XL One Last Time
I have previously written at some length about the reality of the Keystone XL pipeline vs the Fox News version. I have simply had it with those who, desperate to criticize the Biden re-cancellation of Keystone XL, blame it for current high gas prices. The project, which most Americans seem to think would initiate the piping of Alberta (Canada) tar sand oil across the United States, would, in fact, only be an addition to an already existing Keystone pipeline system which has been in operation across parts of the Midwest for years. The pipeline is owned by a Canadian company, TC Energy, and the Provincial Government of Alberta, Canada, yet, in its early construction stages several states allowed this Canadian entity to exert Eminent domain claims over US citizens to acquire right of way!
The existing
pipeline, three phases of it, runs east from Hardisty, Alberta, across
Saskatchewan, across half of Manitoba, then drops almost straight down to
Houston, Tx with a branch pipeline from Steele City Nebraska to southern
Illinois. This system has been in operation since 2012, with the Neb.-Ill.
branch coming online in 2016. It carries Tar sand oil (also known as bitumen),
the dirtiest, costliest to refine, crude
petroleum product existing. The green line is the proposed XL, all the rest is in operation.
Unlike conventional crude oil,
which occurs as a “pumpable” liquid within spaces in solid rock, oil sands are
a mixture of semi-solid oil, sand, clay, and water. The viscous crude, called
bitumen, can’t be pumped as it exists. Extraction methods use more energy and
more water and are much more costly than conventional oil drilling. For
deposits near the surface, the sand and oil mixture, also called “tar sands”
must be strip-mined, then processed
with hot water and solvents to release the bitumen. For deeper deposits, steam
is injected underground to allow the bitumen to flow into extraction wells.
National Geographic has called exploiting oil sands the “world’s most
destructive oil operation.”
The mining of bitumen laden tar
sands strips away forest cover and topsoil, leaving acres of barren, black
ground. The post-processing waste (“tailings”) are piped into large ponds,
which then contain an acutely toxic mixture of water, sand, hydrocarbons,
ammonia, acids, and heavy metals. Numerous scientific studies have detected
toxins in the aquatic environment downstream from oil sands production, and a
2017 analysis estimated that cleanup costs will eventually exceed the value of
oil sands royalties collected by the province of Alberta.
The proposed XL would be larger and would
greatly reduce the amount of pipeline in Canada (and the risk of spillage) by
following the existing route south to the point where it currently turns due east,
instead dropping south by southwest across Montana, South Dakota, and
mid-Nebraska where it would join the current route. The real reason? Tar sand
oil is heavy and sinks into the ground, can pollute the aquifer and is almost
impossible to completely clean up. The existing Keystone lines
already have the capacity to deliver 590,000 barrels per day to the Midwest
refineries and 700,000 to the Texas coast. But the oil is expensive to extract
and process, and it has a lower market value compared to U.S. crude oil. As of
December of 2021, 300,000 of those barrels were simply “passing through” to be
transferred daily to tankers at the port of Houston for export.
So why the XL? Simple, really. Canada
would rather ship this dangerous pollutant through the US than through their
own pristine middle provinces. In Canada, Keystone XL would barely graze
southwestern Saskatchewan before dropping down into Montana, cutting off any
new pipeline in either Manitoba or Saskatchewan.
So, what could go wrong? Well…
TransCanada arbitrarily and improperly adjusted estimated spill factors to
produce an estimate of one major spill on the 1,673 mi of pipeline about every
five years, but federal data on the actual incidence of spills on comparable
pipelines indicate a more likely average of almost two major spills per year. (The
existing Keystone I pipeline had one major spill and eleven smaller spills in just
its first year of operation.)" There were major concerns that a
pipeline spill could threaten the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the world's largest freshwater
reserves; the Ogallala Aquifer spans eight states, provides drinking water for
two million people, and supports $20 billion in agriculture.
A University of Nebraska professor,
John Stansbury, conducted an independent analysis which provides more detail on
the potential risks for the Ogallala Aquifer. His conclusions? Stansbury
concludes that the original safety assessments provided by TransCanada were intentionally
misleading. His opinion? "We can
expect no fewer than two major spills per state during the 50-year projected
lifetime of the pipeline. These spills could release as much as 180,000 barrels
of oil each." Trans Canada also failed to factor in the fact that
Portions of the XL pipeline would also cross an active seismic zone
that had a 4.3-magnitude earthquake as recently as 2002. Oops!
So, what has actually happened so
far on the existing Keystone system?
