Repost from Democracy Now!
[Editor: Our struggle here in Benicia, California is in many ways a “NOT IN MY BACKYARD” fight. But our work is incredibly important to those whose backyards, front doors, ranches and open spaces are located uprail from here. We are called upon to STOP crude by rail on behalf of those who live near the tar-sands mining operations in Canada and the fracked shale fields in North Dakota and Montana. Listen as Neil Young speaks from the heart. – RS]
Category Archives: Keystone XL
Keystone XL delayed again
Repost from The Omaha World Herald, Omaha.com
After years of back and forth, another delay for Keystone XL pipeline
April 20, 2014After more than five years of claims and counter-claims about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline … there is another delay, this time due to a court decision in Nebraska that threw out part of the project’s route.
The State Department said Friday that federal agencies could not evaluate the pipeline’s impact until the “uncertainty created by the ongoing litigation” is resolved.
Now, a final decision on whether or not the pipeline will be built might not come until after the midterm elections in November.
The proposed pipeline, if it gets the president’s OK, would be built by TransCanada Corp. and would run 1,179 miles from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, Neb., where it would connect with existing pipelines to refineries on the Gulf Coast. The U.S. segment would be 875 miles long, running through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska. The 36-inch diameter line could carry up to 830,000 barrels (nearly 35 million gallons) of oil per day. Because it would cross the U.S.-Canadian border, the pipeline requires a finding by the Obama administration that building it is in the national interest.
The debate over the project has pitted environmentalists — who hope to block the project on grounds that it would worsen global warming and result in hazardous oil spills — against the president’s critics on the right — who say he should have approved it long ago to create jobs and lessen U.S. dependence on oil from less friendly countries.
FactCheck.org dug up a few common claims and questions that have been flowing around for the past few years:
FACT CHECK.ORG
Excerpts from FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan website that weighs politicians’ claims. It is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.
Really, how many jobs?
Any big construction project requires workers to build it. How many? The U.S. State Department’s analysis says 3,900 would be employed directly if the job is done in one year, or 1,950 per year if work is spread over two. TransCanada puts the number higher, saying the project would support 9,000 construction jobs directly. Counting “indirect” work, the State Department estimates a total of 42,100 jobs could be created. TransCanada has accepted the 42,100 figure for total employment.
Whatever the number, these jobs are temporary, lasting only for the year or two that it would take to complete the project. The number of permanent jobs is much lower. “The proposed Project would generate approximately 50 jobs during operations,” according to the State Department analysis.
House Republicans say the project would create 120,000 jobs. But that’s based on information from figures given by TransCanada two years ago — for a much longer pipeline than is now proposed.
How dirty is this Canadian oil?
Critics of the pipeline are fond of saying that it would carry “the dirtiest oil on the planet,” and there is no question that the oil is significantly “dirtier” than most in the sense that it results in more greenhouse gas emissions.
The oil comes from Alberta and parts of Saskatchewan, in what the industry calls “oil sands” and environmentalist critics call “tar sands.” By either name, they are vast deposits of bitumen — a form of petroleum so dense that at a temperature of 52 degrees Fahrenheit it is “hard as a hockey puck,” according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. It must be heated or diluted to be made to flow through pipes.
How much “dirtier” is it? The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service found that getting Canadian bitumen produced and processed into fuel produces between 70 percent and 110 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than the weighted average of transportation fuels now used in the United States.
However, once this fuel is in the tank, gasoline or diesel fuel that comes from Canadian bitumen is no different than fuel from any other form of petroleum.
The State Department did say that Canadian oil will probably end up being produced and burned anyway, even if the pipeline is not built.
Without this pipeline, how will oil be transported?
Railroad tank cars
A substantial amount of Canadian oil is already entering the United States by rail, in tank cars. No White House approval is required. Rail shipments have skyrocketed since the White House rejected the original Keystone route, when the shipments were less than 20,000 barrels per day. The State Department’s January report estimated that 180,000 barrels per day are being transported by rail from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin, amounting to nearly 22 percent of the volume that the Keystone XL could carry. And the industry is adding new rail capacity rapidly.
Other pipelines
Besides the Keystone XL, three other pipeline projects are being proposed to carry Alberta crude oil to market. Two would carry it across the mountains of British Columbia to ports on Canada’s Pacific coast, to be loaded on tankers and shipped mostly to China and other Asian markets (and with some going to California), while a third would nearly double the effective capacity of an existing line to the U.S.
What are the safety concerns?
