Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The LA Times doesn’t mind if cancelling Keystone leads to more rail and road freighting of oil, they think truck and tanker train oil spills are preferable to pipeline spills because they cause less environmental damage.
Editorial Keystone XL is still the wrong project for a world facing global warming. Kill it and be done
A decision Monday by the Nebraska Public Service Commission was supposed to settle the fate of TransCanada Corp.’s controversial $8-billion Keystone XL pipeline, which is designed to carry tar sands oil from Canada to U.S. refineries. But the commission didn’t give the company the green light it was looking for; instead, it approved a different and less-studied route for the pipeline than TransCanada wanted.
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Proponents also argue that if the pipeline doesn’t get built, the tar sands oil would move to market anyway through alternative (and more expensive) means such as rail or truck tankers, which they argue pose a higher risk of spilling oil into the environment. But that’s not completely true. Train and truck accidents may indeed occur more often than pipeline breaks, but such accidents leak a small amount of oil compared to pipeline spills. Keystone itself proved that point last week when a single leak in an already operating section of its 2,687-mile pipeline system spewed 210,000 gallons of oil — or about two dozen tanker truck loads — onto South Dakota farmland.
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In 2013, a tanker train derailment and explosion in Lac-Mégantic, Canada led to the loss of 47 lives, when the tanker train derailed while rolling downhill in the downtown area of Lac-Mégantic (see picture above).
There have also been some frightening near misses. A tanker train derailed in Gogama, Northern Ontario in 2015, though thankfully no loss of life on that occasion – the train derailed outside the town.
The 1998 Nigerian pipeline disaster led to over 1000 deaths, but Nigerian police believe the pipeline was deliberately ruptured by scavengers – many of the people who died were allegedly trying to steal fuel.
Pipelines can be routed around towns. Trains and Road Tankers usually have to navigate busy transport interchanges, where an accident or spill can lead to disastrous loss of life.
It is interesting to watch the Liberal establishment ignoring deaths if it suits their political agenda.
But we should not be too complacent. ALL humans behave like this. During WW2 the mass of the German people preferred to ignore the rumours of mechanised killings that were going around – US citizens similarly ignored some of the scandals involving the internment of enemy aliens – as did the British. It’s just the way all humans behave…
Lac Megantic: “The equipment that derailed included 63 of the 72 tank cars as well as the buffer car. Nine tank cars at the rear of the train remained on the track and were pulled away from the derailment site and did not explode. Almost all of the derailed tank cars were damaged, many having large breaches. About six million litres of petroleum crude oil was quickly released.”
Wabamun Lake, Alberta, 2005: 800,000 litres of oil into a lake. Cleanup took years, but the lake is apparently healthy again. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/wabamun-lake-oil-spill-a-decade-later-disaster-still-fresh-in-residents-minds-1.3177556
The thing of it is, the LA Times is hyper-innumerate. Let’s take a page from the scare mongers playbook. An Olympic-sized swimming pool has a volume of 660,430 gallons. So, the leak was less than a third of a swimming pool. Are we all still terrified?
Two dozen tanker truck loads? That doesn’t seem like very much. How may rail tanker cars is that? One or two?
I have not been to LA in years. It is a place to avoid. Is still a grid locked mess?
The ecofascists don’t base their policy on common sense or rational thoughts. They have a full on hatred for all things related to fossil fuels and will try to prevent anything new regarding them including building pipelines, Arctic drilling, fracking, Oil Sands development, and so on. They are simply against all of that…full stop…no debate…no thought at all.
Well anyways, that’s how i make sense of it.
“The delays that will arise from legal challenges to the new route will likely make tar sands oil costlier and harder to sell.”
Of course. That’s the whole idea. Duh. Envirofascism 101.
In 2009 Warren Buffet sold his shares of Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern to purchase the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe railroad. A lot of people theorized that Obama’s resistance to the Keystone pipeline was driven by Buffet’s support. Oil goes by either pipeline or rail and Buffet is known as a savvy investor (which is easy if you’ve got tentacles dipped in DC).
BNSF has proved a good investment for Warren. Interestingly, shipping coal was always instrumental to a RR’s bottom line but coal is now down to about 15-16% of their shipped commodities. And UP is set to break out in returns and is pegged by investors as a ‘buy’. Might Warren be considering adding UP back to his portfolio with BNSF. After all, UP has rail lines reaching to the Gulf just where Keystone would be pumping. And, of course, UP is headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska. And, of course, Buffet lives in Omaha too.
What?
Seriously full of crap..
http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2016/06/oregon_oil_train_derailment_is.html
Hell, building small canals and transporting it by inflatable raft is preferable to a pipeline with safeties that don’t work dumping hundreds of thousands of gallons until a god damned AIRLINE PILOT reports the spill.
??? Care to elaborate.
Incorrect. Airline pilots are blessed.
By the way, the pipeline companies have light airplanes constantly flying their routes to check for leaks.
Yes, if that was the case it would be preferable. But a review of the facts shows otherwise. And if rail and truck transport did not spill many multiples of what has you so upset. And if rail and truck did not also damage property and injure or kill people with a disturbing frequency.
The auto sensors alerted the command and control centre when the PSI dropped on the line instantly, within a few minutes. Everything worked as designed, except why did the pipe rupture, which they will figure out as soon as they dig it up. All the more reason to put in brand new pipe with extra corrosion resistance.
If it waited until some GD airline pilot reported it, it would have been millions and millions of gallons. Unless of course you have a source for that, but not what was reported in a 100 media outlets. Oh I know…it is all fake news. And you probably heard this from Alex Jones, or are just straight BSing everyone here.
“All the more reason to put in brand new pipe with extra corrosion resistance.”
The “old” Keystone pipeline that ruptured is not as leak-proof as the new, parallel version they are building.
Absolutely correct Roger. You would think everyone would be thrilled that new thicker pipe with enhanced state of art security and protection would be preferable to an older pipe line that may be more susceptible to leaks. Keystone in SD has now been shut down for a week, and maybe many more weeks to come and perhaps even Regulatory issues before a re-start when fixed. 600,000 barrels a day is now effectively off-line.
1) the recent leak was about enough to fill an Olympic-sized pool (h/t smalldeadanimals.com)
2) I live half a block from a rail line. I’ll take my chances with a pipeline, thanks
3) “use less oil”? Sure, lets deal with the opioid epidemic by telling users to “use less drugs”
Actually, about a third of an Olympic swimming pool. See my post above.
Thank you for your correction.
Although, for millennials, perhaps we should start talking about how many grandes…
In extreme forms, it seems that belief in climate apocalypse claptrap makes the believer immune to reality.
Pipelines do far less damage to the environment than railroads, highways or wind turbine complexes.
With reference to the battery that can charge up in one minute to run a car for 500 miles, how does one get that much energy into the battery safely. You need either massive cables to connect to the battery or extremely high voltages. Can someone do the maths.
Not just for a sunny day on flat ground in California, but for a snowy day in February at night with the lights and heater full on when driving a road that goes up and down steep hills.
In my electrical experience not safely. My guess is the patent is bogus (Like many others) but then if someone makes one (Patent breach). Clever!
To charge a battery to run a car for 500 miles, we need to spend ten hours or so replenishing the battery with the same amount of energy which was supplied PLUS LOSSES. The so-called invention is a fraud.
Increased oil and gas reliance requires infrastructure improvements. That is a fact, and should be part of any objective decision making process involving energy supply. Greens, however, are incapable of objectivity.