So researchers and regulators have a rough idea what is in dilbit but they never have an exact idea what is in dilbit because the chemistries are proprietary and the companies try to use whatever diluent is cheapest at the time. This is not really “flying blind” like the article implies.
If the pipeline goes to the west coast then the dilbit probably gets shipped to China and they refine it and they consume it. If we send it to Texas then we refine it and it probably stays in the USA or at least in the Americas.
I still think Obama approves the pipeline just before Canada approves one that goes to the BC coast (at that point there is nothing left to gain from delay besides some overwrought concerns about dilbit spills).
No it doesn’t. Every drop goes to China or elsewhere, and the people affected get nothing if it is refined at the Gulf. Refine it in Canada, allow Central America to siphon off a certain % at a discount.
This is craziness. If we import a barrel of oil from Venezuela, refine it, and sell the refined product back to Venezuela, did the American people get anything for that? My contention is that the answer is obviously yes and that we should not only permit but promote that type of activity. What do you think?
WTF are you talking about? Do you have a cite that all of it goes to China or elsewhere? AFAICT, it gets sold to whoever is willing to for it (maybe some of it is earmarked but I have not heard anything like that).
Your proposal is not going to get any traction anywhere, its a horrible idea. The people who are scaring you with concerns about pipeline safety aren’t really concerned about pipeline safety (they know the risks are pretty minimal), they are concerned with keeping the dilbit from ever getting refined in the first place. They are not going to push for a refinery (paid for at taxpayer expense at that) right at the tar sands site
Noone with money of their own is aching to build the refinery at the dilbit site because they would have to ship the refined product out of there, either by a bunch of pipelines (each carrying a difference refined product) or by truck/rail. If light refined products piepleine erupted, you would get pretty heavy concentrations of benzene, which seems to be worrying you). Piping dilbit is probably better than piping or otherwise transporting refined products over thousands of miles.
The people affected (if there is a spill) get tort damages in court. I don’t understand why you don’t get that.
We are simply not going to nationalize any part of our oil industry unless we are at war as oil becomes a strategic commodity or something like that.
Nobody is ‘scaring me’ with concerns about pipeline safety- I can look at the data and see for myself what a catastrophic mistake a dilbit pipeline of this scale is. Americans are being asked to grab their ankles and get the shaft with this- you get a toxic 2000 mile pipeline that is randomly going to kill some of you and destroy some randomly selected land forever, in return for nothing. Just sign here! It is a terrible screw job, you are apparently the one that can’t see it. The risk is not ‘minimal’, this is a guaranteed disaster waiting to happen. Piping crude or refined product would still be dangerous but far, far preferable to stupidly allowing a permanent dilbit pipe of this scale through the center of the US. Benzene is only the beginning of the list of problems with dilbit. You really ought to inform yourself on this issue. Please!
Of course every drop is going for export. I don’t have a problem with international business, unless we have to do something outrageous like build a 2000 mile death trap across America in exchange for nothing. Sorry, you need to look more closely at what is really being proposed.
And I’m sorry, but the courts cannot order the replacement of an aquifer or the restoration of a river. You don’t understand the risks, you have been sold a bill of goods by shucksters. I hope our policymakers are not so foolish. Nationalized oil may be quite unrealistic, but OTOH we can’t let half-witted paranoiac fears about Government Evil herd us into the dumbest decision of the decade.
To be honest this is the kind of thing that makes me very careful about what environmental causes I give money to (primarily The Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land.) I’m a bit of anomaly in that I’m a Republican conservationist to start with, but it’s precisely what I consider to be panic and ridiculous positions like the one you’ve laid out here that make me careful of what aspects of the environmental movement I support.
You ignored LonghornDave’s excellent question: even if the oil is just piped to the Gulf and refined and then exported, it’s your opinion America gets nothing in the deal?
This is factually alarmism for which you’ve provided no supporting evidence.
Um, gasoline would be a much more dangerous product to pipe over 2,000 miles in a pipeline than unrefined product. The fact that you seem to think dilbit is more dangerous shows deep ignorance of the materials involved.
Cite, thanks. It seems doubtful to me that none of the refined product would be used in the United States. I imagine like all refined products, some would go abroad some would be consumed domestically based on supply/demand/contracts etc. Unless you’re aware of some contract in place that mandates all of the refined product goes straight abroad. Otherwise we can presume you aren’t speaking from knowledge but from ignorance.
As was mentioned above, even if that is the case it still doesn’t demonstrate we get “nothing” out of it.
