Excerpt: "Joe Nocera's op-ed in the New York Times yesterday deserves a response and a reiteration of the facts surrounding the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. ...Let's put the rhetoric aside, and simply focus on the facts. Nocera wants us to believe that approving this pipeline is a matter of national security. ... The Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would not make the United States of America safer. Why? It would not make us safer, because the majority of the processed oil was already scheduled for export to foreign countries. That's right, this Keystone XL pipeline's Canadian tar sands oil would have no positive impact whatsoever on America's national security."
Actor, environmental activist Robert Redford. (photo: Contour/Getty Images)
Keystone Pipeline Facts
09 February 12
oe Nocera's op-ed in the New York Times yesterday deserves a response and a reiteration of the facts surrounding the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. President Obama rejected the pipeline's permit last month when the GOP, in a political stunt, forced his hand to approve it without even the final route evident.
Let's put the rhetoric aside, and simply focus on the facts. Nocera wants us to believe that approving this pipeline is a matter of national security. He also seems to think that we should all be kicking ourselves because the Canadians are flaunting a tar sands sale trip to China.
Nocera might ask himself how likely this oil is really to go to China from Canada if Keystone XL is not built. He might ask why the oil companies are looking to bring tar sands almost 2000 miles south rather than just send it across British Columbia for export to Asia.
The answer can be found in the deep and fierce opposition to a new tar sands pipeline in Canada -- especially by the First Nations of British Columbia. In fact, those First Nations this week sent letters to President Hu of China and to the Chinese people letting them know their tar sands grievances in advance of Prime Minister Harper's trip this week.
The Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would not make the United States of America safer. Why? It would not make us safer, because the majority of the processed oil was already scheduled for export to foreign countries. That's' right, this Keystone XL pipeline's Canadian tar sands oil would have no positive impact whatsoever on America's national security.
Canada wanted to send the dirtiest oil on the planet through the heart of America so that they could access export routes. And they proposed getting there by bringing the pipeline right over the Ogallala Aquifer, one of America's most important repositories of fresh water. Along the route, Democrats and Republicans alike opposed it.
Nocera never mentioned that a first pipeline just like the proposed Keystone XL, built by the same foreign company, TransCanada, had over 12 spills in the U.S. (30 if you count Canada) in just its first year of operation. Some of those spills have yet to be cleaned up.
It's kind of like last month when Nocera waxed poetic under the headline "BP Makes Amends," extolling the virtues of the oil giant. In it, when referring to the Gulf shoreline, he said, "The beaches are sparkling," when in fact, in the first 10 days of this year some three tons of tar balls have washed up on the beaches of Alabama and Mississippi.
But I digress. Throughout his entire column, he gives not a whiff of mention to a clean energy future or economy or so much as a nod to the viability of any alternative form of energy. Even though it's a fact that clean energy investments can create four times as many jobs as similar investments in fossil fuel energy.
In fact, when it comes to jobs and the Keystone XL pipeline, the State Department estimated it would create only 20 permanent jobs and about 5-6,000 temporary construction jobs... not the hundred thousand jobs proponents of the tar sands pipeline have been citing.
The Keystone XL pipeline doesn't deliver on jobs or national security, it jeopardizes public health and safety and the president was right to reject it. And tar sands are not just "a little dirtier" than traditional crude as Nocera notes. Producing synthetic crude oil from tar sands generates three times the global warming pollution and the extraction process uses vast amounts of energy and water.
I would be remiss if I didn't call attention to Nocera's calling out of "all right-thinking environmentalists" who oppose his other panacea, natural gas. Call me what you will but I don't believe any of us should turn a blind eye to how it's accessed or to the many documented cases of big oil and gas companies blasting unidentified toxic chemicals deep into the earth in people's back yards, eventually poisoning groundwater and ruining lives and communities.
Nocera says that he guesses the president really wanted to approve the Keystone XL pipeline and implies President Obama would have approved it if it weren't an election year. I think the president ruled in the national interest after assessing the real facts in the matter of this ill-conceived Canadian pipeline.
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Comments
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[Editor's addition] This is a video I took on July 4, 2010. It was 21 years after the Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef. I went looking for remnants of oil that still remained. They were easy to find. -Jeanne Devon
http://www.themudflats.net/2011/11/14/exxon-valdez-the-final-showdown/
“» The construction of KXL will create far fewer jobs in the US than its proponents have claimed and may actually destroy more jobs than it generates.
