Category Archives: Keystone XL

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Keystone XL, Tar sands crude

Bakken & tar-sands oil still a problem if Keystone XL is built

Repost from The Minneapolis Star Tribune
[Editor: Significant quote: “[Senator Al] Franken said that ‘the biggest rail safety issues in Minnesota have to do with transportation of highly volatile Bakken oil, which would only be marginally affected by the construction of this pipeline. So regardless of whether or not the pipeline is built, rail safety will continue to be a major problem in Minnesota unless we upgrade rail cars and improve track inspections and infrastructure to prevent derailments.'”  – RS]

Keystone XL pipeline poses a political dilemma

By Jim Spencer, January 10, 2015
Environmentalists dislike Keystone XL, but without it more oil trains could roll through Minnesota.
If the Keystone XL pipeline is not built, Minnesota will likely see more oil trains on the state’s tracks. Photo: Tom Wallace, Star Tribune file

WASHINGTON – The Keystone XL pipeline does not run through Minnesota. The major rail routes that might deliver much more Canadian crude oil to the U.S. if it is not built do.

As the controversial pipeline passed the U.S. House on Friday and nears approval in the Republican-controlled Senate, Democratic members of the state’s congressional delegation face a complicated balancing act.

Their supporters who are advocates of renewable energy expect them to vote against the pipeline. President Obama has threatened to veto the current pipeline bill because it short-circuits his administration’s review process.

But Minnesota politicians who oppose the pipeline flirt with a possible long-term increase in oil train traffic on tracks that many constituents say are already overloaded with railcars carrying flammable fuel.

“It is a precarious position to be against oil train transport and to be against the Keystone pipeline,” First District Democratic Rep. Tim Walz acknowledged.

Environmentalists who voted for Walz have voiced their disappointment that he voted for Keystone XL in 2014. Walz voted for it again Friday.

“I have people who support me who are frustrated with my vote on this,” Walz said.

He thinks Keystone has now become an oversimplified political “litmus test” that won’t produce the benefits its supporters claim or the damage its opponents assert.

Still, for Minnesota’s Democrats, the situation remains politically tricky. Democratic Reps. Collin Peterson and Rick Nolan joined Walz in voting for Keystone XL on Friday. They were among only 28 House Democrats to do so.

Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken voted against a Keystone XL bill last year when their party controlled the Senate, saying it did not allow the administrative review process to properly play out. The pipeline approval bill lost. But it is expected to come to a vote next week with Republicans in command.

Neither Klobuchar nor Franken was available for interviews on Keystone XL last week. Both issued statements to the Star Tribune and through communications directors said they will continue to vote against any Keystone XL bill that they believe circumvents the regular review process. Neither specifically addressed potential increases in Canadian tar sands crude oil shipments through Minnesota.

“I have consistently supported allowing the State Department permitting process to move forward so that all issues can be aired,” Klobuchar said. “But this decision can’t be delayed indefinitely, and I believe the administration needs to make a decision. … We have rail service and rail safety issues that need to be addressed now, even before the pipeline issues are resolved.”

Franken said that “the biggest rail safety issues in Minnesota have to do with transportation of highly volatile Bakken oil, which would only be marginally affected by the construction of this pipeline. So regardless of whether or not the pipeline is built, rail safety will continue to be a major problem in Minnesota unless we upgrade rail cars and improve track inspections and infrastructure to prevent derailments.”

Roughly 50 oil trains, some of them a mile long, already carry Bakken crude oil from North Dakota across Minnesota each week.

But Alan Stankevitz, a spokesman for Citizens Acting for Rail Safety, said “there is a concern that [Canadian crude] would be coming through. Any derailment along the Mississippi River would be a disaster.”

Stankevitz said that is because tar sands crude is so heavy that it will sink to the bottom of the river and be difficult and expensive to extract.

How much more oil would pass through Minnesota without the Keystone XL remains a matter of debate.

The U.S. State Department estimated that Canadian tar sands crude oil could be shipped on 12 to 14 oil trains per week. The biggest market is the United States, but some oil trains could go to ports on the West Coast of Canada for export on oceangoing tankers.

Last week, researchers paid by the American Petroleum Institute, which has spent millions of dollars lobbying for Keystone XL, estimated that by 2019 railcars would need to haul 700,000 more barrels of Canadian tar sands crude per day if the pipeline is not built.