And what about the exposure from train accidents, which are factually known to be more likely than pipeline accidents? As was pointed out early on, there is no question as to whether this will be extracted and refined. The question is how it gets from A to B. Given that is the only question, I don’t understand why there is a reticence to adopt the option that is safer for the environment. It is not like wolfpup said a situation where the pipeline is creating a desire for drilling of tar sands oil that previously didn’t exist, or that the pipeline is an “endorsement” of any given type of fuel. It’s instead an endorsement of a mode of transportation.
To me it’s similar to the people that made it so hard to put nuclear waste into safe storage in the United States. We had already made the decision to produce the waste, the only question was where to store it, and crazy environmentalists fought tooth and nail to make the answer to that question extremely difficult in hopes that it would magically shut down the nuclear power plant.
We’re on page 2 and the main points have been made, so I can introduce a bit of a hijack.
If you laid them out on a line with one end being greenwash for suits and the other being hippy dippies, a subset of the enviros would look like this.
Keep America Beautiful — Nature Conservancy — EDF — NRDC — Sierra Club — Greenpeace ---- Green Party — Sea Shepherds
The most intellectually rigorous tend to be nearer the center of that range. I’m a little confused by EDF’s take on Keystone, as I understand it. Oh, and the wonkiest of all the Resources for the Future.
Conservative support for nuclear power has baffled me more. It’s an expensive and heavily subsidized form of energy. US policy towards nuclear waste - the screw Nevada Act – stands in sharp contrast to Japan’s framework aka, “Bribe and buyout the locals”. There are very real problems with the Nevada depository that were uncovered after years of research. And there are no procedures in place to locate the least-bad location. The pro-nuclear position does not withstand rigorous scrutiny. I say this as someone who is actually somewhat pro-nuke relative to the average American: I think we should have a small nuclear construction program to maintain our skill base and construction capability. Nuclear has been uneconomic over the past 50 years without subsidies, but that may not necessarily be the case in the future. Proof: even with US subsidies Wall Street is uninterested unless it has federal sweeteners, a captive public utilities commission, and a cost plus regulated rate structure. This is despite Wall Street’s very active interest in disaster bonds. Wall Street can handle risk: a lousy cost-benefit is another matter.
Then thedata is being presented to you in a way that is intended to scare you.
You got a cite for any of this? It really seems like you are hyperventilating.
Why would this pipeline be deadlier than any other pipeline? Why would a dilbit oilspill destroy land forever where a heavy crude oilspill would not? And why is this a guaranteed disaster waiting to happen (sure all systems break down if given enough time but you haven’t provided any evidence that this one is guaranteed to happen before we stop using oil)?
You got a cite for that because all the data seems to suggest that refined product spills are FAR FAR more hazardous than dilbit oilspills. The thing that seems to make dilbit oilspills like kalamazoo more dangerous is the lighter oils that they use as a dilutant separates out from the dilbit and evaporates into the air.
Thats ironic coming from the person who didn’t realize that we already have a Keystone pipeline that transports 600,000 barrels per day and the Keystone XL would only oncrease that capacity by about 20% (much of that extra capacity is going to be consumed by Montana Bakken shale oil).
You realize that the benzene youa re worried about isn’t coming from the bitumen part of dilbit, its coming from the diluent. The lighter oils contain much higher concentrations of benzene than bitumen.
I think you are getting all your “data” from very one sided sources that are not giving you the whole story.
Cite.
First of all, the distance from Hardisty, Alberta to Steele City Nebraska is about 1000 miles. You seem to be confusing yourself again. The current Keystone pipeline is about 2000 miles. Perhaps YOU should look at what is preally being proposed because it seems like you have an awful lot of outrage over things you don’t understand.
Which is why the new Keystone XL route is not imbedded in riverbeds like the Kalamazoo and why the pipeline was rerouted to minimize exposure to the aquifer and avoids the sands hills area entirely.
BTW, our best science tells us that an oil spill would not penetrate down to the aquifer. Noone thinks that bitumen would penetrate down that low and there are already existing pipelines criss crossing the aquifer that carry light natural gas liquids that have had leaks from time to time and that stuff never makes it down to the aquifer either. And even if it did, the damage would be localized, aquifers aren’t like containers of water where contamination in one part eventaully spreads to the entire container.
Its pretty clear you don’t understand the facts.
I could say the same about you and environmentalist shucksters who are trying to manipulate you into objecting to something that you might not otherwise object to.
Are you calling me a half witted paranoiac? because it seems pretty clear to me (and i think everyone else here), who is engaging in hysterical behaviour.
The XL expansion is only about 1000 miles. Its big lie strategy. They keep saying it often enough and pretty soon, they’ve got you saying it too.
I wonder if those trains go over the aquifer or alongside rivers.
Pretty much this.
