Why the Keystone XL Pipeline Project Should Not Proceed

Introduction

The Canadian oil and gas corporation TransCanada proposed building a new pipeline stretching 2,000 miles from Alberta, Canada, to Texas. The pipeline would carry some of the dirtiest crude oil in the world — tar sands oil — into the United States to be refined and used domestically as fuel for transportation and other purposes. The problem with this project, besides the fact that tar sands oil is extremely foul and causes the release of a horrendous amount of greenhouse gases when burned, is that a break or even a small leak in the pipeline could devastate ecosystems, ruin existing water systems, and in the process jeopardize the health of Americans. This paper is vigorously opposed to the development of this controversial pipeline for a number of reasons detailed below.

What Is Wrong With the Keystone Project?

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), among the most respected and powerful conservation advocacy organizations, teamed up with the National Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club, and the Pipeline Safety Trust to produce a factual document titled "Tar Sands Safety Risks." In that document, the NRDC presents logical, verifiable data that all points in the same direction: the Keystone project should never be allowed to proceed.

The pipeline that TransCanada proposes to use is conventional pipeline, which will not be adequate because moving thick, volatile tar sands crude oil requires "higher operating temperatures and pressures to move the thick material through a pipe" (NRDC, 2011, p. 3). Additionally, tar sands oil — known as "DilBit" — is known to be "more corrosive" to pipelines than conventional crude oil. Simply building the pipeline and pushing DilBit through it without additional safety measures and regulations takes extreme risks, the NRDC explains (p. 3).

The tar sands oil comes from beneath the Boreal forest in Alberta. Extracting the tar sands from beneath the Boreal requires strip mining and disrupts "millions of acres of sensitive wildlife habitat," not to mention "critical terrestrial carbon reservoirs in peatlands" (NRDC, p. 5). The extraction process itself requires a large amount of energy; obtaining synthetic crude from the Boreal will release an estimated "three times the greenhouse gas emissions per barrel as compared to that of conventional crude oil" (NRDC, p. 5).

The extraction process also requires two to five barrels of water for every barrel of DilBit extracted, and this process has already created "over 65 square miles of toxic waste ponds" in the otherwise pristine Boreal Forest. Moreover, continuing to extract tar sands oil — to supply refineries in Texas at the southern end of the proposed pipeline — could cause the loss of "millions of migratory birds" that use the Boreal and its wetlands as nesting habitat (NRDC, p. 5).

The Ogallala Aquifer

Once extracted and sent into the United States via pipeline, the tar sands oil will pass over "some of America's most sensitive lands and aquifers on the way to the Gulf Coast," the NRDC explains (p. 5). One of the more sensitive areas the pipeline would pass through is the Ogallala Aquifer, the largest underground water source in the United States, according to Anthony Swift of the NRDC's Switchboard. Swift's concern stems from the fact that Keystone's real-time leak detection system "will not detect pinhole leaks and can't be relied on to detect leaks smaller than about 700,000 gallons a day" (Swift, 2011, p. 1).

A recent leak in Canada — on the Norman Wells pipeline in Enbridge — dumped 63,000 gallons of tar sands crude into the environment and "provides an indication of the types of leaks that can go undetected for weeks," Swift explains (p. 1). Those 63,000 gallons escaped from a hole Swift describes as "about the size of a pinhole," but a spill in the Ogallala Aquifer would be "far worse." The Keystone pipeline would actually run underground through the Ogallala Aquifer in many places, and the supplemental draft environmental impact statement (SDEIS) notes that "the water conductivity — or the rate that water moves through the soil — in the Ogallala Aquifer can be as high as one hundred feet per day" (Swift, p. 1).

That impact statement underscores Swift's argument: the SDEIS concedes that Keystone "does not have the technology to detect a single leak that is less than 1.5–2% of the pipeline's flow-rate in real time." Indeed, the SDEIS notes that a pinhole leak could go undetected for weeks. As for contamination remediation, responders would be unable to simply remove contaminated soil; instead they would have to "pump contaminated water out, which will draw more water into the area of the contamination" (Swift, p. 1).

According to Swift's research, a tiny underground leak within the Ogallala Aquifer could allow as much as "five percent of its capacity, or 1.7 million gallons a day" to escape without triggering the leak detection system (p. 1).

Conclusion

The Keystone pipeline is a very bad — potentially catastrophic — proposal, and it must be defeated. It contributes to climate change, threatens the Boreal forest and the wildlife it sustains, and runs counter to the overarching goal of reducing America's dependence on oil and transitioning to clean, renewable energy sources. In the same spirit, responsible legislators should pass legislation stripping large oil companies such as Exxon-Mobil and Chevron of their subsidies and tax breaks, redirecting those funds into wind energy, solar power, home insulation programs, and other conservation measures.

Works Cited

Bendavid, Naftali, and Janet Hook. "GOP Ties Reducing Payroll Tax to Pipeline." The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved December 8, 2011, from

Hargreaves, Steve. "Keystone Oil Sands Pipeline Construction in Doubt." CNN Money. Retrieved December 9, 2011, from http://money.cnn.com.

Natural Resources Defense Council. "Tar Sands Pipelines Safety Risks." Retrieved December 9, 2011, from

Swift, Anthony. "The Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline Leak Detection System Would Have Likely Missed the 63,000 Gallon Norman Wells Pipeline Spill." Switchboard / Natural Resources Defense Council Staff Blog. Retrieved December 8, 2011, from 2011.