Paul Blackburn, a Minneapolis lawyer who has represented various pipeline foes since 2009, called such assertions “completely ridiculous.” Blackburn says oil train traffic in Minnesota will not increase without Keystone XL because enough unused capacity in other pipelines already exists to move any newly produced tar sands crude to the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Blackburn pointed to pipelines running from Hardisty, Alberta, to Flanagan, Ill., which opened in 2009 and 2010, and a third pipeline from Flanagan to Cushing, Okla., which opened in 2014, as a viable alternative to Keystone XL.

He called the State Department analysis “old and duplicitous.”

Spokesmen for Canada Pacific Railway and Canadian National Railway, which haul Canadian crude through Minnesota, both declined to comment on how much oil train traffic in Minnesota would increase without Keystone XL.

Still, the consensus is that more Canadian crude is headed across the border, despite the hope of some environmentalists that the costs of tar sands oil extraction will be unprofitable without Keystone XL.

“This business of stopping tar sands oil is just not true,” said Nolan, who voted for the pipeline last year and again Friday, despite “serious pushback from environmentalists.”

“All you have to do is go to Ranier, where most of the oil comes into Minnesota,” Nolan said. “The oil trains are lined up for miles. There’s already an abundance.”

The pipeline would be “nice to have,” said Sandy Fielden of RBN Energy in Houston. But Fielden, one of the country’s leading analysts on Canadian oil, said Keystone XL is not something producers “need to have.”

Rail-loading capacity for oil is expanding in Edmonton and Hardisty, two of western Canada’s big depots, Fielden said. The recent crash in oil prices could curb extraction of tar sands crude if it persists for an abnormally long time, Fielden added, but for now, there is still a profit to be made from tar sands crude with or without a new pipeline.

That was one of the main reasons Peterson, who like Walz and Nolan, represents a rural area where Canadian crude could pass, supported Keystone on Friday. Without the pipeline Peterson believes there will be more Minnesota oil train traffic.

“We need to get oil in pipelines and out of trains,” Peterson said. “We need trains for grain. We need trains for coal.”

On the other side, Democratic Reps. Betty McCollum of St. Paul and Keith Ellison of Minneapolis maintained opposition to Keystone XL.

“The regulatory process … exists to ensure the safety of our environment and our citizens,” McCollum said in a statement to the Star Tribune. “Those protections should not be bypassed in the case of the Keystone XL project and federal authorities must continue to be vigilant about rail safety in Minnesota.”

Keystone XL, Strip mining, Tar sands crude

The Destructive Legacy of Tar Sands Oil

Repost from Co.Exist
[Editor: Great photos, best viewed on Co.Exist.  Also of interest on Co.Exist: This Is What Your City Would Look Like If All The World’s Ice Sheets Melt– RS]

As The Keystone Pipeline Inches Closer, Look At The Destructive Legacy Of Tar Sands Oil

A bird’s-eye view of the post-apocalyptic landscape that we’ve already created.
By Adele Peters, November 24, 2014 
Pine Bend Refinery, Rosemont, MN
Strips mines cover an area of forest seven times larger than Manhattan. Uncovered rail cars Loading Petroleum Coke, a byproduct of tar sands refining, Pine Bend Refinery, Rosemont, MN

By a single vote, the U.S. Senate failed to fast-track the approval of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline last week, which would carry Canadian tar sands oil straight across the nation to the Gulf of Mexico. Lawmakers are expected to approve it in January, however, and President Obama may or may not let it squeak through.

A new photo series traces the path of the proposed pipeline, from the tar sands in Alberta to massive refineries in Texas. The photos make something clear: With or without the pipeline, huge amounts of tar sands oil are already being extracted and flowing into the U.S. Over the last four years, the amount of Canadian crude sent to Texas has increased by 83%.

Photographer Alex MacLean first flew over Alberta last winter, taking shots of a post-apocalyptic landscape that are hard to capture from the ground.

Meandering Channel of Wastewater, Suncor Mine, Alberta, Canada

Strip mines cover an area of forest seven times larger than Manhattan. Since most of the tar sands are buried deep underground, and the molasses-like bitumen is too thick to extract on its own, the oil companies have also built enormous boilers to liquefy the sludge.