On the other hand, we have developed better technology to store onsite so maybe we will build better trains
Intelligent environmentalists recognize that human beings require advanced technology, heavy industry, and agriculture to survive and thrive as a species of 7 billion with the quality of life we currently enjoy. The crazies are the ones who believe we shouldn’t be growing anything in the United States or manufacturing anything.
Point me to an energy source that isn’t subsidized. I think coal may be the least subsidized but all the fossil fuels and renewables are certainly subsidized. Nuclear is the one that can scale up to national-level that doesn’t require fossil fuels. Other countries of significant size have shown this (France, Japan etc.) Nuclear arguably has less of an environmental impact than either solar or wind, and isn’t even comparable to coal or natural gas.
Your argument here is like asking why a conservative in ancient China would support the Great Wall, since it wouldn’t turn a profit. I’m talking about energy that powers our way of life here. If that’s not worth collective funding I’m not sure what actually is, especially given we kick money in to every other source of energy we currently use.
Strip away the subsidies and both coal-with-scrubbers and natural gas plants are cheaper than nukes. I think an MIT study calculated that. And if you adjust for global warming, than all sorts of conservation measures (as well as wind and natural gas) become advantageous. Like I said, I think there’s a role for nukes. But the industry is notorious for overpromising and cost over-runs. And even in France, it’s not exactly cheap. My ideal is to set a carbon tax or a tradeable emission permit system and let the chips fall where they may. If nukes are least-cost after tax, terrific. If they are not least-cost (and I suspect they won’t be) then give 'em a sufficient subsidy to maintain our nuclear construction capability. Like we do now. (Cite. Though there are the usual problems in construction.)
I’m not sure what to make of your comment about intelligent environmentalists. I mean heck the Sea Shepherds probably agree that “human beings require advanced technology, heavy industry, and agriculture to survive and thrive”. And the Sea Shepherds are fanatical loons with a taste for attention. Admittedly the Earth Liberation Front might not agree, but they are small and their influence minimal.
I’m in broad agreement with an emissions permit system. My point though with nuclear and the Great Wall comment is that sometimes there are large societal goals that transcend the market (maybe the Apollo Program was a more relevant example.) I think there is benefit to subsidizing nuclear power and continuing to develop it, there are at the very least American companies (like General Electric) that appear to make money selling nuclear reactors and I think that’s a good thing especially since many of them go abroad thus helping our trade deficit.
Nuclear (which to me also includes fusion research) is something we should always keep some pressure on the gas pedal for so to speak, because I do think eventually that’s what will power much of humanity’s electrical grid. This isn’t going to happen in our lifetimes, and I think that cleaner fossil fuels like natural gas and reasonable renewable technologies are going to serve as our “bridge” to fusion which is probably more realistically 4-5 generations away from practical application on a large scale.
They may say that, but many environmentalists seem to love to sue farmers to try and stop all farming, or to force farmers to use less efficient technologies (like non-GMO crops.) I can only assume the motivation for many environmentalists is an anti-modern society bent.
I’m out of my element on this, but isn’t there a large component of the cost overruns on nuclear that is attributable to delays caused by environmental protests every time a new plant is proposed?
Anti-Keystone Super PAC, Credo, announced yesterday that it would spend $500,000 supporting Grimes in the Kentucky Senate race against Mitch McConnell. McConnell supports the pipeline expansion and Grimes had not taken a position.
[QUOTE=LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WHAS11)]
Alison Lundergan Grimes’ lack of specificity in the Keystone XL Pipeline debate is not stopping an anti-Keystone Super PAC from pledging support for her Kentucky U.S. Senate campaign and other Democratic candidates in four other key states.
[/QUOTE]
Unfortunately for them, here’s what Grimes came out and said regarding Keystone XL afterward yesterday.
[QUOTE=Grimes]
“The administration should rule now and approve the project,” Grimes said. “Putting Americans back to work in good-paying jobs that strengthen the middle class is my top priority and it should be the federal government’s as well.”
[/QUOTE]
In what way is oil subsidized in a way that coal is not? they are subject to virtually the same taxing regime. Is it the ridiculously cheap oil leases on federal property?
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.
I think anyone that are professional environmentalists take more moderate positions than casual environmentalists like Joe Q. Environmentalist despite being more extreme in principle. I think this is largely due to the fact that professional environmentalists leverage the ignorance of Joe Q. Environmentalist to support their more extreme agenda.
For example, I suspect the professional environmentalists don’t want tar sands oil to be developed AT ALL. Not because tar sands oil spills are toxic but because they throw off so much greenhouse gas and there is so damn much of it that it will affect the global price of oil and delay the timeline for when clean energy becomes economically viable.
