Legal action considered by Enbridge

The group responsible for a media hoax which tricked some national news outlets to run a story about Enbridge using human hair as oil booms is — no joke — called PERM.

PERM, which stands for People Enbridge Ruined in Michigan, came clean on their involvement in a press release circulated last Wednesday, one day after their stunt had corporate communications officers and journalists pulling out their own hair trying to figure out fact from fiction.

PERM is a collaboration between a group called Yes Labs, an activist think-tank spin-off of a group called The Yes Men, and activists from Michigan.

The confusing saga began with an e-mail which bore the Northern Gateway Pipeline logo, claiming to announce a partnership between Enbridge and over 1,000 hair salons that would collect human hair to be used to soak up oil in the event of a spill.

"The formidable Enbridge hair reserve, fashioned into 30,000 4-metre booms, will be stored in numerous warehouses all along the Northern Gateway Pipelines' 1,170-kilometre route," the release stated.

A mock communications person for the company in the press release referenced the inevitability of oil spills from the project.

Countering that claim, real Enbridge spokesperson Gina Jordan said that spills are not inevitable and "while the probability is remote, Enbridge's goal is to be a model of world class safety and environmental standards."

The company was quick to issue a statement saying that the MyHairCares initiative was not, in fact, something their company was doing.

"It is not an Enbridge or Northern Gateway initiative, and Enbridge deplores this cynical attempt to take advantage of public concern about the environment," said Jordan.

According to Sean Devlin of Yes labs the prank was successful in sparking the discussion they sought.

"It was pretty complicated but we feel like it went well," he said. He pointed out that he's starting to see additional media reporting on litigation in Michigan with Enbridge and the spill victims.

Sparking a discussion was really the intention.

"The hair thing was a joke but the conversation we really wanted to have was 'well, what does Enbridge do after an oil spill?'"

Shannon McPhail is the Canadian spokesperson for PERM, and also works for Hazelton-based Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition. She said she also considers the hoax campaign a success.

"I did not expect the response that we got," she said. "We've been getting e-mails and phone calls and tons of support coming in."

She said that Enbridge's claims of a spill-free pipeline is as ridiculous as MyHairCares.

The campaign idea was sparked two months ago during a meeting in Vancouver when members of the Yes Men came to hold a Yes Lab.

As for the threat of legal action, Devlin is taking a 'bring it on' attitude.

"We don't think they will take action against us because that would just give us a wonderful opportunity to keep talking about these issues," he said.

However, "If they do decide to take legal action we're kind of excited because we know their best lawyers won't be on it, because their best lawyers are currently in Michigan fighting the oil spill victims over compensation.

McPhail said the risks of legal trouble are not as great as the risk to the environment.

"I would certainly risk getting in trouble instead of having another Enbridge disaster happen on the Skeena."

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A spokesperson for Northern Gateway was quick to point out the one trace of truth in all of the prank e-mails last week.

Paul Stanway said that referenced in the news releases was a charitable group called Matter of Trust.

Matter of Trust has done work creating human hair boom products that have been used to clean up oil spills in the U.S.

"They're a charitable foundation in the U.S. and they actually do collect hair and use it for this purpose," he said, before PERM came clean. "I don't believe they're in any way connected to the MyHairCares scam."

He said its a shame that they've been tied up into the scam as they are quite legitimate.

Michelle Yong, executive assistant with Matter of Trust, said that a mixture of hair and animal fur was found to be best at adsorbing oil - adsorbing meaning the oil clings to the material rather than it being 'soaked up'.

MoTs hair mats and booms have been used in the Cosco Busan oil spill in the San Francisco Bay area and during last year's Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The hair booms were made in Alabama and barged to Florida.

Stanway said hair isn't seriously considered as a product that Enbridge would use, but more because of the scale of Enbridge's operations.

"You'd need an awful lot of it to be able to make a lot of difference. It's of some limited use but on the professional scale that we operate on it wouldn't really do the job for us."

He said the company first heard of the fake MyHairCares when they received queries from major media outlets in Ontario looking for more information.