Thread: The Keystone XL Pipeline, which Trump just advanced, will carry the dirtiest fossil

Texas oil will go to Mexico.

The only large new U.S. oil refinery in 40 years will export fuel to MEXICO

Canada Oil Spill on Native Land Came from Tundra Energy Pipeline

No comments
Reuters, January 26, 2017

Tundra Energy Marketing Ltd on Wednesday confirmed its pipeline was the source of a leak of some 52,830 gallons of crude oil onto aboriginal land in Saskatchewan last week.

"An excavation of the release site has confirmed Tundra Energy Marketing Ltd as the operator of the pipeline," the company said in a statement, adding that it was working with regulators and the Ocean Man First Nation indigenous group to determine the cause.

The provincial government said on Tuesday that it will be investigating how long the spill went unnoticed and what leak-detection measures were in place at the site, some 87 miles southeast of Regina. It said on Wednesday that it hoped to send the affected section of pipeline for testing on Thursday, and that 45,970 gallons of oil had been recovered and 240 cubic yards of soil had been removed from the site.

The spill was discovered just days before U.S. President Donald Trump signed executive orders that will move forward two controversial oil pipelines that have long been the target of opposition from indigenous and environmental groups, and could embolden protests against pipeline projects on both sides of the border.

The leak occurred on a feeder artery of the more than 994-mile-long southeast Saskatchewan pipeline system that Tundra, part of Canadian grain trading and energy conglomerate James Richardson and Sons Ltd, purchased from an affiliate of Enbridge Income Fund Holdings Inc. late last year.

"The spill confirms the worst fears of indigenous communities and environmental organizations and no doubt strengthens their resolve to resist and fight back the approved Kinder Morgan and Line 3," said Rauna Kuokkanen, an associate professor of political science and indigenous studies at the University of Toronto.

The federal Canadian government in November approved Kinder Morgan Inc's hotly contested plan to build a pipeline from the Alberta oil sands to the Pacific Coast and Enbridge Inc's replacement of Canadian segments of its aging Line 3 from Alberta to Wisconsin.

https://inspectioneering.com/news/20...nergy-pipeline

(Reporting by Alastair Sharp; Editing by Sandra Maler and Jonathan Oatis)

That's why Trump is going to demand American steel, long long pipes, high quality, less seams on the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines.

8/15/15

U.S. Eases 40-Year Crude Export Ban by Allowing Mexico Swap

Originally Posted by Beezer

The stuff is going to get through...whether it goes through a pipeline...or on mega rich Warren Buffet's trains and semi-trucks.

I think Obama shot the pipeline down because his "special interest" buddy Buffett lined his pockets.

What is the least damage to the environment and lower risk of spillage?

I vote for the pipeline...not railroad.

Oil Leak From Keystone Pipeline 89 Times Worse Than Originally Thought

lejandro Dávila Fragoso Writer/photographer based in Washington D.C.
Apr 8, 2016

Nearly a week after pipeline operator TransCanada shut down a section of its Keystone line over an oil leak, the company reported Thursday thousands of gallons of oil were spilled, not less than 200 as it first said.

Based on soil excavations, TransCanada said about 16,800 gallons of oil leaked onto a field in South Dakota, the Associated Press reported. After the leak was discovered Saturday and the line was shut, TransCanada said about 187 gallons of crude oil had spilled, an accident that environmental groups said shows the dangers of shipping oil by pipeline. Though the spill is larger than first thought, it poses no significant environmental effects or threats to public safety, the AP said. However, Keystone transports Canadian tar sands oil, which is more difficult to clean than conventional oil.

The company behind the rejected Keystone XL line has yet to reveal what caused the leak, but it said the spill is being controlled, and reported the new estimates to the National Response Center and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Administration. The pipeline is part of the existing Keystone network that the proposed Keystone XL pipeline would have expanded. It runs from Alberta, Canada, to refineries in Illinois and Oklahoma via the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri. TransCanada said the pipeline won’t be fully operational until early next week. So far some 100 workers are at the site, located about four miles from Hutchinson County.

Misreported leak volumes often occur following oil spills as companies investigate accidents and discover oil seeped deeper in the ground or waterways than they first thought. Revised figures are at times much larger than first reported. In 2014, for instance, an oil spill in North Dakota was first reported to have caused a loss of 750 barrels of oil, a figure that climbed to about 20,600 barrels once the soil was further investigated.