Pipelines can be hazardous. An average of 97,376 barrels (4.1 million gallons) of petroleum and other “hazardous liquids” have been spilled each year in pipeline incidents over the past decade, according to the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. These incidents have claimed an average of two lives per year, and resulted in more than $263 million in annual reported property damage.
Those figures include the most expensive onshore oil pipeline spill in U.S. history, caused when a pipeline operated by Enbridge ruptured on July 26, 2010, near Marshall, Mich. That dumped more than 1 million gallons of Canadian diluted bitumen — the same material that would be carried in the Keystone XL pipeline — into the Kalamazoo River. Enbridge still is struggling to complete the cleanup. Although Enbridge initially put the spill at about 840,000 gallons, the EPA said last year 1.15 million gallons had been recovered and 350,000 cubic yards of contaminated river sediment still had to be recovered. Enbridge said in August 2013 that it had spent more than $1 billion on the cleanup and remediation, and the figure continues to rise.
A spill from the Keystone XL could potentially have similar effects. The Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality, in its final evaluation report on the project, found that the properties of the diluted forms of bitumen that would flow through the state in the Keystone XL pipeline “are similar in many respects to other heavy sour crude oils.” For what it’s worth, TransCanada says it plans to make the Keystone XL “the safest pipeline ever constructed in the U.S.,” adding more remote shut-off valves and inspections and burying the pipe more deeply than others.
Rail transport also carries hazards, however. Last July, 47 people died in a single disaster when an unattended train including 72 tanker cars loaded with crude oil rolled downhill, exploded and burned in the Canadian town of Lac-Mégantic in Quebec province. And that calamity is by no means an isolated incident.
Based on relative safety records to date, the State Department estimated that an average of six deaths per year would result if the Keystone XL isn’t built and the same amount is shipped by rail instead. More than twice as much oil is likely to be spilled as well, the State Department estimated.
What’s the impact at the pump?
Some proponents have claimed that the Keystone XL project would hold down gasoline prices for U.S. motorists, while foes have claimed that it would do the opposite, at least for Midwestern motorists.
The State Department’s analysis concluded that either way, the Keystone XL project would have “little impact on the prices that U.S. consumers pay for refined products such as gasoline.” That’s because Gulf Coast refineries that process heavy crude could continue to get it from Venezuela or the Middle East, as they do now, if they can’t get it from Canada, the report said. And even if the Keystone XL isn’t built, Canadian crude still “could reach U.S. and Canadian refineries by rail.”
Other independent experts have said essentially the same thing. Even TransCanada doesn’t include lower gasoline prices in its list of the “economic benefits” that it claims would result from building the pipeline.
National energy boom blurs political battle lines
Repost from The Associated Press, The Big Story
National energy boom blurs political battle lines
By NICHOLAS RICCARDI — Apr. 19, 2014
FILE – This March 25, 2014 file photo shows perforating tools, used to create fractures in the rock, lowered into one of six wells during a roughly two-week hydraulic fracturing operation at an Encana Corp. well pad near Mead, Colo. The energy boom is scrambling national politics. Democrats are split between environmentalists and business and labor groups. Some deeply-conservative areas are allying with conservationists against fracking, the technique largely responsible for the surge. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, File)
DENVER (AP) — The U.S. energy boom is blurring the traditional political battle lines across the country.
Democrats are split between environmentalists and business and labor groups, with the proposed Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline a major wedge.
Some deeply conservative areas are allying with conservationists against fracking, the drilling technique that’s largely responsible for the boom.
The divide is most visible among Democrats in the nation’s capital, where 11 Democratic senators wrote President Barack Obama this month urging him to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which is opposed by many environmental groups and billionaire activist Tom Steyer. The State Department said Friday that it was extending indefinitely the amount of time that federal agencies have to review the project, likely delaying a pipeline decision until after the November elections.
Several senators from energy-producing such as Louisiana and Alaska have distanced themselves from the Obama administration, while environmental groups complain the president has been too permissive of fracking.
There is even more confusion among Democrats in the states as drilling rigs multiply and approach schools and parks.
California Gov. Jerry Brown was shouted down at a recent state convention by party activists angry about his support for fracking. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has kept fracking in his state in limbo for three years while his administration studies health and safety issues. In Colorado, Gov. John Hickenlooper has drawn environmentalists’ ire for defending the energy industry, and a ballot battle to regulate fracking is putting U.S. Sen. Mark Udall in a tough situation.
But the issue cuts across party lines.
