take safety very seriously," Janet Holder said. "This just further enhances that we take safety very seriously and that our track record would show that."