There are two ways to make renewable energy more economical. Reduce the cost of alternative energy or increase the cost of conventional energy. We are already doing just about everything we can to reduce the cost of alternative energy, we are effectively pushing a rope at this point. So, I think they are preying on the ignorance of casual environmentalists to help them accelerate the icrease in the cost of conventional energy. If they found a large sea of oil under the Pacific ocean that would satisfy our oil needs for the next 1000 years, environmentalists would oppose the development of that oil because it would mean we would put off development of alternative energy indefinitely even if Joe Q Environmentalists would not oppose development of an new oil field that would reduce gas prices.
I think it’s mostly by chance oil has more subsidy than coal. As you say, they both are the beneficiaries of basically the same set of programs, I think oil just happens to receive more. Coal in 2010 received an estimated $1.3bn in subsidies and “Natural Gas and Petroleum Liquids” received $2.82bn (these figures exclude the $5bn LIHEAP program and classify it as End-Use subsidies and not subsidies strictly linked to any specific type of fuel.)
Off hand some reasons I would guess:
I don’t have the facts to support it, but I think that oil and natural gas may be extracted “more” in the Western United States than is the proportion of coal mined in the Western United States. I know that both petroleum products and coal are heavily extracted in both East and West but I think there is more coal mining in the East relative to in the West than there is for petroleum products. This means more petroleum benefits from sweetheart lease deals as much of the West is actually Federal land. East of the Mississippi most natural resources are being extracted on privately owned property as most of the land East of the Mississippi was never Federally owned or managed by BLM.
I suspect there is more construction done to support petroleum than there is coal. Coal is primarily shipped along extant modes like roads, trains, and rivers. There are some big coal terminals that I’m sure cost a ton of money to build, but it probably doesn’t add up to more construction costs than is involved in the huge pipeline projects. Natural resource industry construction projects typically receive a few different types of subsidy from Federal and State & Local governments.
While not necessarily huge, the SPR is technically a type of subsidy and I don’t believe there is an equivalent for coal.
Damuri: Let’s go through the problems with a dilbit pipe again, in a more orderly fashion. If it can be shown than none are of true concern, then I will have to zip it. Otherwise you will have to agree with my suggestion that the Canadians at least upgrade the dilbit to synthetic crude before pumping it into the United States.
See the comparison of crude to dilbit here, from here. We’ll get to some of the other issues later, but don’t you agree that this highly corrosive, high pressure and temperature mixture of abrasive sludge poses a pipeline failure risk?
The report seems a bit dated. The lower leg of the pipeline that connects the pipeline to the gulf cost is already built. Now we are just talking about the piece that is going to make a stop in the bakken shale oil fields.
In’ts the stuff that they are going to pipe through the Keystone XL the same stuff they are currently piping through the current Keystone pipeline?
If you want better regulations for dilbit pipelines then make your argument (I’m happy to impose reasonable regulations) but any suggestion that we impose a moratorium on pipelines until you can get your act together (or until we impose draconian regulations) is not going to get anywhere. Keystone XL has(for the most part) already addressed the water issues by rerouting the pipeline around sensitive areas, we have technology designed to address corrosion (natural gas condensates (used to make dilbit) are also highly corrosive and we have figured out how to deal with the acidity issue.
Is it? I’m trying to tell you what it is, and convince you that we shouldn’t pipe it. The Canadians need to at least upgrade it to crude before they pipe it into the US.
I’m asking you to look at the comparison of crude to dilbit and explain why dilbit is safe to pipe. You’re the guy who said, “We approve crude pipelines all the time.” Don’t you agree this is not a crude pipeline?
Do you have a cite for the ‘technology designed to address corrosion’? And you haven’t addressed the concern of dilbit’s extreme abrasiveness. It is going to wear out any pipe from the inside.
As for the reroutes, take a look at this. You say my report is old- have all of these risks to these threatened areas been mitigated? ‘For the most part’ is not good enough, no?
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.
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).
I don’t think I ever said that. You might have me confused with Longhorn Dave. 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.
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
Here are some common ways they deal with corrosion 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).
Yes, I believe so.
Most of the stuff on that list refers to currently existing and operational pupelines. Half the stuff is about Enbridge pipelines that are already laid and operating, about half of what is left is about Keystone pipelines that are already laid and operating. The only part of the pipeline that is still up for grabs is the part that is going through the bakken shale oil fields and will be shipping bakken oil to the gulf cost. They have rerouted THAT pipeline to avoid the sandhills region and the Ogallala aquifer. It will still be crossing some rivers in Montana and South Dakota but the people in Montana and South Dakota seem to be largely in favor of having a pipeline for their oil considering the effect the oil industry has had on the economy and unemployment in their states, can you blame them?
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.
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.