“Looking at the pictures of the huge furnaces they have to use in the wells, you can see how much energy this takes to extract,” says MacLean. “If you’re driving around with this fuel, it’s 17% to 20% more carbon intense than regular gas.”

MacLean returned to the oil fields again last summer with journalist Daniel Grossman, and then traveled on to refineries in the Midwest and the Gulf Coast that are already processing tar sands oil.

The Alberta Clipper line ships 450,000 barrels of oil to Wisconsin every day. One branch splits off to Detroit, where a refinery caused a three-day long oil spill in a river in 2010.

Steam and smoke rise from upgrading facility at Syncrude Mildred Lake Mine, Alberta, Canada

“That was a billion-dollar cleanup,” says MacLean. “It was totally overshadowed—they call it the oil spill no one ever heard of, because it happened almost simultaneously with the BP spill in the Gulf.”

Enbridge, the company responsible for that spill, managed to avoid a lengthy approval process to increase its capacity; by next year, it expects to ship 800,000 barrels of oil per day. Unlike the well-publicized Keystone project, it didn’t need a new permit, but instead connected two parallel pipelines running along the border. MacLean’s photos show new lines under construction.

In the Gulf, the photos show the refineries that Keystone may eventually connect to Alberta.

“The size of the capital investment is just staggering—hundreds of billions of dollars of refining infrastructure along the coast,” MacLean says. “It’s just incredible amounts of money. You realize that the pipeline, which is around $4 billion, is just small change in the scheme of things. They can spend hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying to get the pipeline through.”

MacLean hopes the photos help us better understand the impact of a possible approval.

“I think if we’re really going to seriously mitigate climate change, we really need to start now and not put in infrastructure that’s going to last 30 years,” he says. “We’d be saddled with these type of investments, when we’d be better off putting both our know-how and our money towards more sustainable resources.”

[By Adele Peters.   Adele Peters is a writer who focuses on sustainability and design and lives in Oakland, California. She’s worked with GOOD, BioLite, and the Sustainable Products and Solutions program at UC Berkeley.  All photos: Alex MacLean]
Alberta Canada, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Keystone XL, Tar sands crude

Tar sands in Alberta and the Keystone XL Pipeline

Repost from NATUREInternational Weekly Journal of Science
[Editor: a friend sent this excellent overview of policy struggles behind the tar sands debacle in Alberta and the Keystone XL pipeline in the U.S.  Significant quote: “As scientists spanning diverse disciplines, we urge North American leaders to take a step back: no new oil-sands projects should move forward unless developments are consistent with national and international commitments to reducing carbon pollution. Anything less demonstrates flawed policies and failed leadership. With such high stakes, our nations and the world cannot afford a series of ad hoc, fragmented decisions.” – RS]

Energy: Consider the global impacts of oil pipelines

25 June 2014, by Wendy J. Palen, Thomas D. Sisk, Maureen E. Ryan, Joseph L. Árvai, Mark Jaccard, Anne K. Salomon, Thomas Homer-Dixon, & Ken P. Lertzman
Debates over oil-sands infrastructure obscure a broken policy process that overlooks broad climate, energy and environment issues, warn Wendy J. Palen and colleagues.

The debate over the development of oil sands in Alberta, Canada, is inflaming tensions in and between Canada and the United States.

In April, US President Barack Obama deferred a decision on the fate of the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline, despite escalating pressure to approve it from Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The contentious pipeline would transport 830,000 barrels per day of partially refined bitumen from Alberta’s oil sands, through the US Midwest, to Gulf Coast refineries. Harper is also facing a controversial domestic battle over his approval on 17 June of the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, to connect Alberta with a port on British Columbia’s remote Pacific coast.

But drama over the pipelines obscures a larger problem — a broken policy process. Both Canada and the United States treat oil-sands production, transportation, climate and environmental policies as separate issues, assessing each new proposal in isolation. A more coherent approach, one that evaluates all oil-sands projects in the context of broader, integrated energy and climate strategies, is sorely needed.

Although Keystone XL and Northern Gateway are among the first major North American projects to highlight flaws in oil-sands policies, more than a dozen other projects are on the drawing board. Meanwhile, the US government is considering its first oil-sands leases on federal lands, as bitumen mining expands on state land in Utah’s Uinta Basin.

