Wednesday Open Thread [6.19.13]

Filed in Open Thread by on June 19, 2013

I have been ambivalent on the proposed construction of the Keystone Pipeline. It was one of those balancing issues where protection of the environment went up against concerns for new sources of energy and jobs. If you forced me to decide, I would have decided against it only because the US was not the recipient of the oil. It may just be me, but if we are going to build the thing, and give up our land, and take the risk that we are going to damage forever our environment in nearly half the states, then I want the freaking oil to stay in the US for our use and not export it to China.

Well, what opponents of the Pipeline long feared would happen to US if the pipeline was built has happened to Canada:

A massive toxic waste spill from an oil and gas operation in northern Alberta is being called one of the largest recent environmental disasters in North America. First reported on June 1, the Texas-based Apache Corp. didn’t reveal the size of the spill until June 12, which is said to cover more than 1,000 acres. Members of the Dene Tha First Nation tribe are outraged that it took several days before they were informed that 9.5 million liters of salt and heavy-metal-laced wastewater had leaked onto wetlands they use for hunting and trapping. “Every plant and tree died” in the area touched by the spill, said James Ahnassay, chief of the Dene Tha. …

Following initial speculation that the leak stemmed from aging infrastructure, officials from Apache Corp. revealed that the pipeline was only five years old and had been designed to last for 30. The incident comes on the heels of accusations from the provincial New Democratic Party that Alberta Energy Minister Ken Hughes is withholding the results of an internal pipeline safety report pending the U.S. government’s decision regarding Keystone XL.

The icing on the cake, however, is this:

TransCanada Corp. (TRP), which says Keystone XL will be the safest pipeline ever built, isn’t planning to use infrared sensors or fiber-optic cables to detect spills along the system’s 2,000-mile (3,200-kilometer) path to Texas refineries from fields in Alberta. … Though the so-called external leak detection tools have been recommended by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline, the Calgary-based company says they’re impractical for the entire project.

Tough. Your supposedly safe pipeline just caused the largest oil spill in the history of the Dominion of Canada. You want your pipeline to cross American soil, the very least you will do is build an external protection network as described above at your expense. If you do not, the pipeline does not get built.

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  1. John Young says:
  2. cassandra_m says:

    It is worth reading the entire article on the Canadian pipeline, and it is more than just one spill. Globe and Mail article. And don’t forget the Mayflower, AK spill too. Not planning on adding the pipeline sensoring is particularly hypocritical for an industry (and its supporters) who keep claiming that this work can be done cleaner that it ever has been in the past. The thing is, they are quite right about that — they just won’t spend the money on the technology that will get them to all of that clean.

    I’m opposed to this pipeline (there is a reason they are not allowed to build through Canada), but I’d place a pretty big bet that the Obama Admin will approve it.

  3. anonymous says:

    Public Servant Markell, your Grade is – F, for Failure.

    When it really counts, when the people are really depending on you to do the right thing for their state, for all people for that matter, you have chosen instead, to be the man who failed. Your efforts would bring the only refinery on the East Coast to accept the filthiest of the filthy, shale oil and tar sand oils to, of all places, the People’s Coastal Zone.

    I wish you no success in your industrious undertaking. You have already begun to get the attention you deserve. And they say you are withholding information from the very people you represent and are tasked with serving. Instead the people see, you are serving the best interests of the fossil fuel industry.

    One doesn’t view Mr. Markell as the dunce in a tin hat in the corner of the classroom, but instead as the Tin Man, not following the path, but instead laying the railroad tracts across the ‘protected’ Coastal Zoning territory, not in search of a heart, as he has sold it to the fossil fuel industry, but in search of money.

    The heartless care about nothing and are always the most feared.

    Russell Peterman is a man honored by many.

    But what honor is there in an act of betrayal Mr. Markell?

    The People of Delaware have been made aware that Mr. Markell has allegedly attacked the Coastal Zoning Act in order to move up to 45,000 train delivered barrels daily, of crude shale oil and tar sand oils into Delaware’s Coastal Zoning Act area to relay such a load to PBF’s Paulsboro, N.J.

    Oil sand extraction is also a process that greatly damages the landscape with open pit mining and vast amounts of energy and water waste required for it’s extraction.

    If such is the case, not only has the Tin Man trespassed on honored lands of the People, he has laid his tracks despoiling and plundering on the legacy left by Delaware’s Russell Peterson. But it’s more offensive than that.

    The People of Delaware know Russell Peterson as a man with great foresight and love of Delaware’s environment, who created a Coastal Zoning Act exactly for such a time as this. You Mr. Markell, are the politician, the enabler, the unknown – that the people need to be protected from.

    “The known climate scientist James Hansen emphasizes that the extraction of tar sands would increase the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere by 50%. ‘When the development of the tar sands continues, then it means “game over for the climate,’ says Hansen.”

    http://www.ted.com/talks/james_hansen_why_i_must_speak_out_about_climate_change.html

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-16/hansen-says-tar-sands-oil-makes-climate-change-unsolvable.html