In 2016, about four hundred barrels
(18,000 gallons) were released from the original Keystone pipe network via
leaks, due to what was referred to as a "weld anomaly". Since all
such welds should be radiographed, this casts TransCanada’s quality assurance
processes in doubt.
On November 17, 2017, the pipeline
leaked around 9,600 barrels onto farmland near Amherst, South Dakota. The oil
leak is the largest seen from the Keystone pipeline in the state. Investigators
found that a metal tracked vehicle had run over the area, damaging the
pipeline. An additional federal investigation found that 408,000 US gallons of
crude had spilled at the site, which was about twice what TransCanada had
reported. It was the seventh-largest onshore oil spill since 2002.
In April 2018, Reuters reviewed
documents that showed that Keystone had "leaked substantially more oil,
and more often, in the United States than the company indicated to regulators
in risk assessments before operations began in 2010."
On October 31, 2019, a rupture
occurred near Edinburg, North Dakota, spilling an estimated 9,120 barrels. Where
the 45,000 US gallons that were not recovered from the 0.5-acre containment had
spread, five acres were rendered essentially useless. This leak occurred while
the South Dakota Water Management Board was in the middle of hearings on
whether or not to allow TC Energy to use millions of gallons of water to build
camps to house temporary construction workers for Keystone XL construction. Bad
timing, huh?
On December 7, 2022, 4 days ago as
I write this, TC Energy initiated a shutdown of the Keystone Pipeline System in
response to an alarm signaling a loss in pressure. TC Energy later confirmed
that there had been a release of oil into a creek located in Washington County,
Kansas, twenty miles to the south of Steele City, Nebraska. About 588,000
gallons of tar sands crude was released. This leak was the
largest in the United States in nearly a decade. Cleanup is ongoing
but, being heavy, unrefined tar sand oil, it will likely never really be
restored to former conditions.
Cleanup efforts in Kansas
So why not just continue the existing pipeline east to the Canadian east coast or build a new one across Canadian soil to the west coast, avoiding dealing with the US at all? TransCanada’s Energy East project had proposed to do exactly that, promising to carry 1.1 million barrels per day from Alberta to Canada’s east coast. But the plan was scrapped in 2017 amid strong opposition from indigenous communities, environmental advocates, and communities through which the pipeline would have passed (in other words, Canadians who didn’t want the possible environmental damage.) Going west, the Northern Gateway pipeline, proposed in 2008, would have taken the westward route, ending up in Kitimat, British Columbia. It would have cut almost 1400 miles off the current Keystone route. It was also killed for the same reason. “Why take a chance of polluting here when we can ship it south across the USA?”
So why not refine tar sand oil in
Canada? Canada hasn’t built a new refinery in over 40 years, even though the
Canadian Communications, Energy and Paperworker’s Union
estimates that 18,000 Canadian jobs are lost for every 400,000 barrels of
bitumen that are exported. Why? It is expensive to build a refinery and only a
specialized refinery can process bitumen and turn it into refined products such
as fuels. Few refineries in Canada can do it. None of the refineries in eastern
Canada can refine large quantities of bitumen. Not only does refining of tar
sands significantly increase air pollution, but it also produces an especially
dirty, carbon-intensive byproduct known as petroleum coke. Extracting bitumen
from tar sands—and the refining of it into gasoline—is significantly costlier
and more difficult than extracting and refining liquid oil. The Canadian
position would seem to be, “Let someone else take the environmental risk, do
the dirty work, and make the investment!”
The conclusion? As a risk/reward
exercise Keystone XL is a loser for the US. Canada has more oil (175 billion
barrels estimated) than anyone but the Saudis, but it is far dirtier. They
currently produce more refined oil in their eastern refineries from what
they import than they use, making them a net energy exporter. It is
simply easier and cheaper for them to ship high risk, high sulfur, hard to
refine, tar sand oil elsewhere, since the refining process is costly and a
serious polluter.
XL would have been a good deal for Canada and
a bad one for the US, regardless of the misinformation to the contrary
promulgated by those on the Far Right, whose primary objective is to attempt to
discredit any decision which is even remotely environmentally based and
Democratic in origin. The worst of these canards, as I said earlier, is the
allegation that there is a gasoline shortage related to the cancellation of the
Keystone XL. Its output, had it been built (and it would still be years from
completion), would largely be sold overseas, profiting Canada, since we, the
US, are still exporting oil, even now and US Energy company profits are at all-time
highs.
Amen!