After the spill was reported earlier this week, environmental groups said Keystone’s spill proves the threat that the Keystone XL expansion would have posed. They also noted that the Keystone pipeline, approved by President George W. Bush in 2008, leaked oil 12 times in its first year of operation. “TransCanada’s Keystone I disaster is a stark reminder that it’s not a question if a pipeline will malfunction, but rather a question of when. This is one of the reasons President Obama rejected the Keystone XL pipeline and it’s why he should reject all dangerous fossil fuel pipeline proposals,” Sierra Club’s Executive Director Michael Brune said in a statement.

Oil transportation largely relies on trains and pipelines. Out of those two, pipelines spill more often than trains, yet train accidents can be deadlier as trains are more likely to explode. U.S. pipelines spilled three times as much crude oil as trains over the period of 2004 to 2012, according to an International Energy Agency study. And last year, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration reported 314 “significant” incidents causing damages of more than $305 million, and 10 fatalities.

Despite opposition from environmentalists and mounting leaks, TransCanada is determined to expand its system and refuses to shelve Keystone XL, as it has challenged Obama’s decision under the North American Free Trade Agreement in federal U.S. court.

https://thinkprogress.org/oil-leak-f...e05#.j7h8zw58e[/COLOR]

Look at Gulf oil spill. We have hurricanes, rigs catch on fire...do we ban that too?

Look at Exxon Valdez, do we ban ships transporting crude?

What is 100% safe?...nothing.

Originally Posted by Beezer

Look at Gulf oil spill. We have hurricanes, rigs catch on fire...do we ban that too?

Look at Exxon Valdez, do we ban ships transporting crude?

What is 100% safe?...nothing.

Exactly, I was just responding to your earlier post stating you believed pipelines were safer than rails. Obviously neither of them have a good record. It seems rails are more dangerous to human life but pipelines are more dangerous to the environment. I just don't think we should be in the business of running Canada's filthy crude across our beautiful landscape for export to foreign countries. Risking damage to our country's environment to mainly benefit the pipelines owners and investors. It just doesn't make much sense in my opinion.

I agree it does not make sense. My point is they will transport it one way or another whether we like it or not. It is filthy crude.

Unfortunately, the Mayflower and Kalamazoo oil spills are only the beginning of disasters to come. Putting our people, our wildlife, our water and lands at this great risk so the big boys can make more money is beyond the pale. This is a total snow job on Americans; the eminent domain, or living nearby to a pipeline is petrifying for homeowners, the fear of the pipe breaking - no one will buy your property either. Put yourself in the position of our fellow Americans that will be at risk or lose their land rights - some are homesteads owned for years, some are mortgaged to the hilt by new young buyers with young children.

Deny the fire bomb trains period - tell Canada to SHOVE their dirty oil that they acquired by raping precious forest land - it is depraved. Let them figure out a way to SELL IT TO SOMEONE without bringing it thru USA or sit on it, stop producing it because no one wants their filth nor be part of their depravity - right now only the profiteers or the fooled do.

Be prepared for Tillerson as SOS to go @ the world making deals to destroy every single rainforest or african lands that host the last surviving species of the territories. hillary promoted fracking everywhere. Lands in africa right now are being destroyed for mining directly in the last remaining habitat of the great ape. Aside from habitat loss, the workers are eating them into extinction. Watch what tillerson does! It is all profiteering at nature's expense - it is evil and the quote is money is always at the root. Without a balance, there is no hope.

There are pictures of the Amazon people with enormous melon size tumors on their face, neck, bodies from the oil spill of years ago, still can't get a proper cleanup or monies. It is impossible to clean it up. Dispersants are more damaging that the oil and only look like the oil is removed. It a losing situation and we should move on, progress to renewable energy with plenty of jobs and no toxicity. We are being held back by the big profiteers gas and oil.

Chevron's Ecuador Cancer Problem: 10,000 People at Risk of Contracting Disease in Coming Decades, Says Expert

Oil Giant Faces Up to $69 Billion in Liability for Potential Cancer Deaths

Amazon Defense Coalition
14 October 2010 - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Paul Paz y Miño: +1 510.281.9020 x302, paz@amazonwatch.org

Quito, Ecuador – Almost 10,000 people in Ecuador face a significant risk of contracting cancer in the coming decades due to Chevron's refusal to clean up the billions of gallons of oil waste it dumped into the rain forest, a leading American expert has reported to the Ecuador court where Chevron is a defendant in a multi-billion dollar environmental trial.

The cancer assessment was presented on September 16 to the Superior Court of Nueva Loja in Lago Agrio, Ecuador, where Chevron is charged with dumping more than 18 billion gallons of toxic "water of formation" directly into the rainforest. The company also faces a potential $69 billion liability for the cancer deaths, an amount that accounts for slightly less than half of the top end of the plaintiff's assessment of total damages, estimated at $113 billion.

Dr. Daniel Rourke, a prominent American statistician formerly associated with the RAND Corporation, has concluded that 9,950 people living in the rainforest region in Ecuador where Chevron operated face a significant risk of contracting cancer in the coming decades. The number could spike higher as Dr. Rourke's analysis assumes a clean-up of the contaminated area will begin immediately and be completed in ten years – something that Chevron has thus far rejected out of hand.

"This study demonstrates that Chevron has created a critical human health catastrophe in Ecuador that puts thousands of people at risk of death," said Luis Yanza, who coordinates the legal case against Chevron for approximately 80 rainforest indigenous and farmer communities impacted by the oil giant's operations.

"As it is, hardly a day goes by where we don't receive a report of another cancer death in the area where Chevron operated," he said.

Chevron, which operated several oil fields in the Amazon from 1964 to 1990, is being sued by 30,000 rain forest residents for clean-up costs. The trial is taking place in Ecuador at Chevron's request after it was moved from U.S. federal court in 2002.

Several experts believe the damage caused by Chevron in Ecuador dwarfs the harm generated by the BP Gulf spill, and is probably the world's largest oil-related disaster. The contamination covers an area the size of Rhode Island and will take at least a decade to remediate once funds are in place, according to experts.

The human health problem in the area where Chevron operated is exacerbated by the fact the local population lives in close proximity to the hundreds of oil wells and waste pits that Chevron left behind when it departed Ecuador in 1992. Chevron never warned local residents of the dangers of exposure to the contamination and never fenced off any of its 916 toxic waste pits, which are considered hazardous.

Dr. Rourke's report uses actuarial life-table methodology to estimate the number of lives at risk of cancer as a result of exposure to the oil contamination.

The report utilizes Ecuadorian census data to estimate the population of the region, adjusted for growth rate since the oil operations began in 1964. The value of each excess cancer death was estimated at $7 million, a figure based on an average from the U.S. tort system and an economic concept of the "value of a statistical life" as employed by the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Several peer-reviewed health evaluations had previously found that cancer rates in the region where Chevron operated were dramatically higher than in the rest of Ecuador. These reports can be found here.

When Chevron published a full-page ad in Ecuadorian newspapers attacking the health studies, more than 50 eminent scientists signed a letter published in the prestigious International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health defending the methods used to conduct the health evaluations and criticizing Chevron's efforts to undermine the studies' findings.

Chevron's own damages report, also submitted to the court on Sept. 16, found that the company had no liability and that the oil contamination from its former oil fields poses no harm to human health.

Chevron has been hit hard in the Ecuador trial in recent days.

The company's primary American technical expert in Ecuador, John Conner, suffered a major blow to his credibility when it was reported that he testified in Mississippi that the oil giant had never harmed even a single person in his two decades working as a consultant for the company. Conner also admitted that Chevron had paid his company $8 million in consulting fees, with up to $5 million coming from his work on the Ecuador matter.

After hearing Conner's testimony in Mississippi, a jury delivered a $19 million judgment against Chevron on behalf of five plaintiffs who suffered cognitive injuries from exposure to the company's leaking underground gas tanks.

True to form, in the dozens of expert reports Chevron submitted to the Ecuador court under Conner's supervision, not one has concluded that Chevron's operational practices in the South American nation had harmed even a single person.

http://chevrontoxico.com/news-and-mu...people-at-risk

Enbridge oil spill Michigan people sick and dying



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KAI...ature=youtu.be