Even in deeply Republican Texas, some communities have restricted fracking. In December, Dallas voted to effectively ban fracking within city limits.
“You’re looking at a similar boom as we had in tech in 1996,” said Joe Brettell, a GOP strategist in Washington who works with energy companies. “The technology has caught up with the aspirations, and that changes the political dynamics fundamentally.”
Those technological advances have made it possible for energy companies to tap deep and once-untouchable deposits of natural gas and oil. They include refinements in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which is the injection of chemicals into the ground to coax buried fossil fuels to the surface.
The U.S. is now the world’s largest natural gas producer and is expected to surpass Saudi Arabia soon as the world’s greatest oil producer, becoming a net exporter of energy by 2025.
The boom has brought drilling rigs into long-settled neighborhoods, raising fears of water contamination, unsafe traffic and air pollution, and outraging residents.
Pollster Steven Greenberg said Cuomo provides little notice before his public appearances because anti-fracking protesters will crash his events. Republicans blame the governor for stymieing growth. New York voters split evenly on fracking, with Democrats only modestly more likely to oppose it than Republicans.
“No matter what he decides, he’s going to have half the people upset with him,” Greenberg said. “From a purely political point of view, it’s hard to argue with his strategy — punt.”
In California, Brown has a long record of backing environmental causes, but he’s drawn the wrath of some environmentalists for supporting fracking. One group cited the $2 million that oil and gas companies have given the governor’s causes and campaigns since 2006. Democrats in the Legislature have proposed a freeze on fracking but are not optimistic Brown will support it.
The Democratic split is sharpest in Colorado.
Hickenlooper, a former oil geologist, has been a staunch supporter of fracking; at one point he said he drank fracking fluid, albeit a version without most of the hazardous chemicals. His administration has fought suburban cities that have banned fracking, insisting that only the state can regulate energy exploration.
In response, activists are pushing 10 separate ballot measures to curb fracking. One measure would let cities and counties ban it. The effort has the support of Colorado Rep. Jared Polis, a wealthy Democrat. At the state party’s recent convention, he gave a rousing speech nominating Hickenlooper for a second term but acknowledged “none of us … are going to agree on every single issue.”
Some Colorado Democrats worry that the ballot push is bringing energy groups who generally support Republicans into the state. One pro-fracking group has spent $1 million in TV ads.
Jon Haubert, a spokesman for the group, said leaders in both parties think the measures are economically dangerous. “We look at that and say this seems to be an extreme opinion,” he said, referring to the initiatives.
The ballot measures will force Democratic candidates to choose among environmentalists, labor groups and Colorado’s business community, whose political and financial support is vital to Democrats in the swing state.
Udall embodies this dilemma. He’s an environmentalist in a tight re-election campaign with Republican Rep. Cory Gardner, who represents an oil-and-gas rich, mostly rural congressional district.
In an interview, Udall declined to say if cities should have the right to ban fracking. “I’m not a lawyer,” he said.
Hickenlooper has put in place several landmark regulations — requiring that drilling occur a set distance from homes and schools and limiting methane emissions from energy exploration. But that has not assuaged activists such as Laura Fronckwiecz, a former financial worker who got involved in an effort to ban fracking in her moderate suburb of Broomfield after a drilling well was planned near her children’s elementary school.
A Democrat, she’s aghast at her party’s reluctance to embrace the cause. “Ten years ago, I’d say it was a progressive cause they’d get behind,” Fronckwiecz, 41, said, “but much has changed, and the politics of oil and gas are not what you’d expect.”
Fronckwiecz says she has Republicans and Libertarians in her coalition, as do activists pushing to limit fracking in energy-friendly Texas. While the GOP-dominated Legislature in Texas has rejected efforts to limit drilling, activists have earned small victories in towns and cities that have limited drilling, and one big win, the Dallas vote.
Sharon Wilson, Texas organizer for the environmental group Earthworks, says she gets a warm reception from conservatives and Libertarians. “When they come into your community and start fracking,” she said, “it does not matter what your political affiliation is.”
Five myths about crude oil by rail
Repost from TRAINS The Magazine of Railroading
A lot of what you’ve been hearing is not true. It’s time to set the record straight
COASTAL REFINERIES ARE FLOCKING TO OIL BY RAIL LIKE DROWNING MEN TO LIFE PRESERVERS.
