The Vancouver Sun reports in its Saturday edition that the federal government is reducing the size of a proposed emergency fund pipeline operators would be required to have on hand to deal with short-term costs of incidents such as spills. A Canadian Press dispatch to The Sun quotes Natural Resources Canada as saying that the fund proposed under its new Pipeline Safety Act would bring down the minimum amount of "readily available" money to at least 5 per cent of a company's liability from the 10 per cent originally proposed when consultations on the act began more than a year ago. If adopted, regulations would require a large company with capacity to transport at least 250,000 barrels of oil per day to demonstrate that it can cover cleanup bills of $1-billion. The "readily available" fund requirement at 5 per cent would thus be $50-million, versus $100-million at 10 per cent. No such fund was required under previous pipeline rules. The feds said the reduction, which was published as part of draft regulations, would be sufficient based on the costs of previous pipeline spills. Enbridge has estimated $1.2-billion (U.S.) in cleanup costs from its 2010 pipeline oil spill into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan.