Keystone XL -- I don't understand the opposition

Great Debates
81

Here is a paper discussing remediation and clean up strategies that may clear things up with respect to the aquifer.

Quote:
Crude oil released to land or marine environment is immediately subject to a verity of physical, chemical and biological changes [6, 7]. At sea, crude oil, which is usually lighter than water, will spread over the water surface area. After a short time the thickness of the oil film on the water surface will amount to less than 1 mm. The velocity of propagation of the oil on water surface depends on the type of oil, water temperature, and weathering processes such
as; atmospheric temperature, wind and tide. The evaporation of the light components will take place immediately and up to around 40 % of a crude oil may evaporate during a short period of time [8]. This Treatment Techniques of Oil-Contaminated Soil and Water Aquifers process will lead to an increase in the viscosity of the spilled oil. Another part of the oil will be loaded into the water, since some volatile hydrocarbon components, such as
benzene, toluene, and the xylenes have some water solubility in the range of 150-1800
mg/l and are toxic [7].
Thus, the removal of the hydrocarbon from soil and from water surface is an essential practice to prevent groundwater contamination. Any remained portion of crude oil in the ground acts as a permanent source of contamination. The removal efficiency of crude oil from contaminated sites requires information about the composition of the crude oil and the type of soil. For instance, the heavy crude oil does not readily penetrate porous media and its density may be near that of water. The toxicity of this class of oil is low. However, the cleanup of such type of oil is very difficult. The weathering or evaporation of volatiles may produce solid or tarry oil. The average or medium crude oil is more toxic than the heavy crude oil and has the tendency to penetrate into porous media. The light crude oil (volatile oil) spreads rapidly on solid or water surface and penetrates porous surface. This type of oil is usually highly toxic. "

On initial reading, the author asserts that heavy crude is less toxic than light crude, and it appears I was in error in that regard, although dilbit and heavy crude are similar in properties they are not identical.
These are the points to ponder, though.
1)The diluent used to make the bitumen flow is very toxic, and would be very slow to disperse in an underground aquifer as it can’t evaporate as described in the paper.
2) Less toxic doesn’t mean non-toxic and the heavy portions are going to be a bear to remove by known conventional means.

82

Thank you, that’s exactly the cite I was asking for and what I was getting at. Appreciate you digging that up. I have only skimmed it so far, but let me ask you something…do you think that there is more or less potential risk of spillage and environmental impact from transshipping the oil via rail, as is being done today (well, a combination of existing pipelines and rail I suppose to be technical), or by building this pipeline and not using rail at all? Obviously, either way the oil is going to go to market and be used, but you have to assess relative risk…so, what’s your honest assessment?

83

The best that can be said about that is that capturing carbon is probably better than not capturing it. In terms of the big picture, fossil fuel deposits represent safely and permanently sequestered carbon from extremely ancient carbon-rich climates. By burning them we’re returning the sequestered carbon to the short-term active carbon cycle. The carbon capture and artificial sequestration schemes I’ve seen to date all represent significant risks and unknowns. And no one thinks it’s a panacea or anything other than a stop-gap. The real solution is to stop extracting the damn stuff in the first place.

Rail car shipments don’t represent a $5 billion-plus capital investment that will have to be recouped through accelerated oil production over a period of generations. Rail car shipments don’t represent a fixed investment that will encourage maximum utilization over the pipeline’s estimated 50 year lifetime.

84

[QUOTE=wolfpup]
Rail car shipments don’t represent a $5 billion-plus capital investment that will have to be recouped through accelerated oil production over a period of generations. Rail car shipments don’t represent a fixed investment that will encourage maximum utilization over the pipeline’s estimated 50 year lifetime.
[/QUOTE]

Are you asserting that rail car transshipment is cheaper and safer than the proposed pipeline?? If so…cite?? Because that would be an incredible assertion that I haven’t seen anyone make, even those totally against this pipeline.

If not then, well, what’s your point?

85

Where did I make or even hint at such an assertion?

I thought my point was very clear. The pipeline is an enormous capital investment whose profitability is premised on being able to ramp up tar sands production and ship large volumes of oil for many decades. IOW its viability is premised on a denialist mentality that requires us to do precisely those things that every climate study is telling us we should not be doing. If you can take yourself out of the mindset of the oil companies and look at it realistically, rail cars are a flexible resource with adaptable capacity. A pipeline is infrastructure that is most effective when operated at capacity. The idea that this thing is worth building and will be heavily utilized for even a fraction of its expected 50-year lifetime is based on pure denialist fantasy, but it’s going to create a major impetus by the heavily invested parties to keep that fantasy alive. We have enough of that crap going on already.

86

No, I believe part of the assertion is that if the Keystone XL is never completed, the market will find an alternative other than rail shipments. In particular, several of the Alberta producers have already signed contracts to move the oil east or west though other pipelines, such as the Energy East project from Alberta to Quebec and New Brunswick.

More importantly, rail cars can be repurposed. They can move around: what hauls Alberta crude to Louisiana can also haul Eagle Ford crude to Houston. They also don’t cost as much as the pipeline, so there is not the same amount of sunk costs.

If the KXL is built, however, it will represent a huge fixed investment. To recoup their investment, the pipeline has to be used heavily. The Canadians will have to continue to pump the dirtiest and most environmentally destructive crude down the pipeline even if/when other sources make more sense, just because of the compulsion to get their money’s worth out of that pipeline.

87

XT, to answer your question shipping by rail is 70x more likely to result in a spill for the same amount of product. Having said that the analogy the article I read is comparing travel by car to travel by airplane. Per passenger mile, airlines are safer than cars, but when an accident does occur the airliner is far more likely to have catastrophic impacts to the passengers and surroundings.
I think slash2k and wolfpup have addressed the real crux here and that is whether it needs to be built at all. If it were me I’d sooner see the refining done in Alberta and us shipping finished product out to the world but in another discussion with a petroleum engineer was quickly schooled in the fact that with the variation of standards in gas and diesel it is cheaper to ship the crude and refine it at the destination country in most cases.

88

I suspect I heard the same NPR broadcast. After I had scraped my jaw off the floor of my car and wondered, “Now I know why some people are referring to this as National Petroleum Radio” (and it is YOUR fault for not responding to the pledge drive), I found this thread. I think the OP is a straightforward poster and not a conscious promoter of an oil industry straw man, but I do have to jump into this.

First of all, I don’t think the only answers to the OP have to come from ‘the environmental community’. Much in the same way I have never seen XT lose an argument with an actual CTer, the OP seeks to pigeonhole the opposition before they even say a word. I call shenanigans.

The first reason that this project is even proposed is that the people of Canada would not allow a dilbit pipeline across their territory.

It is worth pointing out that even though there is malarky on both sides, the right wing advocates in the debate are far worse than their opponents on this score. The high-level government GOP advocates of the Keystone appear wholly bought, being unable to even acknowledge, let alone directly answer, their more rational critics on the specifics of the irreconcilable deficiencies in the plans to complete the pipeline (see Keystone XL will be the safest pipeline ever constructed in the United States - sheer industry propaganda). The ‘liberals’ (gawd, I hate the way sides are chosen in American politics these days) are more fully comprehensive with the facts and subsequent conclusions, and therefore win the debate.

If the XL isn’t built, the possibility of a localized, ~830,000+ barrel-per-day spill is eliminated. Dilbit spills are not in the same class as oil spills, they are order***S *** of magnitude worse. This fact being any different in the presence of any aquifer shouldn’t be a matter of debate- if anything, dilbit spill damage will be magnified in that case.

A dilbit pipleline is not the same thing as a crude pipeline. A dilbit pipeline is 16x more likely to rupture than a crude pipeline, operating as it does under much higher pressure, temperature and abrasion, and a dilbit spill costs 200x+ what it costs to clean up a crude oil spill. Build the XL and someplace in middle America is surely doomed, we just don’t know where, yet. In exchange for what?

And none of this touches on the millions of tons of waste this pipeline will spread across Louisiana &etc. The tailings of decades of extracted boreal forests will be dumped in the Southern United States, for the benefit of Canadian oil interests. It will rot there and poison our citizens if we allow this.

I say the Canadians refine their sands into crude before pumping it across the border, making good on their claim that this is just another oil pipeline. I won’t exactly approve of the project in that case, but I would get out of the way. But the Right cannot acknowledge such a compromise.

The facts win. The Keystone XL pipeline shall not be rightly built.

89

Keystone XL does not matter at all. Businesses moved on years ago because they cannot play this long waiting game. It’s purely a political issue now, and even talking about it is buying into either the political hype of the right or the left. There have been many pipelines built since Keystone XL discussion started and businesses also have essentially created a “virtual Keystone XL” through rail shipping. This oil is already being pumped and sent to the United States for refinement. If you even read about the Keystone pipeline here, you’ll see that it’s already shipping tons of crude. The XL portion was latched onto by greens as a cause célèbre, the billionaire funding them very specifically said he wanted to find an issue on which they could “win” and force the President to do something they wanted. He largely has done so but avoided putting finality on it out of the craven political fear that guides 90% of his actions.

90

One of the annoying things about the SDMB is since no debates ever change anyone’s mind or advance any issue, people often pop back up to repeat arguments long debunked. Try2B Comprehensive’s anti-scientific and false arguments about diluted bitumen were well debunked in this thread and should rightfully be disregarded.

91

Stop right there. The ANWR issue is an even easier argument to make than the rest of your premise. It’s a tiny area of scrub land that is right next to an already existing pipeline. We’re talking about 8% of ANWR of which very little of it is disturbed. The line separating “drill here” and “sacred wildlife refuge” is arbitrary and pointless.

Drilling there isn’t the environmental equivalent of Dante’s Inferno. It’s a political soundbite of “save the whale” only in this case it would increase the animals the pipeline was originally (and rightly) assumed it would harm. But since we know it has not harmed wildlife it’s really a sound decision to move an arbitrary line in a area that has no real environmental need for protection. It’s the maximization of the utility of the pipeline with the minimum of impact.

We are the users of the oil and should take responsibility for it’s extraction instead of leaving it to 3rd world countries who as an additional bonus fund terrorists.

By harvesting our own oil we greatly increase the tax base putting needed money in a government that is 17 trillion in debt. We can focus that money on projects that fast-track environmentally friendly energy. It’s a win-win-win.

92

And drilling might only take up 1% of a national park, forest, or other preserve. It is antithetical to the purpose of having preserves. And before you go further, yes, I have flown over ANWR and I know what it looks like.

93

Um, my claims are a matter of record.

94

When did Canadians reject a pipeline for this oil? I’ve heard (and read in this thread) that if the pipeline isn’t built in the US, odds are that a pipeline will be built in Canada.

95

fromWiki: However, studies show that dilbit does not increase the risk of corrosion occurring within a pipeline or otherwise increase the risk of a release occurring.

You’ve made a broad statement without fact. The engineering of the pipes can and would be based on the product that flows through them as would the response to leaks. It’s not an engineering “one size fits all” proposition.

96

Well, as an Albertan whose entire family is pretty much reliant on those jobs, I may have an axe to grind over this issue. However, I also have to admit that there are merits to opposing arguments.

For example, it’s absolutely true that the pipeline is designed to lower costs for getting our oil to market. And anything that lowers the cost of this oil will increase its use on the margin. And for that matter, systemic risks to the project such as opposition to any means of moving the oil to market does have a chilling effect on future investment by increasing risk and cost uncertainty, and thus in how much oil production happens in the future.

So from the standpoint of an activist who believes limiting CO2 is critically important and overrides all other issues, it makes perfect sense to throw as many wrenches into the works as possible.

That said, this is a very complicated issue, both on the cost and benefit side.

For example, much has been said about the risks to the environment from pipeline spills. But that’s not meaningful unless compared to the risks of the alternative. Alberta at the moment plans to ship the oil to terminals on the coast, and from there to offload the oil onto tankers. Another transport method will be to load it onto trains and move it down south that way.