Fred W. Frailey, Trains Magazine, Feb2014, Vol. 74 Issue 2, p17Three years have passed since the village was rocked by the scandal, namely the remarriage, after half a century of divorce, of Mr. Big Rail and Ms. Crude Oil. People are still aghast. Who would have imagined these two would find each other attractive again? Yet a lot of loose tongues are still spreading gossip, and frankly, much of it is simply not true. To promote harmony in the village, your scribe this month wishes to set the record straight. Here are five commonly articulated myths that have no basis in fact.
1. It’s just a fling and won’t last. The way oil is priced worldwide virtually guarantees this marriage will endure. The world oil price (Brent) in recent years has usually been $10 to $25 a barrel higher than the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) price for oil from the U.S. interior, and oil from new discoveries in North Dakota and Canada is further discounted from the WTI price. Follow me so far? Refineries on the west and east coasts are not reached by pipelines from the country’s oil-producing midsection, and had to pay the Brent price (or something close to it) to buy oil from overseas or Alaska’s North Slope. It was difficult for these refiners to compete and stay in business.
Now these coastal refineries are flocking to oil by rail like drowning men to life preservers. If they can get oil $10 to $25 a barrel cheaper, they’re way ahead even after paying the railroads. Therefore, the east and west coasts, I maintain, will be the ultimate destination for much, if not most, of the oil coming from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota and Saskatchewan. And the only way to get it there is by rail.
2. The Keystone XL pipeline will disrupt the marriage. Not at all. TransCanada’s XL, according to the environmental impact statement, is supposed to bring up to 730,000 barrels a day of stuff from Canada (more about “stuff” in a minute) to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast, and pick up another 100,000 barrels of North Dakota oil as it passes through that state. But there are problems with the XL. First, it may never be approved by the U.S. government. Second, Gulf Coast refineries are being flooded by light sweet crude oil of the sort North Dakota produces. I concede that pipelines can get North Dakota crude to the Gulf cheaper than railroads, but question whether there will be much appetite for it. Third, the “stuff” from Canada is not well-suited to pipelines.
3. Railroads cannot compete with pipelines head to head. In theory, that’s largely true. Between Point A and Point B, if there are no complicating hang-ups, pipe will underprice rail. Now, let’s talk about “stuff:’ The oil being extracted in northern Alberta, above Edmonton, is so heavy that you cannot do conventional drilling. Either you mine it and extract the oil from the sand, or you heat it underground and boil it out, so to speak. What you get is an oil called bitumen. Gulf Coast refiners are largely geared for this heavy oil – it’s a natural destination for this oil – but there’s a catch: Bitumen will not flow through a pipeline. Pipelines shippers have to buy condensate. transport it to northern Alberta, and then dilute the bitumen with it so that they end up pumping 72 percent bitumen and 28 percent condensate, or “stuff:’ So what goes through the pipe is 28 percent waste. At the other end, refiners have to remove the diluent. It’s a costly process. At least a couple of oil industry experts who have studied the economics of all this say bitumen can be shipped a lot cheaper by unit train, particularly if you use insulated tank cars with coils for steam injection to permit raw bitumen to be loaded and unloaded. Facilities that will do just that are being built or planned at both ends. The same experts say that even if you dilute the bitumen with 18 percent condensate to make it flow in and out of ordinary tank cars, unit trains are still the low-cost winner, although not by much.
4. Crude oil doesn’t explode. That was the prevailing wisdom before a runaway, unmanned crude oil train piled up in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, in July, killing dozens. And in November an Alabama & Gulf Coast crude oil train derailed over a wooden trestle near Aliceville, Ala., and press reports state that three cars of crude exploded (while other derailed cars did not). Today, I suppose the popular belief is that crude oil is explosive. The truth is that both myths are untrue (or true, take your pick). The lighter the crude oil, the more likely it will be to contain explosive elements such as butane and benzene that may separate from the heavy components during transport. If released and ignited, an explosion may result, according to published safety data sheets. Both the Lac-Megantic and Aliceville accidents involved light sweet crude that originated in North Dakota. As for tar-like bitumen, you could probably hit it with a flamethrower with no explosive effects.
5. The backlog of tank car orders is creating a bubble that will burst. That bit of village gossip had validity because after all, booms are followed by busts, and freight car manufacturers aren’t exempt. But after the Association of American Railroads in November got behind the idea of retrofitting (or reassigning or scrapping) 78,000 of the 92,001]. cars hauling flammable liquids such as ethanol and crude oil, it pretty much insured that the car builders will be turning out tank cars at their peak 24,000-a4 year rate for some time to come. That bust appears to be a long way off. ~
Fred W. Frailey is a TRAINS special correspondent and blogs on www.TrainsMag.com.