# Is the link between KXL pipeline and the Koch brothers as big as my facebook newsfeed suggests? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 24, 2014, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-link-between-kxl-pipeline-and-the-koch-brothers-as-big-as-my-facebook-newsfeed-suggests/684448 "2014-03-24T15:59:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-link-between-kxl-pipeline-and-the-koch-brothers-as-big-as-my-facebook-newsfeed-suggests/684448/101 "2014-04-29T14:25:11Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > We are already piping 6-700,000 bbl/day of dilbit though the keystone pipeline. I think we have a pretty good handle on what dilbit is, how it affects pipelines and how to deal with dilbit spills. Does this mean that we will never have bad spills? Of course not but if you want those sort of guarantees, you should probably grow a beard and go live with the Amish. The problem is, there isn’t really a good way to deal with a dilbit spill. I don’t think _you_ have a good handle on what it would mean to spill 100,000 barrels of this stuff. The section of the Kalamazoo river that was poisoned with dilbit is all but ruined forever. Again, the cost to clean it up is 150-200x what a crude oil spill costs to clean up. Your handwaving away of the risk involved is… well, it must be out of ignorance. > [@](#): > > So again, the ONLY thing on the table is the Keystone XL. Obstructing the Keystone XL is not about the safety of the Keystone XL. Its about opposition to dilbit (and the bakken shale oil) generally. After they rerouted around the aquifer and the sandhills, the only people who are still objecting to this are people that object to the use of oil generally and those that they have convinced that this is about something other than refining the bakken shale oil and the Alberta tar sands. > > If you want better regulation then make your case, do you know anything about pipeline regulation (they’re regulated by the Dept. of Transportation)? I am not convinced that the regulations are perfect or that Keystone XL can’t be improved but I’m not going to go along with obstructing the Keystone XL in order to obstruct the exploitation of the tar sands and the bakken shale oil fields. How about I tell you what my motives are instead of you telling me what my motives are? I am not trying to shut down the oil sands; I am not trying to shut down the Bakken. What would be the point? Yes, the Alberta Tar Sands project is horribly destructive and worse for climate change than other oil projects, but 1) at least they are doing it somewhere remote and mostly unpopulated and 2) shutting it down would only mean more drilling somewhere else, affecting climate change little if at all. I’ll continue to discuss this with you (don’t take my long reply times personally, I’m just busy), but you seem to have capitulated. You say, “Does this mean that we will never have bad spills? Of course not”. What you aren’t getting is that we can never have a dilbit spill on this scale, and the answer to that is to upgrade dilbit to synthetic crude before pumping it into this country. You say, “that isn’t going to happen”. That _is_ what happened before unplanned growth of this project outstripped Canada’s ability to process the gunk. If they can build a 2000 mile pipeline they can build more facilities to clean this up before pumping it into our country. The premise of your argument to me appears to be, “The US is obligated to do something stupid that will lead to disaster.” No, we are not. We don’t owe Alberta politicians anything, we don’t owe Canadian oil companies anything, and we certainly don’t have to open ourselves up to a major dilbit disaster. > [@](#): > > We’re already piping it. Are you trying to convince me to shut down the piping we are already engaged in? Because I’m pretty sure that is a lost cause (and frankly so is opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline). Right. Dilbit is not safe to pipe. Pipe synthetic crude, fine, and address global warming by reducing demand for oil. > [@](#): > > I don’t think I ever said that. You might have me confused with Longhorn Dave. Sorry. > [@](#): > > I think there are differences between dilbit and crude just as there are differences between light sweet crude and heavy sour crude, or crude and condensates. They all have different chemistries but those things are not a secret to anyone. The oil industry is just as aware of these risks as the NRDC and they have every incentive to avoid oil spills. Not really- the costs of spills mostly get externalized and oil companies get off the hook. If the entire board of directors of TransCanada was subject to capital punishment for any spill over 50,000 bbl, I still would not approve the piping of dilbit. We all know their true liability actually amounts to very little. Look at [this](http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20110919/keystone-xl-pipeline-safety-regulations-phmsa-transcanada-oil-sands-bitumen): > [@](#): > > TransCanada and the U.S. State Department have repeatedly touted safety standards for the proposed Keystone XL heavy crude pipeline as robust and unparalleled. As proof, they point to 57 “special conditions” that the Alberta-based pipeline operator has agreed to follow. > [@](#): > > According to recent research by the Natural Resources Defense Council, only 12 of the 57 conditions set by federal regulators at the Department of Transportation differ in any way at all from the minimum standards the DOT routinely requires for pipeline safety. > [@](#): > > That is true for almost all oil products (I became somewhat familiar with the topic when I had to deal with natural gas condensates, which cause corrosion problems in pipelines). Dilbit might be more corrosive than light sweet crude but AFAICT, all pipelines have to deal with internal corrosion. That why they have corrosion engineers.[Corrosion engineering - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrosion_engineering) > Here are some common ways they deal with corrosion [http://www.nace.org/uploadedFiles/Corrosion\_Central/Pipeline%20Corrosion.pdf](http://www.nace.org/uploadedFiles/Corrosion_Central/Pipeline%20Corrosion.pdf) > > AFAICT the big issue is detecting the corrosion so that you can replace sections of pipe when you need to. Thats why they send unmanned drones called “pigs” down these pipelines to perform pipeline endoscopies (I think there was a James Bond movie where 007 travels through a pipeline aboard one of these pigs). That’s great, but a much better approach would be to reduce the amount of quartz and silicate abrasives in dilbit from 125 lbs. per minute to zero (a sandblaster uses between 1.5-47 lbs of sand per minute). Then you wouldn’t need to pipe it at double the temperature and 2.5x the pressure. Admit it, _that_ would be safer. And you haven’t address this: > [@](#): > > as DilBit flows through a pipeline, pressure changes within the pipeline can cause the natural gas liquid condensate component to move from liquid to gas phase.37 This forms a gas bubble that can impede the flow of oil. Because this phenomenon—known as column separation—presents many of the same signs as a leak to pipeline operators, real leaks may go unnoticed. Because the proper response to column separation is to pump more oil through the pipeline, misdiagnoses can be devastating.38 > During the Kalamazoo River spill, the Enbridge pipeline gushed for more than twelve hours before the pipeline was finally shut down, and initial investigation indicates that > the pipeline’s monitoring data were interpreted to indicate a column separation rather than a leak.39 Ultimately, emergency responders were not notified until more than nineteen hours after the spill began. There are far more problems than corrosion, which itself is best addressed by lowering the corrosiveness of the piped material when possible. Look, I’m out of time, sorry if this is choppy. I’ll be back. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-link-between-kxl-pipeline-and-the-koch-brothers-as-big-as-my-facebook-newsfeed-suggests/684448/102 "2014-04-29T15:18:14Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Or you could go live in Silicon Valley – the most high-tech community on earth – with the ~12,000 Tesla owners who don’t use gas and mostly power their cars with free solar energy. I’ve never understood why concern for the environment has to be associated with being a technology-hating Luddite or a hippie. > > The best argument against KXL isn’t any one specific hazard, it’s the argument of the forward-looking perspective, of being part of an imperative solution instead of being part of the problem, of being on the right side of history. There’s definitely alternative energy sources, specifically renewables, that we should continually build up and are in fact building up. But intentionally or not you just made a “let them eat cake” post. Just because the 21st century version of Marie Antoinette (whom I know never actually said the famous phrase) can live in one of the most expensive regions of the United States and drive a $70,000 luxury car doesn’t mean that’s an answer for everyone. That’s like saying we can solve the educational system by sending everyone to the school where Bill Gates or Barack Obama send their kids. Societal level solutions require mass scale, and for at least a generation the only mass scale solution to our energy needs is a portfolio of products that will be heavy on fossil fuels. It’s ideal that we’re moving as much away from the dirtiest fossil fuel (coal) as possible. But we’re not going to all be driving electric cars tomorrow or even 20 years from now, and we’re also not all going to be able to charge them with solar energy. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-link-between-kxl-pipeline-and-the-koch-brothers-as-big-as-my-facebook-newsfeed-suggests/684448/103 "2014-04-29T22:10:13Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > … But intentionally or not you just made a “let them eat cake” post. Just because the 21st century version of Marie Antoinette (whom I know never actually said the famous phrase) can live in one of the most expensive regions of the United States and drive a $70,000 luxury car doesn’t mean that’s an answer for everyone … we’re not going to all be driving electric cars tomorrow or even 20 years from now, and we’re also not all going to be able to charge them with solar energy. No, my reply was really a response to the ridiculous assertion that anyone trying to balance energy needs with environmental responsibility is someone who “should go live with the Amish” or go live in a cave or limit his transportation to a bicycle or a horse. Environmentalism doesn’t equate to low technology; in a forward-thinking world it equates to _ **high** _ technology, and it’s the fume-belching polluting fuels that really represent primitive technology. I’m not saying that everyone can or should own a Tesla right away, I’m saying that it’s an excellent proof of concept of the above thesis. If someone had said a few years ago that a clever innovator was going to go into production with an electric car that was fast, sporty, high-performance, and eminently practical, he would have been dismissed as a silly liberal dreamer – but there it is! And I don’t know about “20 years from now” – Tesla’s affordable electric car for everyman is supposed to be just a couple of years away, and if they can do it, any company will soon be able to do it. I agree with you that fossil fuels are so entrenched that it will take many years to transition to clean energy. But I also believe that government decisions should be in the direction of accelerating this trend, not stifling it by further promoting fossil fuels. It’s like the argument that electric cars are pointless because a lot of areas get their power from coal plants. Whose fault is that? Maybe the government that loosened pollution restrictions to promote coal power and make it cheaper. Major progress is generally made one step at a time, and every decision like the one on KXL is either a step forward or a step backward. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-link-between-kxl-pipeline-and-the-koch-brothers-as-big-as-my-facebook-newsfeed-suggests/684448/104 "2014-04-30T00:17:37Z")
Part of the reason fossil fuels are entrenched is they are energy dense and cheap. That’s an advantage they are going to have for a long time that doesn’t just go away “because technology” or “because Tesla.” We’re way out in the grass now, because at the end of the day there is demand for tar sands oil and there is little logical opposition to the pipeline. I haven’t seen a single argument against it that is convincing, even if I agree lock step with what I call the “fundie” greens even their argument against Keystone XL is actually bad for the environment. It does nothing to lower usage or extraction of the fuel and is just a stubbornness in which a desire is there to “flex some political muscle” because a Democrat is sitting in the Oval office and by god he better listen to the greens. Never mind that this same exact type of petroleum is already going through pipelines in America, never mind that without the pipeline extension, it’ll travel over rail which is worse for the environment on two levels (in that it’s less energy efficient to move it, and more dangerous.) ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-link-between-kxl-pipeline-and-the-koch-brothers-as-big-as-my-facebook-newsfeed-suggests/684448/105 "2014-04-30T01:11:46Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Or you could go live in Silicon Valley – the most high-tech community on earth – with the ~12,000 Tesla owners who don’t use gas and mostly power their cars with free solar energy. I’ve never understood why concern for the environment has to be associated with being a technology-hating Luddite or a hippie. > > The best argument against KXL isn’t any one specific hazard, it’s the argument of the forward-looking perspective, of being part of an imperative solution instead of being part of the problem, of being on the right side of history. There is no “right side of history” on this one. We’re not oppressing minorities or denying global warming to make a profit. This stuff is already being refined and extra capacity from the KXL will largely be used to bring bakken shale oil to market. If your argument for getting rid of oil is that there are $70,000 cars available that don’t need oil then you might as well be a luddite (and do you have a cite that they are mostly powered by solar energy (and if so, how subsidized is that solar energy compared to natural gas)?). ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-link-between-kxl-pipeline-and-the-koch-brothers-as-big-as-my-facebook-newsfeed-suggests/684448/106 "2014-04-30T02:58:37Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > The problem is, there isn’t really a good way to deal with a dilbit spill. I don’t think _you_ have a good handle on what it would mean to spill 100,000 barrels of this stuff. The section of the Kalamazoo river that was poisoned with dilbit is all but ruined forever. Again, the cost to clean it up is 150-200x what a crude oil spill costs to clean up. Your handwaving away of the risk involved is… well, it must be out of ignorance. You keep bringing up the kalamazoo oil spill (the LARGEST inland oil spill in US history) as the example that we should keep in mind. You might as well point to the Exxon Valdez oil spill and say we should have stop shipping oil by tankers. You are hyperventilating largely because you are only aware of one side of the facts. > [@](#): > > How about I tell you what my motives are instead of you telling me what my motives are? I am not trying to shut down the oil sands; I am not trying to shut down the Bakken. What would be the point? Yes, the Alberta Tar Sands project is horribly destructive and worse for climate change than other oil projects, but 1) at least they are doing it somewhere remote and mostly unpopulated and 2) shutting it down would only mean more drilling somewhere else, affecting climate change little if at all. I’m not saying your motives are to shut down tar sands production (after all you seem to support refining the tar sands in place). But as other posters like wolfpup demonstrate, a lot of the resistance to the KXL isn’t because of safety concerns over the pipeline, its because they don’t want the tar sands to be exploited at all. Your idea of refining the tar sands in place would get absolutely no traction from the people who are driving the resistance to the KXL. The strategy seems to be to offer enough sustained resistance to ALL fossil fuels to raise the price of energy and reduce consumption. We saw the consumption of gasoline drop pretty aggressively when gas prices rose to $5. If they can stop natural gas frakking (or even slow down its growth (there are over 10,000 new gas wells drilled every year and that predictably steady increase in supply is keeping natural gas prices very low), then renewable energy wouldn’t seem so fucking expensive in comparison (if natural gas prices doubled, then solar power would only be twice as expensive as gas and they would reach grid parity a lot sooner). So they try to stop frakking with overblown safety concerns. KXL seems to be largely the same thing. > [@](#): > > I’ll continue to discuss this with you (don’t take my long reply times personally, I’m just busy), but you seem to have capitulated. You say, “Does this mean that we will never have bad spills? Of course not”. What you aren’t getting is that we can never have a dilbit spill on this scale, and the answer to that is to upgrade dilbit to synthetic crude before pumping it into this country. I don’t think that I ever said that spills would never happen. Its a risk but we take risks every day. We had the exxon valdez and we still ship oil by tankers. We had the deepwater horizon and we still have deepwater oil drilling. And we had the kalamazoo river spill and we will still pipe dilbit. The kalamazoo river spill is the largest and most expensive onland oil spill in US history. If it had occurred outside of a waterway, the cleanup would have been immeasurably faster, cheaper and easier. I think the fines and penalties are laughable but it looks like the cleanup will cost almost a billion dollars (I think that the fines should be at least a billion dollars). > [@](#): > > You say, “that isn’t going to happen”. That _is_ what happened before unplanned growth of this project outstripped Canada’s ability to process the gunk. If they can build a 2000 mile pipeline they can build more facilities to clean this up before pumping it into our country. Dilbit is processed already. It has to be to meet the requirements of the refineries on the receiving end. They are blended to approximate heavy crude. Sure they could process it more to make it more like conventional crude but the refineries in Texas are looking for heavy sour crude like the stuff they used to get from Venezuela before Venezuela’s production dropped off the map. The stuff is already cleaned up and approximates heavy sour crude. > [@](#): > > The premise of your argument to me appears to be, “The US is obligated to do something stupid that will lead to disaster.” Cite? > [@](#): > > and we certainly don’t have to open ourselves up to a major dilbit disaster. You keep ignoring the fact that we already pipe 6-700,000 bbl/day through the existing keystone pipeline and several hundred thousand bbl/day through other pipelines. > [@](#): > > Right. Dilbit is not safe to pipe. Pipe synthetic crude, fine, and address global warming by reducing demand for oil. Can you tell me how dilbit differs from heavy sour crude? I think that you are adopting the nomencalture that some environmentalists are adopting by referring to light sweet crude as conventional oil and using that to make dilbit seem exotic. Thats is why your chart seems to show such a dramatic difference between the two. If you had a similar chart comparing dilbit with heavy sour crude, you would not have this sort of disparity. > [@](#): > > Not really- the costs of spills mostly get externalized and oil companies get off the hook. If the entire board of directors of TransCanada was subject to capital punishment for any spill over 50,000 bbl, I still would not approve the piping of dilbit. We all know their true liability actually amounts to very little. > Look at [this](http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20110919/keystone-xl-pipeline-safety-regulations-phmsa-transcanada-oil-sands-bitumen): How do the costs of oil spills get mostly externalized? They have to clean it up, they have to compensate anyone that is harmed and they have to pay a penalty (I think the penalties are ludicrously small). > [@](#): > > That’s great, but a much better approach would be to reduce the amount of quartz and silicate abrasives in dilbit from 125 lbs. per minute to zero (a sandblaster uses between 1.5-47 lbs of sand per minute). Then you wouldn’t need to pipe it at double the temperature and 2.5x the pressure. Admit it, _that_ would be safer. Abrasion is never an issue AFAICT. in order for it to be an issue, the abrasive has to be harder than the abraded surface. Thats why the sandblasting guns don’t disintegrate when you pull the trigger. A sandblaster is going to have about a 1/8" nozzle which means it has a cross section of pi/256th square inch a 3 foot pipeline is going to have a cross section that is about pi\*324 square inches. The pipeline will have a cross section that is 82944 times larger than a sandblaster. I only point this out to show you who silly they are being with their comparisons. > [@](#): > > And you haven’t address this: Do you know what column separation is? It happens in all pipelines not just dilbit. Here is column separation in anpother context. [http://www.youngeng.com/fuel\_surge\_tank\_movie.html](http://www.youngeng.com/fuel_surge_tank_movie.html) there is technology that prevents column separation failures these days. The Enbridge pipeline that had the Kalamazoo spill was 40 years old and used old technology. What would make you change your mind? I think I have presented a lot of evidence that half the stuff you believed to be true were half truths and distortions. Here’s what it would take to change my mind (or at least think about changing my mind and I’m no expert by any means): A clear disparity in the characteristics of dilbit and heavy sour crude with an explanation that shows why this disparity creates an unacceptable danger that is not addressed by modern technology. For these purposes, unacceptable means something that cannot be remedied by spending money or kills people where heavy crude would not. [Heavy crude oil - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_crude_oil) An argument that doesn’t involve comparing the failure of a 40 year old pipeline with the potential failure of a modern pipeline. In fact don’t even bring it up other than to point out how bad an oil spill can get if operated by negligent idiots. In fact it would be nice to show how a dilbit spill is worse than a heavy sour crude oilspill. Or some proof that the Koch brothers are going to make a huge windfall from kxl that they are going to use to subvert democracy (you don’t have to prove the last part just the windfall part, I am already convinced that they want to subvert democracy). ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-link-between-kxl-pipeline-and-the-koch-brothers-as-big-as-my-facebook-newsfeed-suggests/684448/107 "2014-04-30T03:07:21Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > No, my reply was really a response to the ridiculous assertion that anyone trying to balance energy needs with environmental responsibility is someone who “should go live with the Amish” or go live in a cave or limit his transportation to a bicycle or a horse. There really isn’t an attempt at balancing in any realistic sense. YOu like paying 10 cents per megawatt hour? Get rid of natural gas and your energy prices double overnight. Mayybe you can afford it but it would be a hardship for many people. I don’t see anyone offering any balanced approaches besides living like the Amish or using energy that is triple current energy prices. > [@](#): > > Environmentalism doesn’t equate to low technology; in a forward-thinking world it equates to _ **high** _ technology Sure, eventually, let me know when we achieve grid parity. Noone is getting in the way of the development of that technology. The only obstruction we see in this space is from environmentalists that are trying to obstruct current energy sources before we have any future energy sources. > [@](#): > > Tesla’s affordable electric car for everyman is supposed to be just a couple of years away, and if they can do it, any company will soon be able to do it. And when that day comes, you will have your argument. Until then you just have theory. > [@](#): > > I agree with you that fossil fuels are so entrenched that it will take many years to transition to clean energy. But I also believe that government decisions should be in the direction of accelerating this trend, not stifling it by further promoting fossil fuels. By increasing the cost of energy?!?!??!:dubious: > [@](#): > > It’s like the argument that electric cars are pointless because a lot of areas get their power from coal plants. Whose fault is that? Maybe the government that loosened pollution restrictions to promote coal power and make it cheaper. Major progress is generally made one step at a time, and every decision like the one on KXL is either a step forward or a step backward. KXL is a step towards avoiding an economic meltdown. Do you remember the 1970s when oil shortages brought our economy to its knees and ushered Ronald Reagan and the modern conservative movement into power? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-link-between-kxl-pipeline-and-the-koch-brothers-as-big-as-my-facebook-newsfeed-suggests/684448/108 "2014-04-30T03:10:55Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > …there is little logical opposition to the pipeline. I haven’t seen a single argument against it that is convincing, even if I agree lock step with what I call the “fundie” greens even their argument against Keystone XL is actually bad for the environment. It does nothing to lower usage or extraction of the fuel and is just a stubbornness in which a desire is there to “flex some political muscle” because a Democrat is sitting in the Oval office and by god he better listen to the greens. Its picking a fight they think they can win. Even if it does nothing to really help their cause, it hurts the other side and makes them seem more vulnerable. It was largely the strategy behind thee proposed AWB last year. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-link-between-kxl-pipeline-and-the-koch-brothers-as-big-as-my-facebook-newsfeed-suggests/684448/109 "2014-04-30T13:42:33Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > There is no “right side of history” on this one. We’re not oppressing minorities or denying global warming to make a profit. This stuff is already being refined and extra capacity from the KXL will largely be used to bring bakken shale oil to market. > > If your argument for getting rid of oil is that there are $70,000 cars available that don’t need oil then you might as well be a luddite (and do you have a cite that they are mostly powered by solar energy (and if so, how subsidized is that solar energy compared to natural gas)?). Exactly, there is no right side of history on this. I’m a conservative environmentalist and I’d love to flip a switch tomorrow and have nothing but fancy electric cars and fuel cell vehicles, a grid powered by mostly renewable energy, natural gas (and eventually not even that), and nuclear and be using fossil fuels basically to fly jets and for the military. But in 1850 we started using the fuels we could use at that time. I don’t feel it’s “wrong” that humanity utilized fossil fuels when the alternative was never establishing our modern way of life. We should move away from them, especially coal and oil, but until that happens it just seems like denying reality that there is massive global demand for oil that isn’t going away overnight and that will be satisfied from the Alberta oil fields whether Keystone XL is built or not. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-link-between-kxl-pipeline-and-the-koch-brothers-as-big-as-my-facebook-newsfeed-suggests/684448/110 "2014-04-30T14:28:03Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > You keep bringing up the kalamazoo oil spill (the LARGEST inland oil spill in US history) as the example that we should keep in mind. You might as well point to the Exxon Valdez oil spill and say we should have stop shipping oil by tankers. You are hyperventilating largely because you are only aware of one side of the facts. If you could read my mind this would go a lot faster. You can’t tell me what I am aware of- please stop strawmanning me. You are talking about building the largest pipeline in US history, one which you admit is destined to fail eventually. Dilbit has only been piped in this country at scale for a short time, and already has resulted in the largest inland spill in history. Of course it is an appropriate comparison- the Keystone will produce far worse disasters, ones which must never be allowed to happen. > [@](#): > > I’m not saying your motives are to shut down tar sands production (after all you seem to support refining the tar sands in place). But as other posters like wolfpup demonstrate, a lot of the resistance to the KXL isn’t because of safety concerns over the pipeline, its because they don’t want the tar sands to be exploited at all. Your idea of refining the tar sands in place would get absolutely no traction from the people who are driving the resistance to the KXL. Please respond to what I am saying instead of what others are saying. I’m not aiming to get traction with those people. I’m not on a fool’s errand to shut down the tar sands project. I am pushing for the responsible thing, which is to not pipe 900,000 bbl of dilbit across the country, for one reason- it isn’t safe, it will cause an unacceptable disaster, we can get the oil without going through it. > [@](#): > > The strategy seems to be to offer enough sustained resistance to ALL fossil fuels to raise the price of energy and reduce consumption. We saw the consumption of gasoline drop pretty aggressively when gas prices rose to $5. > > If they can stop natural gas frakking (or even slow down its growth (there are over 10,000 new gas wells drilled every year and that predictably steady increase in supply is keeping natural gas prices very low), then renewable energy wouldn’t seem so fucking expensive in comparison (if natural gas prices doubled, then solar power would only be twice as expensive as gas and they would reach grid parity a lot sooner). So they try to stop frakking with overblown safety concerns. KXL seems to be largely the same thing. I don’t deny you may have observed that strategy, but please don’t confuse my opposition to dilbit piping with some vague anti-fossil fuel agenda. Do I like the tar sands or fracking? Not really. Am I going to grow my hair out and chain myself to a piece of pipe? Hell no. And I haven’t objected to the Bakken oil being piped. From what I hear, the Bakken oil is actually very nice oil once you get it out of the ground. North Dakota is almost as remote as North Alberta- if we gotta frack, that is a decent place to do it. As for renewables, you haven’t been keeping up with the trends. I posted [this](https://www.q-cells.com/uploads/tx_abdownloads/files/11_GLOBAL_OVERVIEW_ON_GRID-PARITY_Paper_02.pdf) earlier. The summary is in these images: [1](https://i.imgur.com/7hcXRmV.jpg) [2](https://i.imgur.com/1B5Vv0w.jpg) [3](https://i.imgur.com/KfD34Cg.jpg) (I lost the one for the America’s, but you can find it in the main cite). Grid parity is already here in plenty of places, and will sweep the globe by 2020 regardless of how the XL pipeline turns out. I don’t have to do anything to make it happen. > [@](#): > > I don’t think that I ever said that spills would never happen. Its a risk but we take risks every day. We had the exxon valdez and we still ship oil by tankers. We had the deepwater horizon and we still have deepwater oil drilling. And we had the kalamazoo river spill and we will still pipe dilbit. The kalamazoo river spill is the largest and most expensive onland oil spill in US history. If it had occurred outside of a waterway, the cleanup would have been immeasurably faster, cheaper and easier. But we don’t _have_ to pipe dilbit. Exxon didn’t have to use single-hulled ships. And those damnable, contemptible fucks at British Petroleum could have drilled a relief well at the same time as their main well like responsible actors such as the Norwiegans and others whose heads are not firmly up their asses do, but no, foreign companies frankly don’t give two shits about what happens to the lands they operate in as long as they make a profit. Who went to jail from any of those previous disasters? Nobody. Nobody will after a major dilbit spill either. Unacceptable. We must take the proper precautions in advance instead of letting these idiots demagogue the issue. That can only happen at the government level- history shows oil interests won’t do it on their own. > [@](#): > > Dilbit is processed already. It has to be to meet the requirements of the refineries on the receiving end. They are blended to approximate heavy crude. Sure they could process it more to make it more like conventional crude but the refineries in Texas are looking for heavy sour crude like the stuff they used to get from Venezuela before Venezuela’s production dropped off the map. The stuff is already cleaned up and approximates heavy sour crude. Great story. But we don’t know what they mix into it. They can keep their trade secret, but they will also have to keep their dilbit AFAIAC. Heavy sour is not what I am asking for. > [@](#): > > You keep ignoring the fact that we already pipe 6-700,000 bbl/day through the existing keystone pipeline and several hundred thousand bbl/day through other pipelines. I’m not, I am pointing out that it is bad policy and should not be expanded. Piping dilbit in Canada has led them to have a pipeline failure rate 16x what it is here in the US, with pipes half the age. Once they started piping dilbit here, blammo, awful spills. > [@](#): > > How do the costs of oil spills get mostly externalized? They have to clean it up, they have to compensate anyone that is harmed and they have to pay a penalty (I think the penalties are ludicrously small). The people affected never get their land back. The US will not be getting back the ruined section of the Kalamazoo. Money is no substitute for having your life ruined by a disaster. I’m not willing to put another piece of America on the chopping block for the sake of oil company interests when the risk can be mitigated. I’m not asking for something ridiculous- clean up the dilbit, then pipe it here. Or, don’t pipe it here, build a dilbit pipe across Canada instead > [@](#): > > Abrasion is never an issue AFAICT. in order for it to be an issue, the abrasive has to be harder than the abraded surface. Thats why the sandblasting guns don’t disintegrate when you pull the trigger. > > A sandblaster is going to have about a 1/8" nozzle which means it has a cross section of pi/256th square inch a 3 foot pipeline is going to have a cross section that is about pi\*324 square inches. The pipeline will have a cross section that is 82944 times larger than a sandblaster. I only point this out to show you who silly they are being with their comparisons. That is a nice story, but again, the demonstrated failure rate of dilbit pipes is far higher than conventional ones, so I think we’re better off referring to that. > [@](#): > > Do you know what column separation is? > > It happens in all pipelines not just dilbit. > > Here is column separation in anpother context. > > [http://www.youngeng.com/fuel\_surge\_tank\_movie.html](http://www.youngeng.com/fuel_surge_tank_movie.html) > > there is technology that prevents column separation failures these days. The Enbridge pipeline that had the Kalamazoo spill was 40 years old and used old technology. Yeah. I don’t think an overflow bladder is going to work with highly viscous, high-pressure sludge in a 2000 mile pipe. Looks like it would work great in a crude pipeline. The Enbridge pipeline _was_ old technology. As I cited above, the standards have mostly not changed for the XL pipeline, so we can expect similar results, only on a larger scale. > [@](#): > > An argument that doesn’t involve comparing the failure of a 40 year old pipeline with the potential failure of a modern pipeline. In fact don’t even bring it up other than to point out how bad an oil spill can get if operated by negligent idiots. In fact it would be nice to show how a dilbit spill is worse than a heavy sour crude oilspill. This is a red herring. The 40 year old pipes have very nearly the same standards as the XL pipeline- there isn’t much of a distinction there. As for why a dilbit spill is so bad, let me put that together and I’ll get back to you. We haven’t covered all the dilbit piping risks yet though. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-link-between-kxl-pipeline-and-the-koch-brothers-as-big-as-my-facebook-newsfeed-suggests/684448/111 "2014-04-30T18:00:00Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > If you could read my mind this would go a lot faster. You can’t tell me what I am aware of- please stop strawmanning me. Were you aware that the keystone pipeline was already piping 6-700,000 bbl/day into the USA? My impression was that you were not. How much do you know about “conventional oil”? > [@](#): > > You are talking about building the largest pipeline in US history, one which you admit is destined to fail eventually. The largest tankers in the world are destined to fail one day as well. Same with nuclear power plants. > [@](#): > > Dilbit has only been piped in this country at scale for a short time, and already has resulted in the largest inland spill in history. Of course it is an appropriate comparison- the Keystone will produce far worse disasters, ones which must never be allowed to happen. Dilbit has been around for 30 years. > [@](#): > > Please respond to what I am saying instead of what others are saying. I’m not aiming to get traction with those people. I’m not on a fool’s errand to shut down the tar sands project. I am pushing for the responsible thing, which is to not pipe 900,000 bbl of dilbit across the country, for one reason- it isn’t safe, it will cause an unacceptable disaster, we can get the oil without going through it. I thought I did when I asked you what the difference was between dilbit and heavy sour crude (which is considered a conventional oil). > [@](#): > > Grid parity is already here in plenty of places, and will sweep the globe by 2020 regardless of how the XL pipeline turns out. I don’t have to do anything to make it happen. I have no idea whaat those graphs are supposed to represent. I have no objection at all to getting rid of fossil fuel energy altogether. I know that we have achieve unsubsidized grid parity in a few places but it was my understanding that places like Germany do not actually achieve grid parity, rather the government taxes fossil fuels and subsidizes solar to the point that it has achieved parity on a subsidized basis. > [@](#): > > But we don’t _have_ to pipe dilbit. Exxon didn’t have to use single-hulled ships. And those damnable, contemptible fucks at British Petroleum could have drilled a relief well at the same time as their main well like responsible actors such as the Norwiegans and others whose heads are not firmly up their asses do, but no, foreign companies frankly don’t give two shits about what happens to the lands they operate in as long as they make a profit. Who went to jail from any of those previous disasters? Nobody. Nobody will after a major dilbit spill either. Unacceptable. So the answer to a tanker spill was better tankers outfitted with better technology. The answer to a deepwater drilling accident is better drilling technology. The answer to a dilbit spill is getting rid of dilbit? So tell me again what is the difference between dilbit and heavy sour crude? > [@](#): > > We must take the proper precautions in advance instead of letting these idiots demagogue the issue. Almost all the demagoguery is coming from the protest side. > [@](#): > > Great story. But we don’t know what they mix into it. They can keep their trade secret, but they will also have to keep their dilbit AFAIAC. Geez, I thought we already resolved this. We DO know what they mix into it. It varies from time to time but it is simply lighter forms of oil and condensates. > [@](#): > > Heavy sour is not what I am asking for. So now you want to ban the import of heavy sour too?:smack: > [@](#): > > I’m not, I am pointing out that it is bad policy and should not be expanded. Piping dilbit in Canada has led them to have a pipeline failure rate 16x what it is here in the US, with pipes half the age. Once they started piping dilbit here, blammo, awful spills. Do you have a cite that dilbit pipelines in canada are experiencing 16 times the failure rate of non-dilbit pipelines? Because it seems like there could be other reasons why Canada is experiencing higher failure rates than the USA. > [@](#): > > The people affected never get their land back. The US will not be getting back the ruined section of the Kalamazoo. Money is no substitute for having your life ruined by a disaster. I’m not willing to put another piece of America on the chopping block for the sake of oil company interests when the risk can be mitigated. I’m not asking for something ridiculous- clean up the dilbit, then pipe it here. Or, don’t pipe it here, build a dilbit pipe across Canada instead I don’t think you realize what is in heavy synthetic oil. Or are you saying that we should dilute dilbit to the point where it is like texas intermediate and not useful to the heavy crude refineries? > [@](#): > > That is a nice story, but again, the demonstrated failure rate of dilbit pipes is far higher than conventional ones, so I think we’re better off referring to that. Its funny, the NRDC paper says that dilbit MAY have caused the higher failure rate and you take this as fact. They even state: “While differences in data collection and regulations between Alberta and the United States make it impossible to make a clear comparison of this data” its still a cause for concern. Here’s a chart of the characteristics of different kinds of oil and dilbit and synthetic crudes: [http://www.coqa-inc.org/102209CanadianCrudeReferenceGuide.pdf](http://www.coqa-inc.org/102209CanadianCrudeReferenceGuide.pdf) See how similar the heavy sours are to dilbit. See how similar the heavy synthetics are to dilbit? Now tell me again why dilbit is so much worse than heavy sour crudes? > [@](#): > > Yeah. I don’t think an overflow bladder is going to work with highly viscous, high-pressure sludge in a 2000 mile pipe. Looks like it would work great in a crude pipeline. You would use more than one and the viscosity is comparable to heavy crude. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2014, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-link-between-kxl-pipeline-and-the-koch-brothers-as-big-as-my-facebook-newsfeed-suggests/684448/112 "2014-05-04T20:43:24Z")
Sorry to take so long. Anyway, before I dive into some of these points, let’s be clear about a few points: -If Transcanada/Enbridge are unable or unwilling to reveal what additives they intend to add to the dilbit that will flow through this proposed pipeline, that is the end of the discussion and the answer is NO. It is bad enough that American fracking operations treat the public this shabbily and shamefully, and that has to stop. I will never countenance it from a foreign company. -I don’t care if dilbit is already being piped into this country from Canada. Upgrading the dilbit that is already pumped into this country is a precondition for approving the XL, which will not be piping dilbit 1700 miles across America under high pressure and temprature. They can pipe upgraded crude and/or refined products, or pipe nothing. If the Canadians are too lazy to process this dangerous sludge, they can hang on to it. -If this proposal does not address the question of, “What do the people affected get in return for this project?”, then that, too, brings us to the end of the discussion and the answer is NO. A certain dollar amount per barrel pumped through the pipe must be set aside for an American soveriegn wealth fund, similar to Norway’s Sovereign Wealth Fund or whatever Alaska calls their public oil fund. This may make more sense/be more palatable if it only applies to the states this pipeline is to pass through. To ask Americans to take the colossal, roulette-wheel like risk associated with a dilbit pipe on this scale for the sake of foreign oil companies’ profits, in return for nothing, is the clearest example of a non-starter I have seen in quite some time. Frankly, the Canadians should be ashamed of themselves for behaving in such a shady, immoral way. This entire proposal is lowering my opinion of our friends to the North, suggesting to me that they couldn’t care less about the well-being of the American public as long as there is a buck to be made. There’s a word for this- can you guess what it is? -Neither you nor any of the proponents of this pipeline seem willing to acknowledge the real risks associated with piping dilbit, in typical oil-interest fashion. Take a look at the [dilbit spill on the Yellowstone River in Montana](http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2011/07/yellowstone-oil-spill-montana): > [@](#): > > Most of the damage was within 50 miles of the site of the break, though oil has been reported as far as 240 miles away. > [@](#): > > The 12-inch Silvertip pipeline is buried five feet below the riverbed, which was supposed to be far enough to prevent a spill like this from happening. > [@](#): > > Just 160 hundred miles downstream from the spill site is where the proposed Keystone XL pipeline would also cross the Yellowstone. Three times larger and many miles longer than the Silvertip, the Keystone would transport up to 21.4 million gallons of tar-sands oil every day from Alberta to Texas. It would cross more than 70 rivers and streams—including the Yellowstone—in addition to the Ogallala Aquifer, which provides nearly one-third of the groundwater used to irrigate US crops. > [@](#): > > A recent study on the proposed pipeline found that a single spill on the Yellowstone could release up to 5.8 million gallons—140 times more than the spill earlier this month Are you effing kidding me? We are not going to take the risk of a spill of this magnitude, considering the cleanup costs are, according to the precedent of the [Kalamazoo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalamazoo_River_oil_spill) [dilbit disaster](https://www.google.com/search?q=kalamazoo+river+oil+spill&rlz=1C1TSNF_enUS464US464&es_sm=122&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=_5hmU-aLNdWgyATMooG4DA&ved=0CEAQsAQ&biw=1920&bih=947), up to 200x the costs of cleaning up a crude spill. Or consider the [Mayflower, Arkansas dilbit disaster](https://www.google.com/search?q=mayflower,+arkansas+oil+spill&rlz=1C1TSNF_enUS464US464&es_sm=122&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=YJlmU5bDL4WzyATgjILABw&ved=0CDUQsAQ&biw=1920&bih=947). Those people can never return to their homes, and the whole area is probably ruined for the duration of our lifetimes. To suggest that America needs more of this, in return for nothing, to benefit Canadian oil companies, is simply amoral, among a list of other negatives. -_We don’t need Canada’s oil_. [The United States is projected to surpass Saudi Arabia in oil production by 2015](http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/energy/item/17834-thanks-to-fracking-u-s-will-pass-saudi-arabia-in-oil-production), at a time when [American oil consumption is dropping](http://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/comarison-of-actual-and-expected-us-oil-consumption.png). What use do we have for Canada’s low-grade, unrefined goop when we will be the largest oil producer in the world? Why take the risk? The answer is: don’t. > [@](#): > > The largest tankers in the world are destined to fail one day as well. Same with nuclear power plants. Precedent shows that the likelihood of a dilbit spill is far, far higher than the risk of the disasters you mention. It is in fact all but guaranteed. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it- better to repeat dilbit pipeline doom in Canada than America if you ask me. We’ll pipe our own oil, thanks. > [@](#): > > Dilbit has been around for 30 years. This is a dishonest and misleading thing to say by itself. [Here](http://www.bloomberg.com/infographics/2014-04-24/canada-energy-superpower.html) is a chart of the growth in dilbit production. You can see that it spiked only recently. Anyway, the important point isn’t how long this stuff has been produced, but how long it has been piped into the United States, and the startling number of disasters it has caused in that short time period. > [@](#): > > I thought I did when I asked you what the difference was between dilbit and heavy sour crude (which is considered a conventional oil). You’ve said a lot of things about sour crude inviting me to make some kind of point about it, but I don’t know what you’re looking for. The standard I am putting on any XL pipeline is that the oil must be able to flow through it at ambient temperatures and ordinary oil-pipe pressures. If Canada can’t clean up their goop to do that, they can keep it. > [@](#): > > I have no idea whaat those graphs are supposed to represent. I have no objection at all to getting rid of fossil fuel energy altogether. I know that we have achieve unsubsidized grid parity in a few places but it was my understanding that places like Germany do not actually achieve grid parity, rather the government taxes fossil fuels and subsidizes solar to the point that it has achieved parity on a subsidized basis. Grid parity is really a separate discussion from the XL pipeline. Basically, my position is that until we can make the switch to alternatives, we will have to continue burning oil (pretty obvious, no?). But we don’t have to resort to tar sands- again, we’re producing plenty of our own oil, thanks. Take a closer look at the cite and those graphs. The graphs represent where various countries are relative to grid parity, and where they are projected to be through 2020. Solar doesn’t cost the same everywhere, and neither does electricity, so different places will reach grid parity at different times. Pretty much everyplace will be there by 2020, though it will still be awhile before solar can replace oil after that. > [@](#): > > So the answer to a tanker spill was better tankers outfitted with better technology. The answer to a deepwater drilling accident is better drilling technology. The answer to a dilbit spill is getting rid of dilbit? You are correct. I’m talking about [risk management](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_management). The risks of piping dilbit is simply unacceptable vs. the risks of piping conventional crude (according to the standard I explained above), especially when you consider that the risk/reward ratio Americans see for this project is _infinity_ (actually, it is a division by zero error, but whatever) since the public doesn’t get a goddamn thing out of this project. Dilbit is the source of the unacceptable risk. Eliminate that and maybe we can make a deal. > [@](#): > > So tell me again what is the difference between dilbit and heavy sour crude? It doesn’t matter, and I can’t make your argument for you. They can pipe oil at ambient temperatures and ordinary pressures, or they can keep it. > [@](#): > > Almost all the demagoguery is coming from the protest side. Thanks, I needed a good laugh 🙂 > [@](#): > > Geez, I thought we already resolved this. We DO know what they mix into it. It varies from time to time but it is simply lighter forms of oil and condensates. Ok, cite what they put in it then. Everything I’ve read says they are keeping it a secret. > [@](#): > > So now you want to ban the import of heavy sour too?:smack: I don’t want to _pipe_ dilbit, especially not 1700 miles across my country, which you seem to view as some kind of disposable wasteland from end to end. Shipping it is hazardous too, but a different issue. > [@](#): > > Do you have a cite that dilbit pipelines in canada are experiencing 16 times the failure rate of non-dilbit pipelines? Because it seems like there could be other reasons why Canada is experiencing higher failure rates than the USA. I posted the cite earlier. I’ll repost it later if you want. Dilbit is too dangerous to pipe, precedent proves it. > [@](#): > > I don’t think you realize what is in heavy synthetic oil. Or are you saying that we should dilute dilbit to the point where it is like texas intermediate and not useful to the heavy crude refineries? Ambient temperatures and ordinary pressures. It is a rather simple position. And, you do realize there are other priorities besides the interests of Gulf Coast refineries in play, no? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2014, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-link-between-kxl-pipeline-and-the-koch-brothers-as-big-as-my-facebook-newsfeed-suggests/684448/113 "2014-05-05T03:37:48Z")
A lot of what you seem to be saying is: “I don’t care what they have to say, here are my conditions and unless they meet them, I will never approve” Fortunately for the world, we don’t need your approval for everything. > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > -If Transcanada/Enbridge are unable or unwilling to reveal what additives they intend to add to the dilbit that will flow through this proposed pipeline, that is the end of the discussion and the answer is NO. It is bad enough that American fracking operations treat the public this shabbily and shamefully, and that has to stop. I will never countenance it from a foreign company. Lets stick with the things they have been asked for and refused to provide, if you want to start making demands and insist that they shouldn’t be allowed to proceed if they don’t meet YOUR demands then your not going to get anywhere. AFAICT, any controversy concerning the diluent in dibit is marginal at best and any equivalence between the dilbit diluent and frakking compound is manufactured hysteria (implying that there is some secret to what is in dilbit and linking it to frakking) built upon manufactured hysteria (the hysteria surrounding hydraulic fracturing). That’s not to say there isn’t a reason to insist on oversight but the fact of the matter is there is no big secret surrounding dilbit diluents (and we know what is in frakking liquid). > [@](#): > > -I don’t care if dilbit is already being piped into this country from Canada. Upgrading the dilbit that is already pumped into this country is a precondition for approving the XL It may be a pre-condition for YOUR approval, but noone else seems to insist on this. Neither the pro-KXL camp (who are perfectly fine with dilbit pipelines), nor the anti-dilbit camp (who really don’t give a shit how they transport the dilbit, they just want to stop the stuff from being refined and reaching market). > [@](#): > > They can pipe upgraded crude and/or refined products, or pipe nothing. That sounds like an ultimatum from a person who has no power to enforce that ultimatum. All you have going for you is the power of persuasion and ultimatums are not very persuasive. > [@](#): > > -If this proposal does not address the question of, “What do the people affected get in return for this project?”, then that, too, brings us to the end of the discussion and the answer is NO. Once again, ultimatums from positions of absolutely no power are not very persuasive. Until someone actually suffers a harm, noone is being affected, its just a pipeline. Are you under the impression that these pipeline companies are judgement proof and can just walk away from a bad spill and dump the clean-up cost on those directly affected by a spill? > [@](#): > > -Neither you nor any of the proponents of this pipeline seem willing to acknowledge the real risks associated with piping dilbit, in typical oil-interest fashion. Take a look at the [dilbit spill on the Yellowstone River in Montana](http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2011/07/yellowstone-oil-spill-montana): Is there any indication that this sort of spill cannot be mitigated or cleaned up? > [@](#): > > Are you effing kidding me? We are not going to take the risk of a spill of this magnitude How much do you want to bet we already are? > [@](#): > > , considering the cleanup costs are, according to the precedent of the [Kalamazoo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalamazoo_River_oil_spill) [dilbit disaster](https://www.google.com/search?q=kalamazoo+river+oil+spill&rlz=1C1TSNF_enUS464US464&es_sm=122&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=_5hmU-aLNdWgyATMooG4DA&ved=0CEAQsAQ&biw=1920&bih=947), up to 200x the costs of cleaning up a crude spill. But they are bearing those costs along with all the costs of litigation and liability, right? So what you are saying is that even though the industry seems willing to pay 200 times what they expected to clean it up and paying damages to thousands of people, we won’t let them run the pipeline because it costs them so much money? > [@](#): > > -_We don’t need Canada’s oil_ Well if there wasn’t a demand for Canada’s oil, they wouldn’t be pumping and refining it. Oil is a global market and our price at the pump is affected by the global supply. Of course there is no absolute need for it to be piped to our refineries but you haven’t presented a persuasive argument why not, other than hysterical claims about how much of a witches brew dilbit is. > [@](#): > > American oil consumption is dropping. What use do we have for Canada’s low-grade, unrefined goop when we will be the largest oil producer in the world? Well, when our oil consumption drops enough that we don’t give a shit about reducing the world supply of oil, THEN you can make that argument. Right now the world supply of oil is pretty important to us. > [@](#): > > Why take the risk? The answer is: don’t. Or the answer is that its not that great a risk and you’re hyperventilating. > [@](#): > > Precedent shows that the likelihood of a dilbit spill is far, far higher than the risk of the disasters you mention. It is in fact all but guaranteed. Another Kalamazoo type oil spill (the largest inland oil spill in our history)? or just any old oilspill (which occur several times a year… month… week)? And just to be clear, we can fix a Kalamazoo type oil spill of 20,000 barrels in a matter of years now, we have a better handle on dilbit spills. The Exxon Valdez was between 250,000 and 750,000 barrels and I don’t think anyone argues the environmental impact of a nuclear meltdown is anywhere south of fucking horrible and far worse than Kalamazoo. > [@](#): > > Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it- better to repeat dilbit pipeline doom in Canada than America if you ask me. We’ll pipe our own oil, thanks. You do not seem to speak for the majority of Americans. In fact AFAICT you don’t even seem to speak for a small minority of Americans. > [@](#): > > You’ve said a lot of things about sour crude inviting me to make some kind of point about it, but I don’t know what you’re looking for. The point I am trying to tease out from you is whether you object to heavy crudes as well as dilbit because I think you would be hard pressed to point out any significant differences between dilbit and some of the heavier sour crudes. You are going through pains to portray dilbit as some witches brew of really horrible nasties when it is simply bitumen diluted by thinner petrochemicals. I think a lot of your uneasiniess with dilbit is the result of being fed just a little bit of knowledge (and you know what they say about a little bit of knowledge). Of course I may also be the victim of a little bit of knowledge. > [@](#): > > The standard I am putting on any XL pipeline is that the oil must be able to flow through it at ambient temperatures Wait. Are you under the impression that dilbit requires heating to be piped?!!??! AFAICT the only time it is heated for piping is when it is being piped to the place where it is diluted (or upgraded). Do you have a cite for the fact that KXL will be a heated pipeline? Heating is one of the alternative methods of transporting bitumen.[Dilbit - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbit#Alternatives_to_diluent) not a component of the KXL (and I don’t think it works well for really really long distances) > [@](#): > > and ordinary oil-pipe pressures. If Canada can’t clean up their goop to do that, they can keep it. Once again, ordinary for what? Dilbit runs through pipelines the same way that heavy sour crude runs through pipelines. Dilbit runs through pipelines at ambient temperature, there is no heating element to the pipeline. The pipelines heat up because there is more friction than with thicker fluids than with thinner fluids but they run at an ambient temperature of about 90-100 degrees. Higher pressures mean faster speed in the pipeline and consequently higher temperatures. All that is really better left up to materials engineers rather than folks like you and me. > [@](#): > > Grid parity is really a separate discussion from the XL pipeline. Basically, my position is that until we can make the switch to alternatives, we will have to continue burning oil (pretty obvious, no?). But we don’t have to resort to tar sands- again, we’re producing plenty of our own oil, thanks. The only question you seem to be concerned with is whether the tar sands piped to the coast and refined in refineries that are geared to refine this stuff along the gulf coast or whether it will be piped to the west coast of Canada and refined or shipped from there. > [@](#): > > You are correct. I’m talking about [risk management](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_management). The risks of piping dilbit is simply unacceptable vs. the risks of piping conventional crude (according to the standard I explained above), especially when you consider that the risk/reward ratio Americans see for this project is _infinity_ (actually, it is a division by zero error, but whatever) since the public doesn’t get a goddamn thing out of this project. The public gets as much out of this pipeline as any other oil pipeline. You think the risks are much higher but can only point to the largest inland oilspill in US history and somehow assume that this will be the norm going forward if we allow yet another dilbit pipeline in the country (have I mentioned that the currently operating keystone pipeline is already transporting dilbit across the length of the country? [/quote] > [@](#): > > Dilbit is the source of the unacceptable risk. Eliminate that and maybe we can make a deal. I find the risk acceptable, you don’t. Those sound like opinions, not facts. And frankly your opinion is not going to stop the nearly million bbl/day of dilbit that runs through America’s pipelines every day. > [@](#): > > It doesn’t matter, and I can’t make your argument for you. Wait, so you can’t distinguish between heavy crude and dilbit and you want to ban dilbit? Doesn’t that mean you also want to ban heavy crude? > [@](#): > > They can pipe oil at ambient temperatures and ordinary pressures, or they can keep it. Aside from the fact that they are not heating the dilbit, what is the problem with higher heat temperatures? Are they propsoing something for this pipeline that they aren’t doing with the rest of the Keystone pipeline? > [@](#): > > Thanks, I needed a good laugh 🙂 Demagogue:a political leader who tries to get support by making false claims and promises and using arguments based on emotion rather than reason. So what are the false claims that are being made by the proponents of KXL? AFAICT, you have expressed at least three instances where you didn’t know wtf you were talking about. You were presumably relying on talking points presented to you by anti-kxl folks that are trying to work you up into a lather. I would suggest you are getting your information from demagogues. It doesn’t mean they are wrong or you are wrong but the effects of demagoguery seem to be more evident in your posts than in my posts. 1. You didn’t realize that we were already piping a shitload of this dilbit across the country and the KXL would oly increase the capacity of the already operational Keystone pipeline from 700,000 bbl/day to 900,000 bbl/day; 2. You didn’t realize that the kxl route has been shifted to avoid the sand hill area and reduce the profile on the ogallala aquifer; 3. You seem to think the kxl is a heated pipeline that will run at exceptional pressures. The repeated reference to Kalamazoo as if that is the template of a typical dilbit oil spill seems like demgaoguery. So what demagoguery have you seen from the other side? > [@](#): > > Ok, cite what they put in it then. Everything I’ve read says they are keeping it a secret. > **[Dilbit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbit#How_is_bitumen_diluted.3F)** > > Dilbit (diluted bitumen) is a bitumen diluted with one or more lighter petroleum products, typically natural-gas condensates such as naphtha. Diluting bitumen makes it much easier to transport, for example in pipelines. Per the Alberta Oil Sands Bitumen Valuation Methodology, "Dilbit Blends" means "Blends made from heavy crudes and/or bitumens and a diluent, usually natural-gas condensate, for the purpose of meeting pipeline viscosity and density specifications, where the density of the diluent i... I’m going to guess that if you go back and read it, your sources say that noone can tell you the exact composition of dilbit. Thats largely because they thin the bitumen with whatever is available but it is almost always a thinner lighter petrochemical (frequently natural gas condensates like naptha). I suspect that if you go back and read your sources a natural inference of the WAY they present this information makes it seem like they are hiding something. (BTW, I would call this another piece of demagoguery, or fear-mongering). > [@](#): > > I don’t want to _pipe_ dilbit, especially not 1700 miles across my country, which you seem to view as some kind of disposable wasteland from end to end. Shipping it is hazardous too, but a different issue. I suspect that its largely the result of not knowing what dilbit is. > **[TRB Special Report 311: Effects of Diluted Bitumen on Crude Oil Transmission...](https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/18381/trb-special-report-311-effects-of-diluted-bitumen-on-crude-oil-transmission-pipelines)** > > Read online, download a free PDF. In order to be of any use at all to the gulf coast refineries, dilbit has to be a close approximation of the heavy sour crudes that we used to get from Venzuela and produce domestically in the gulf of Mexico. It is no more corrosive or put any greater strain on pipelines than heavy crudes that flow through pipelines taht already criss cross our country. > [@](#): > > I posted the cite earlier. I’ll repost it later if you want. Dilbit is too dangerous to pipe, precedent proves it. Are you talking about the NRDC report? That report doesn’t seem to compare apples to apples. Aside from Kalamazoo, what precedent are you talking about? > [@](#): > > Ambient temperatures and ordinary pressures. It is a rather simple position. And, you do realize there are other priorities besides the interests of Gulf Coast refineries in play, no? The KXL will be piping at hotter than ambient temperature but it is not heated and does not need to be heated for transportation, thats what the diluent is for. Any heavy crude is going to run at higher temperatures than lighter crudes. What is the temperature concern anyway? The pressure is ordinary for heavy crude. Its not ordinary for texas tea but dilbit is not running under exceptional pressure. What is the concern over pressure anyway? ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2014, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-link-between-kxl-pipeline-and-the-koch-brothers-as-big-as-my-facebook-newsfeed-suggests/684448/114 "2014-05-05T04:38:59Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > You havea cite for that? I don’t doubt you but I’d like to read something credible and I put MIT and CalTech into that category. This isn’t a nuke thread, so I made a more general google search (the MIT study isn’t recent and I didn’t want to go granular and comprehensive). The Institute for Energy Research\* has a primer on energy costs: [http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2012/08/22/electric-generating-costs-a-primer/](http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2012/08/22/electric-generating-costs-a-primer/) Check out the bar chart. Nuclear isn’t too bad: it’s viable. It’s at the upper end of the range though: wind, coal and natural gas tend to be cheaper. Clean coal is more expensive as are some older natural gas technologies. That’s sort of where nukes sit in my mind: they are not cheap. Much of the problem lies in construction cost overruns and not incidentally interest rate costs. Ok, now we turn to the Union of Concerned Scientists, a center lefty operation. They put the costs of nuclear subsidies, past and present, at 13-98% of power produced. The IER data doesn’t reflect that. Assume the true figure is closer to the lower end and you obtain, “Not cheap.” Yes, yes, there are substantial fossil fuel subsidies to consider as well. [http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear\_power/nuclear\_subsidies\_report.pdf](http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/nuclear_subsidies_report.pdf) Finally, go over to Vox for an up to date take on nukes: [Over the past two years](http://www.vox.com/2014/5/2/5671394/nuclear-power-retirements-climate-change), US power companies have announced the retirement of five nuclear reactors — in Florida, Wisconsin, Vermont, and two in California. Some of those reactors were simply too pricey to keep open in the face of rising maintenance costs and competition from cheap natural gas and wind power. … Only five new reactors are slated to get built in the foreseeable future: two in Georgia, two in South Carolina, and one in Tennessee. (Note that new reactors are mainly being built in regulated states where utilities can recover their costs through rate hikes.) [Nuclear plants in the US keep closing — that’s bad news for climate change | Vox](http://www.vox.com/2014/5/2/5671394/nuclear-power-retirements-climate-change) Of all my links, I’d recommend the Vox one the most. It emphasizes the consequences for carbon emissions of all these nuclear plant closures, but gives an interesting view of the economic fundamentals. - Not a lefty group: the CEO was formerly of Enron and ExxonMobil once cut them checks. [Institute for Energy Research - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Energy_Research) ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2014, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-link-between-kxl-pipeline-and-the-koch-brothers-as-big-as-my-facebook-newsfeed-suggests/684448/115 "2014-05-05T05:06:10Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > So what are the false claims that are being made by the proponents of KXL? I’m out of time for now, but let me answer this. 1. That the pipeline will be safe. Take a look at [this](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pipeline_accidents_in_the_United_States_in_the_21st_century). Consider just a sample of this argument with [these](http://www.npr.org/2014/04/19/304707516/telltale-rainbow-sheens-show-thousands-of-spills-across-the-gulf) types of examples. The record for piping oil is terrible. It is worse for dilbit. 2. That this is in America’s interest- it is solely for the benefit of a few oil interests, to the detriment of the United States. They want to pipe this all the way across America to the coast because they want to export it all to China and other places. America won’t get any of it- that is the motive of bypassing any refineries along the way to take it to the coast, and of refusing to refine it themselves. The current glut of oil in the Midwest will be reversed if this project is approved, raising fuel prices there. So, Americans get all the risk, _higher_ gas prices, and nothing in return, so that Canadian oil companies can raise the price they get for their low-quality, unrefined product in the international market (which apparently they can’t reach without turning our land into their waste dump), without having to pipe it across their own country. **Damuri Ajashi** , why don’t the Canadians pipe this across their own territory and export it themselves? And tell me, why can’t the Canadians upgrade this plainly, obviously dangerous substance before piping it? Your handwaving and evasions notwithstanding, America cannot tolerate the risk of a dilbit spill on the scale presented by this project. Canada stands to lose hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming decades if they can’t bring their oil to market. What is the major malfunction with cleaning it up before piping it through my land? ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2014, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-link-between-kxl-pipeline-and-the-koch-brothers-as-big-as-my-facebook-newsfeed-suggests/684448/116 "2014-05-05T05:16:28Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > AFAICT, you have expressed at least three instances where you didn’t know wtf you were talking about. You were presumably relying on talking points presented to you by anti-kxl folks that are trying to work you up into a lather. I would suggest you are getting your information from demagogues. It doesn’t mean they are wrong or you are wrong but the effects of demagoguery seem to be more evident in your posts than in my posts. One other thing- this is what I mean by handwavey evasiveness. Instead of responding directly to what I say, you conjure images of lather and cast what I’ve said as ‘talking points’ when I refer to the facts on which I base my (my) views. > [@](#): > > 1. You didn’t realize that we were already piping a shitload of this dilbit across the country and the KXL would oly increase the capacity of the already operational Keystone pipeline from 700,000 bbl/day to 900,000 bbl/day; > 2. You didn’t realize that the kxl route has been shifted to avoid the sand hill area and reduce the profile on the ogallala aquifer; > 3. You seem to think the kxl is a heated pipeline that will run at exceptional pressures. No, I think it is unacceptable that this much dilbit is already flowing. Tweaking the route isn’t good enough- I want to tweak out 1700 miles of dilbit pipe and replace it either with nothing or a true crude oil pipe, f_or the reasons I am stating, not those you strawman me with_. And a dilbit pipe must operate at elevated temperatures and pressures for it to function at all (and I’ve cited this, so you either ignored it or are handwaving it away)- this, besides what is in the pipe, is part of what makes it dangerous and unacceptable. > [@](#): > > The repeated reference to Kalamazoo as if that is the template of a typical dilbit oil spill seems like demgaoguery. It is real. Please come up with an explanation in which the Kalamazoo spill is acceptable, and why the United States should suffer more disasters like it or like the other recent dilbit disasters, in exchange for nothing. Can you answer me directly, **Damuri Ajashi**? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2014, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-link-between-kxl-pipeline-and-the-koch-brothers-as-big-as-my-facebook-newsfeed-suggests/684448/117 "2014-05-06T21:25:02Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > This isn’t a nuke thread, so I made a more general google search (the MIT study isn’t recent and I didn’t want to go granular and comprehensive). If people think this is a hijack, I will start a new thread but that paper footnotes the main problem with their methodology. Wind is not driving nuclear out of business. Its natural gas. If natural gas was out of the picture, we would be building more nuclear plants not shutting them down. Wind doesn’t present a steady enough energy source for people to rely it. You can use energy storage techniques (a lot of hydro power facilities also have a large lake above the dam that they pump water into during high production periods and then they release the water through the turbines during low production periods; Con Edison used to store energy in pendulums overnight to meet daytime demands; some places use off peak energy to power a compressor to compress gas that is released to spin turbines, etc), but all these techniques represent energy loss that more than closes the gap between nuclear and wind. Natural gas on the other hand is like half the price of nuclear and looks like it will remain cheap for a long time. With all that said, energy diversity makes nuclear worth preserving, IMO. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2014, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-link-between-kxl-pipeline-and-the-koch-brothers-as-big-as-my-facebook-newsfeed-suggests/684448/118 "2014-05-08T14:11:27Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > A lot of what you seem to be saying is: “I don’t care what they have to say, here are my conditions and unless they meet them, I will never approve” Fortunately for the world, we don’t need your approval for everything. > [@](#): > > Lets stick with the things they have been asked for and refused to provide, if you want to start making demands and insist that they shouldn’t be allowed to proceed if they don’t meet YOUR demands then your not going to get anywhere. AFAICT, any controversy concerning the diluent in dibit is marginal at best and any equivalence between the dilbit diluent and frakking compound is manufactured hysteria (implying that there is some secret to what is in dilbit and linking it to frakking) built upon manufactured hysteria (the hysteria surrounding hydraulic fracturing). That’s not to say there isn’t a reason to insist on oversight but the fact of the matter is there is no big secret surrounding dilbit diluents (and we know what is in frakking liquid). This isn’t about me. It is FULL disclosure or the pipeline doesn’t get approved. There is no way around it, no way to cast people as ‘hysterical’ who demand to know what this foreign company plans to pipe through our country. Why? Those are the rules, that’s why. It has already been posted, [here](http://www.epa.gov/compliance/nepa/keystone-xl-project-epa-comment-letter-20130056.pdf): > [@](#): > > EPA appreciates TransCanada’s commitment to conduct cleanup and restoration and to provide alternative water supplies to affected communities in the event of an oil discharge affecting not only surface waters, but also groundwater. We recommend that these commitments be clearly documented as proposed permit conditions. We believe this would give important assurances to potentially affected communities of TransCanada’s responsibilities in the event of an oil discharge that affects either surface or groundwater resources. > Conclusion > Based on our review, we have rated the DSEIS as E0-2 (“Environmental Objections- Insufficient Information”) Translation: the pipeline did not get approved the last time in part because they did not reveal what they intend to pump 1700 miles across America. To respond to that concern with, “You’re being _hysterical_!” is, I think, a dodge to cover up the fact that the companies involved intend to pipe something that Americans would never in a million years allow if they only knew about it. But hey, they wouldn’t allow dilbit if they were truly informed about, welcome to America. > [@](#): > > It may be a pre-condition for YOUR approval, but noone else seems to insist on this. Neither the pro-KXL camp (who are perfectly fine with dilbit pipelines), nor the anti-dilbit camp (who really don’t give a shit how they transport the dilbit, they just want to stop the stuff from being refined and reaching market). That is a way to get this pipeline to meet the _laws_ governing its approval, see below. > [@](#): > > That sounds like an ultimatum from a person who has no power to enforce that ultimatum. All you have going for you is the power of persuasion and ultimatums are not very persuasive. > > Once again, ultimatums from positions of absolutely no power are not very persuasive. Until someone actually suffers a harm, noone is being affected, its just a pipeline. Are you under the impression that these pipeline companies are judgement proof and can just walk away from a bad spill and dump the clean-up cost on those directly affected by a spill? I’m going to refer you to [Executive Order 13337—Issuance of Permits With Respect to Certain Energy-Related Facilities and Land Transportation Crossings on the International Boundaries of the United States](http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/WCPD-2004-05-10/pdf/WCPD-2004-05-10-Pg723.pdf): > [@](#): > > if the Secretary of State finds that issuance of a permit to the applicant would not serve the national interest, the Secretary shall notify the officals required to be consulted under paragraph (b)(ii) of this section of the proposed determination that the application be denied. If the project is not in the national interest, the law demands that the application be denied. And guess what? A leaky, dilbit-disaster in the waiting pipeline across America that allows private companies to export their product to the global market in exchange for _absolutely nothing_ for the people affected is not in America’s interest. I ask you again: what do the people affected by this pipeline get in return? That this question is avoided without answer is why I accuse XL proponents of demagoguery: this project is not in the national interest, and they seek to distract attention from that and turn the issue into something else. Really, your whole style in engaging this issue feels characteristic of the oil industry at large: indirect, duplicitous, reckless, insulting. It is time to quit wasting time on this Palinesque project, reject it forever, and turn our attention to international partners who are capable of displaying respect for the laws and people of the United States. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2014, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-link-between-kxl-pipeline-and-the-koch-brothers-as-big-as-my-facebook-newsfeed-suggests/684448/119 "2014-05-09T02:15:04Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > If people think this is a hijack, I will start a new thread but that paper footnotes the main problem with their methodology. Wind is not driving nuclear out of business. Its natural gas. …energy storage techniques … > > Natural gas on the other hand is like half the price of nuclear and looks like it will remain cheap for a long time. With all that said, energy diversity makes nuclear worth preserving, IMO. You don’t need energy storage techniques if you offset changes in wind power with a variable output natural gas plant. This is especially true when wind is thin sliver of the total. Ditto for solar, whose price is dropping fast. But yeah, natural gas is the up and coming electrical power source, though coal also remains pretty strong unfortunately. I perceive nuclear as an expensive (though not prohibitive) power source that we should keep around for diversification purposes. My first best choice though is to slap a tax on greenhouse gases and let the market sort things out. I suspect there’s a lot of conservation that would come into play before nuclear became wildly popular. Nukes have a lot of problems including waste disposal and I disagree with nuclear advocates who wave their hands and claim these are purely political challenges. I don’t see it that way at all. But I support a small nuclear construction program (which we now have) and doubling it would leave me less than horrified. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2014, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-link-between-kxl-pipeline-and-the-koch-brothers-as-big-as-my-facebook-newsfeed-suggests/684448/120 "2014-05-10T03:41:45Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > This isn’t about me. It is FULL disclosure or the pipeline doesn’t get approved. There is no way around it, no way to cast people as ‘hysterical’ who demand to know what this foreign company plans to pipe through our country. Why? Those are the rules, that’s why. It has already been posted, [here](http://www.epa.gov/compliance/nepa/keystone-xl-project-epa-comment-letter-20130056.pdf): You do realize that the Dept of State issued a final supplemental environmental impact study in January, right? The study concluded that there was in fact enough information to conclude that the Keystone XL pipeline would have no impact on how much of the tar sands oil gets burned and that pipelines are MUCH safer than railcars. Translation, the EPA slowed down the process but the process is still moving forward. > [@](#): > > That is a way to get this pipeline to meet the _laws_ governing its approval, see below. > [@](#): > > I’m going to refer you to [Executive Order 13337—Issuance of Permits With Respect to Certain Energy-Related Facilities and Land Transportation Crossings on the International Boundaries of the United States](http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/WCPD-2004-05-10/pdf/WCPD-2004-05-10-Pg723.pdf): > > If the project is not in the national interest, the law demands that the application be denied. And guess what? A leaky, dilbit-disaster in the waiting pipeline across America that allows private companies to export their product to the global market in exchange for _absolutely nothing_ for the people affected is not in America’s interest. I ask you again: what do the people affected by this pipeline get in return? Right now the stuff is cross the bordeand crossing thousands of miles to refineries by rails. Pipelines are orders of magnitude safer than railcars. Noone thinks that this pipeline is going to spill more oil than shipping all that stuff by railcar and if fewer spilt barrels are in the national interest then i suppose the pipeline is in the national interest. > [@](#): > > That this question is avoided without answer is why I accuse XL proponents of demagoguery: this project is not in the national interest, and they seek to distract attention from that and turn the issue into something else. Failing to answer a question isn’t demagoguery. A demagogue is someone who uses false claims and uses arguments based on emotions rather than reason. This sounds much more descriptive of the fact deficient opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline. > **[Definition of DEMAGOGUE](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/demagogue)** > > a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power; a leader championing the cause of the common people in ancient times… See the full definition This question was answered somewhere on page one or two. The fact that you keep asking it doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been answered > [@](#): > > Really, your whole style in engaging this issue feels characteristic of the oil industry at large: indirect, duplicitous, reckless, insulting. It is time to quit wasting time on this Palinesque project, reject it forever, and turn our attention to international partners who are capable of displaying respect for the laws and people of the United States. :rolleyes: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-link-between-kxl-pipeline-and-the-koch-brothers-as-big-as-my-facebook-newsfeed-suggests/684448.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-link-between-kxl-pipeline-and-the-koch-brothers-as-big-as-my-facebook-newsfeed-suggests/684448.md?page=7)