So, the real question is this: Given that X million barrels of oil WILL be moved out of Canada, what’s the safest way to do it? Train, ship, or pipeline? I’m guessing pipeline wins, but I haven’t seen the numbers.

As for the benefits - yes, the jobs are ‘temporary’. But so are all construction jobs. Once you’ve built something, it’s built. Then you have to find another construction job. I don’t recall Obama mentioning that when pushing for a huge infrastructure spending bill. More to the point, construction workers stay working because there is a constant churn - new construction shows up, and as it’s finished the workers move on to new projects. If you were going to oppose construction on the grounds that the work is only ‘temporary’, you’d halt all construction.

The benefit side of the equation has other factors as well. For example, if we wind up sending all our oil to China, that pulls us closer to China’s sphere of influence, which has geopolitical ramifications for the U.S. In addition, energy security for the U.S. is enhanced by helping to sustain an oil industry in its largest trading partner, which also happens to be a free democracy. If a point in time comes in the future where America’s geopolitical foes attempt to squeeze its oil economy, it’s nice to know that a large supply exists next door.

Also on the benefit side: Boosting the economy of your neighbour and largest trading partner. A stronger Canada benefits the U.S. in many ways, not least of which is that we buy a whole lot of our goods from the U.S.

On the cost side, you should consider that Canada is an ally, and that we are supposed to exist in a free trade zone. As we get more and more hostility and intransigence from the U.S., we will be less likely to help the U.S. when it comes asking. And we will start to slowly seek out new alliances and partners as it becomes more clear that the U.S. has become an unreliable ‘friend’. That’s just the nature of diplomacy.

I understand that environmentalists really, really want this ‘dirty oil’ left in the ground, and ultimately opposition to its development is happening on many fronts. The pipeline is best looked at as just another front in this battle. However, It’s also true that given the money involved, that’s just not going to happen. The only thing that will keep that oil in the ground is if it becomes too expensive to market. You won’t do that by trying to impact the cost side - the effects aren’t big enough.

Ironically, the biggest threat to the oil sands comes from fracking - which environmentalists have also opposed. The huge new reserves of exploitable fossil fuels in the U.S. has panicked OPEC, and they are responding by trying to drive oil below the production cost of alternative supplies. It may even work - Alberta is already feeling the economic effects of the drop in world oil prices. If they stay this low for more than a year, you’ll start to see cancellation of new projects in oil sands everywhere, followed by shutdowns of existing production when the cost falls below the long-term futures price of oil.

Ultimately, this stuff is going to get burned until there are cheaper alternatives, since the demand for energy is increasing all the time. The only feasible alternative to fossil fuels we have today is nuclear - also opposed by most environmentalists. One only needs to look at Germany to see the effects of trying to move away from nuclear and fossil fuels and attempting to replace them with alternatives that don’t scale and which can’t provide base-load power.

97

This. It’s GOING to be pumped whether we do it efficiently or not. It’s pointless to jack up the cost of it. All that does is hurt the economy and remove money that could be used elsewhere.

98

The Northern Gateway pipeline is meant to take oil from Alberta and move it across British Columbia. However, this pipeline is heavily opposed.

Radio and TV propaganda in favor of new pipelines is steady here. A friendly face is presented saying “I live here too and I love nature! Safety first!” et cetera. The tankers will be guided by BC coast pilots (so that it will be our own fault when one crashes). There’s also a big push by the Provincial Government for our future as fueled and paid for by magical LNG, which will solve all our problems and make everyone rich.

Ultimately I think the money side wins, hands down. But the locals aren’t going to make it easy for them.

99

Excellent idea. Now if you’ll just send a cheque to cover the economic and tax losses that Canada will have to bear, then we’ll get right on not producing that oil.

100

Is Canada (or TransCanada Corp.) going to pay the U.S. for a lease for the land for a pipeline running through our sovereign territory? Why are Republicans so eager to help Canada to ship their oil to our ports to export to other countries? Maybe the U’S. could be given 49% of TransCanada’s stock.