As scientists spanning diverse disciplines, we urge North American leaders to take a step back: no new oil-sands projects should move forward unless developments are consistent with national and international commitments to reducing carbon pollution. Anything less demonstrates flawed policies and failed leadership. With such high stakes, our nations and the world cannot afford a series of ad hoc, fragmented decisions.

Incremental decisions

Current public debate about oil-sands development focuses on individual pipeline decisions. Each is presented as an ultimatum — a binary choice between project approval and lost economic opportunity. This approach artificially restricts discussions to only a fraction of the consequences of oil development, such as short-term economic gains and job creation, and local impacts on human health and the environment. Lost is a broader conversation about national and international energy and economic strategies, and their trade-offs with environmental justice and conservation.

Expand

This pattern of incremental decisions creates the misguided idea that oil-sands expansion is inevitable. By restricting the range of choices, governments have allowed corporations to profit from one-off policy decisions, leading to a doubling of oil-sands production in Alberta in the past decade, with production forecast to double again to 3.9 million barrels per day in the coming decade1. The collective result of these decisions is unnecessarily high social, economic and environmental costs.

When judged in isolation, the costs, benefits and consequences of a particular oil-sands proposal may be deemed acceptable. But impacts mount with multiple projects. The cumulative effects of new mines, refineries, ports, pipelines, railways and a fleet of transoceanic supertankers are often at odds with provincial, state, federal or international laws protecting clean water, indigenous rights, biodiversity and commitments to control carbon emissions.

Oil-sands development in Alberta, for example, has irreversibly transformed more than 280 square kilometres of the boreal landscape by burning or degrading peatlands covering oil-sands deposits2. Such ecosystems represent long-term carbon sinks that require thousands of years to develop. The development has also elevated waterway concentrations of chemical contaminants such as polycyclic aromatic compounds that are toxic to fish and other aquatic organisms3, 4, and has been associated with a tenuous but troubling rise in rare cancers in downstream indigenous communities5.

Major infrastructure such as pipelines requires decades of operation to recoup the initial investment, fostering expansion of oil-sands projects upstream and refineries and ports downstream. For example, the proposed US$5.4-billion Keystone XL pipeline would drive further oil-sands extraction by providing access to Gulf Coast refineries and profitable export markets (see ‘Big decisions’). Such investments create a ‘lock-in’ that commits society to decades of environmental degradation, increased risk of contamination and spills, and unsustainable carbon pollution.

Oil-sands production has already caused dramatic increases in carbon pollution. The United States and Canada have committed to the same 2020 greenhouse-gas emissions target: a 17% decrease relative to 2005 levels. But Canada’s agencies predict that it will miss its target by 122 million tonnes annually6, 7. Although emissions in many sectors are falling, those from oil-sands production are predicted to triple from 2005 by 2020, from 34 million to 101 million tonnes.

Smart steps

Despite these predictions, public discussions around emissions from expanding oil-sands production are being muted. Since 2010, public hearings on proposed pipelines, including Northern Gateway, the Trans Mountain pipeline in British Columbia, and the Line 9B pipeline reversal in southern Ontario, have formally excluded testimony by experts or the public about carbon emissions and climate (see go.nature.com/mpx2sc).

We propose two steps to improve decisions about the development of oil sands. First, North American citizens and policy-makers must enact policies at national, state and provincial levels that acknowledge the global consequences of expanding oil-sands develop­ment. Legislated constraints on carbon pollution (such as a carbon tax or cap-and-trade) based on current climate science will help to ensure that the full social costs of carbon combustion are incorporated into investment decisions about energy and infrastructure. This will help companies and policy-makers to better judge trade-offs between investment in oil-sands projects, renewables and energy-conservation programmes, while catalysing innovation in low-carbon technologies.

Second, policy-makers need to adopt more transparent and comprehensive decision-making processes that incorporate trade-offs among conflicting objectives such as energy and economic development, environmental protection, human health and social justice. The decision sciences offer pathways, from problem identification to policy implementation, which can encompass a wide range of public values and address multiple drivers, linked effects and nested scales of cause and effect.

Decision-support tools are being developed for exploring how outcomes, priorities and trade-offs shift under different future energy scenarios. Possibilities might include the approval or rejection of pipeline proposals, more stringent low-carbon fuel standards, carbon taxes, or a spike or drop in global demand for Canadian oil8. Such tools can be used to identify thresholds where development should shift from one energy option to another, and evaluate which investments are most robust given environmental, social and economic policies and their effects on energy supply and demand8. The territorial government in the Canadian north is using these tools to identify energy options that protect the Arctic environment and developing economy, while meeting the needs of local communities9.