» The industry’s US job claims, and even the State Department’s analysis, are linked to a $7 billion KXL project budget. However, the budget for KXL that will have a bearing on US jobs figures is dramatically lower—only around $3 to $4 billion.
» The claim that KXL will create 20,000 direct construction and manufacturing jobs in the US is unsubstantiated . There is strong evidence to suggest that a large portion of the primary material input for KXL—steel pipe—will not even be produced in the US
» The industry’s job projections fail to consider the large number of jobs that could be lost by construction of KXL. This includes jobs lost due to consumers in the Midwest paying 10 to 20 cents more per gallon of gasoline and diesel fuel. These additional costs ($2 to $4 billion) will suppress other spending and cost jobs. Furthermore, pipeline spills, pollution and increased greenhouse gas emissions incur significant human health and economic costs, thus eliminating jobs.
Put simply, KXL’s job creation potential is relatively small, and could be completely outweighed by the project’s potential to destroy jobs through rising fuel costs, spill damage and clean up operations, air pollution and increased GHG emissions.”
TransCanada’s existing contracts and business plans indicate that most of their output will be destined for export, mostly to Latin America and Europe, NOT for US domestic consumption. Currently, a good portion of the oil in question is shipped from Canada to the Midwestern US via the existing Keystone pipeline (that's right, the XL project is just an EXTENSION to an existing line). Once at the end of the line in the Midwest, most of that oil is refined there and consumed there, which has helped keep gas and oil prices relatively low in the Midwest for the past few years. Once/if the pipeline is completed, most of that oil that is currently consumed in the Midwest will flow South (mostly to Texas) where it will be refined and MOST OF IT WILL BE EXPORTED. So, in the long run, the XL project may very well result in LESS of the oil being consumed in American. Which leads us to....
Effect on Price of Oil in US:
Here's a little something you don't hear the Republicans and proponents of this project talking about: TransCanada, THE COMPANY BUILDING THE PIPELINE, has said that this project will actually INCREASE the price of a barrel of oil in the USA! Don't believe me? According to a Feb 2011 story from Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/10/idUS292515702420110210
"Although the pipeline, if approved, would increase the supply of oil reaching the U.S., a 2009 market analysis conducted by TransCanada, builder of the pipeline, forecast higher prices. The analysis, which TransCanada conducted as part of its Canadian permit application, projected that prices would increase about $3 per barrel as a result of the pipeline.
That would send at least an additional $2 billion from American consumers to Canadian and multinational oil interests, despite the increase in supply."
And that's according to TransCanada's OWN study on the issue.
Wake up people. This project is a joke!
Redford is painfully wrong about the possibility of shipping the oil to China. While indigenous peoples have objected loudly, they are currently in negotiations. The only issue that remains is how much the oil company is going to pay them for the right to build the pipeline through their land.
This oil will be shipped and processed and used by someone unless we are willing to go to war with Canada to stop it. Since I assume that we are not willing to go to war with China, the only question that remains is "Will the oil go south through the US with its fairly strong environmental laws or will it go east, through seismically fragile lands and via much more environmentally dangerous tankers to China where it will be burnt without benefit of any significant environmental regulations?"
You choose.
Lee Nason
New Bedford, Massachusetts
So, on one hand, there is a good chance the pipeline won't get approval. On the other hand, Alberta has foolishly backed itself into a corner by not diversifying their economy and selling the tar sands oil is essential to them - AGW be damned. The PM's power base is Alberta so it will be quite a show.
Please send this to the Times for publication; all of their readers should get the benefit of the facts.
As it turns out it appears the Keystone XL pipeline would cross about 250 miles of land above the Ogallala Aquifer. By contrast, it appears about 20,500 miles of pipelines (includi 3,000 miles of hazardous liquid pipelines) are in Nebraska and many miles cross the aquifer. Oil wells have been drilled and are in production within areas overlying the Ogallala Aquifer.
In additon, I suspect not all portions of the aquifer are equally exposed to contamination. The vulnerability of groundwater to a spill is determined by hyrologists by an assessment of soils, near surface geology above the aquifer; depth to groundwater; and presence of confining layers, if any. Like most aquifers, I suspect that some parts of the Ogallala Aquifer are isolated by impervious materials such as clays and glacial till which would prevent pollution from entering these parts in the event of spill.
These factors need to be in the public debate when decsions are made about the merits of the pipeline. I recommend interested people see the Nebraska data on the USDOT, "Office of Pipeline Safety" site.
The site contains data on pipeline miles and spill volume that often can be cleaned quickly.
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