In the absence of a global accord to reduce carbon emissions, the United States and Canada should agree to a suite of shared policies to guide development of both carbon-based and low-emission sources of energy over the coming decades. Such coordination might seem unlikely given the ideological gulf between the current US and Canadian administrations, but that divide will not persist indefinitely.

A binational carbon and energy strategy should align with existing continental trade accords, provide a clear road map for decisions about energy development — particularly for unconventional oil — and enhance North American competitiveness and leadership. It should specify priorities, expectations and principles whereby decisions on infrastructure projects, such as Keystone XL or Northern Gateway, are made in the context of an overarching commitment to limit carbon emissions. North America’s energy challenges would then become a vehicle for beneficial economic coordination and integration rather than remaining a source of rancour and friction.

A key step is a moratorium on new oil-sands development and transportation projects until better policies and processes are in place. Reform is needed now: decisions made in North America will reverberate internationally, as plans for the development of similar unconventional reserves are considered worldwide.

With clearer policy, smarter decisions and stronger leadership, Canada and the United States can avoid the tyranny of incremental decisions — and the lasting economic and environmental damage that poorly conceived choices will cause.

Journal name:
Nature
Volume:
510,
Pages:
465–467
Date published:
()
DOI:
doi:10.1038/510465a

References

  1. Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. 2014 CAPP Crude Oil Forecast, Markets, & Transportation: Refinery Data (CAPP, 2014).

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  2. Rooney, R. C., Bayley, S. E. & Schindler, D. W. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 109, 4933–4937 (2012).

    Show context

  3. Kurek, J. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 110, 1761–1766 (2013).

    Show context

  4. Kelly, E. N. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 106, 22346–22351 (2009).

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  5. Chen, Y. Cancer Incidence in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta 1995–2006 (Alberta Cancer Board, 2009).

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  6. Environment Canada. Canada’s Emission Trends (2013).

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  7. Office of the Auditor General of Canada. 2012 Spring Report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development Ch. 2 (2012).

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  8. Arvai, J., Gregory, R., Bessette, D. & Campbell-Arvai, V. Iss. Sci. Technol. 28, 43–52 (2012).

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  9. Kenney, L., Bessette, D. & Arvai, J. J. Environ. Plan. Mgmt http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09640568.2014.899205 (2014).

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Bakken Crude, DEIR, Derailment, Explosion, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Hazardous cargo transparency, Keystone XL, U.S. Department of Transportation

The dark side of the oil boom – analysis of federal data from more than 400 oil-train incidents since 1971

Repost from Politico

The dark side of the oil boom

By Kathryn A. Wolfe and Bob King | 6/18/14

Communities throughout the U.S. and Canada are waking up to the dark side of North America’s energy boom: Trains hauling crude oil are crashing, exploding and spilling in record numbers as a fast-growing industry outpaces the federal government’s oversight.

In the 11 months since a runaway oil train derailed in the middle of a small town in Quebec, incinerating 47 people, the rolling virtual pipelines have unleashed crude oil into an Alabama swamp, forced more than 1,000 North Dakota residents to evacuate, dangled from a bridge in Philadelphia and smashed into an industrial building near Pittsburgh. The latest serious accident was April’s fiery crash in Lynchburg, Virginia, where even the mayor had been unaware oil was rolling through his city.

(WATCH: News coverage of recent oil train spills)

A POLITICO analysis of federal data from more than 400 oil-train incidents since 1971 shows that a once-uncommon threat has escalated dramatically in the past five years:

  • This year has already shattered the record for property damage from U.S. oil-train accidents, with a toll exceeding $10 million through mid-May — nearly triple the damage for all of 2013. The number of incidents so far this year — 70 — is also on pace to set a record.
  • Almost every region of the U.S. has been touched by an oil-train incident. These episodes are spreading as more refineries take crude from production hot spots like North Dakota’s Bakken region and western Canada, while companies from California and Washington state to Missouri, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Florida build or expand terminals for moving oil from trains to barges, trucks or pipelines.
  • The voluntary reforms that DOT and industry have enacted so far might not have prevented the worst accidents. For example, the department announced a voluntary 40 mph speed limit this year for oil trains traveling through densely populated areas, but DOT’s hazardous-incident database shows only one accident in the past five years involving speeds exceeding that threshold. And unlike Canada’s transportation ministry, DOT has not yet set a mandatory deadline for companies to replace or upgrade their tank cars.

Starting this month, DOT is requiring railroads to share more timely information with state emergency managers about the trains’ cargoes and routes. But some railroads are demanding that states sign confidentiality agreements, citing security risks.

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx says each step is a move in the right direction.

“There’s been such exponential growth in the excavation of this crude oil that it’s basically outrun our normal systems,” Foxx said in an interview. But Foxx, who became secretary four days before the Quebec disaster, added: “We’ve been focused on this since I came in. … We’re going to get this right.”

Defending the voluntary speed limits, Foxx said: “You have to understand that all these pieces fit together. So a stronger tank car with lower speeds is safer than a less strong tank car at higher speeds.”

Members of Congress are joining the call for more action.

“The boom in domestic oil production has turned many railways and small communities across our country into de facto oil pipelines, and the gold-rush-type phenomenon has unfortunately put our regulators behind the eight ball,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has been pushing for stricter safety and disclosure rules. “It has become abundantly clear that there are a whole slew of freight rail safety measures that, while for many years have been moving through the gears of bureaucracy, must now be approved and implemented in haste.”

Sierra Club staff attorney Devorah Ancel said the rising damage toll should “ring alarm bells in the minds of our decision-makers, from cities all the way up to Congress and the president.”

“Our fear is that the regulators are being pushed over by the industry,” she said.

Like the oil boom itself, the surge in oil-train traffic has come much faster than anyone expected. Meanwhile, the trains face less onerous regulations than other ways of moving oil, including pipelines like TransCanada’s Keystone XL project.

Keystone, which would carry oil from Alberta to the Gulf Coast, has waited more than five years for a permit from the Obama administration while provoking a national debate about climate change. But no White House approval was needed for all the trains carrying Canadian oil into the United States. In fact, freight railroads in the U.S. are considered “common carriers” for hazardous materials, meaning they can’t refuse to ship it as long as it meets federal guidelines.

The oil-trains issue is bringing a flurry of foot traffic to the White House Office of Management and Budget these days as railroad and oil industry representatives press their case on what any new regulations should look like. Representatives of the country’s leading hauler of Bakken crude, Warren Buffett’s BNSF Railway, met with OMB regulatory chief Howard Shelanski on June 3 and June 6, and joined people from railroads including CSX, Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern in another meeting June 10.

DOT says it has been working to address the problem since as far back as September 2012, and that efforts accelerated after Foxx took over in July. His chief of staff, Sarah Feinberg, holds a meeting each morning on the issue, and she and Foxx meet regularly with top leadership at the two key DOT agencies that oversee railroads and the transport of hazardous materials.

The voluntary agreements that Foxx’s department has worked out with the freight rail industry and shippers address issues like track inspections, speed limits, brakes and additional signaling equipment. Those are all “relevant when dealing with reducing risk” from oil train traffic, the freight rail industry’s main trade group said in a statement.

“The number one and two causes of all main track accidents are track or equipment related,” the Association of American Railroads said. The statement added, “That is how the industry came up with the steps in the voluntary agreement in February aimed at reducing risks of these kinds of accidents when moving crude oil by rail.”

Meanwhile, the oil train business is primed to get bigger. Even TransCanada might start using rail to ship oil to the U.S. while waiting for Keystone to get the green light, CEO Russ Girling said in an interview in May — despite agreeing that trains are a costlier and potentially more dangerous option.

“If anybody thinks that is a better idea, that’s delusional,” Girling said.

In fact, the State Department estimated this month that because of the risks of rail compared with pipelines, an additional 189 injuries and 28 deaths would occur every year if trains end up carrying the oil intended for Keystone.

But environmentalists who warn about the dangers of crude-by-rail say it would be wrong to turn the issue into an excuse to approve Keystone. For one thing, the Texas-bound pipeline would replace only part of the train traffic, which has spread its tendrils all across the U.S. “There are no pipelines that run from North Dakota to the West Coast,” the Sierra Club’s Ancel said.