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Greens, Industry Draw Battle Lines in Fight Over Oil Pipeline
Environmentalists and the oil industry are fine-tuning their talking points ahead of a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing later Monday on a proposed pipeline that would carry Canadian oil sands from Alberta to refineries in Texas.
Committee Chairman Fred Upton (Mich.) and other Republicans on the panel are pushing a draft bill that would require President Obama to make a decision on the pipeline, known as Keystone XL, by Nov. 1. The committee will hold a hearing on the bill Monday afternoon.
The pipeline, which is undergoing a multi-agency review headed up by the State Department, has long drawn the ire of the environmental community and the praise of the oil industry.
The American Petroleum Institute, the country’s most powerful oil industry trade association, said Monday that approval of the pipeline will create thousands of jobs and ensure the country’s energy security.
“The Keystone XL pipeline has undergone extensive analysis and review over the last two years, and it is time to focus efforts on creating jobs and strengthening our relationship with America’s No. 1 source of imported oil: Canada,” API Executive Vice President Marty Durbin said in a statement, calling the Republican draft bill “an important driver of U.S. economic growth and job creation.”
But environmental groups slammed the legislation, arguing that the Obama administration must be allowed to complete a thorough review of the pipeline project before making a final decision.
Jeremy Symons, a senior vice president at the National Wildlife Federation, is the only witness slated to testify at the hearing, which is likely to offer major criticism of TransCanada’s Keystone XL project.
Symons, according to written testimony filed to the committee, will argue that imposing a Nov. 1 deadline on the administration to make a decision on the pipeline could force officials to gloss over the potential threat of oil pipeline spills.
“The arbitrary deadline suggested in the legislation also short-circuits the administration’s ability to investigate and consider safety lessons that can be learned from several catastrophic ruptures of tar sludge pipelines that have occurred since Transcanada submitted its [Keystone XL] application,” Symons says in his written testimony, pointing to recent pipeline spills in Alberta and Michigan.
“These recent spills are clear warnings that America’s outdated pipeline safety laws are not prepared for the highly corrosive and toxic tar sludge that is proposed to be pressurized and sped through 2,000 miles of [the Keystone XL] pipeline, crossing some of America’s most important sources of clean water,” Symons says.
Symons will also attempt to counter Republican arguments that the pipeline will offer huge benefits to the United States at a time of economic uncertainty.
“[T]he Keystone XL pipeline scheme opens the Canada-to-China oil route that oil companies have long sought,” Symons says in his written testimony. “The pipeline will take Canadian oil that is already flowing to America away from U.S. refineries in the Midwest and send it instead to foreign-owned refineries on the Gulf Coast for export.”
Meanwhile, expect lawmakers on the committee to spar over who might benefit from approval of the pipeline.
Rep. Henry Waxman (Calif.), the committee’s ranking Democrat, said late last week that the Koch brothers — the owners of a Kansas-based refining company that have been major contributors to a slew of Republican causes — could benefit from the Keystone XL project. Though Koch Industries has no interest in the Keystone XL project, Waxman suggested Friday that the company has a stake in the Canadian oil sands industry.
Koch and Republicans have dismissed Waxman’s comments as pure politics.
If Waxman focuses on the issue at the hearing, Republicans are prepared to counter that George Soros, the liberal businessman and enemy of many on the right, could actually benefit from the approval of the pipeline, one source with ties to the committee says. Soros, the source notes, owns a large amount of stock in a company that is a major miner of Canadian oil sands.
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Show AllAlberta's Tar Sands have been a disaster from day one.
The end product requires the energy equivalent of 33+ barrels of oil, plus hundreds of liters of fresh water to produce ONE barrel of synthetic crude.
The Tar Sands have permanently polluted hundreds of miles of rivers, contaminated dozens of lakes, killed tens of thousands of birds and other wildlife, and contributes to a cancer rate in Northern Alberta that is 400 TIMES higher than the Canadian national average. Not 400%. FOUR HUNDRED TIMES! You might as well cuddle a leaky nuclear reactor.
And speaking of nuclear reactors, so much energy is required to produce the steam to separate the bituminous 'tar' from the sand that the Alberta government has actually had studies done on the feasibility of building nuclear reactors in the region to supply electricity to the tar sands refineries.
The Alberta Government has been in bed (literally!) with the oil companies ever since the discovery at Leduc 1. They allow the oil industry to pillage the landscape, and violate even the minimal environmental standards Alberta does have. When members of the public have a legitimate complaint, they are harassed, intimidated, or silenced (just ask Weibo Ludwig).
Check this, from Wikipedia (yeah, yeah, I know. But look at the notes, ok?):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_sands#cite_note-66
Specifics- Between 2 to 4.5 volume units of water are used to produce each volume unit of synthetic crude oil (SCO) in an ex-situ mining operation. (So one 42 gallon drum of syncrude needs 84 to 189 gallons of water to produce. ouch.) Despite recycling, almost all of it ends up in tailings ponds, which, as of 2007, covered an area of approximately 50 km2 (19 sq mi). In SAGD operations, 90 to 95 percent of the water is recycled and only about 0.2 volume units of water is used per volume unit of bitumen produced.[67] Large amounts of water are used for oil sands operations – Greenpeace gives the number as 349 million cubic metres per year, twice the amount of water used by the city of Calgary. It is unclear if this is the amount of water they are licensed to remove from the Athabasca or the actual use and how up to date the statistic is.
-Approximately 1.0 – 1.25 gigajoule of energy is needed to extract a barrel of bitumen and upgrade it to synthetic crude. As of 2006, most of this is produced by burning natural gas. Since a barrel of oil equivalent is about 6.117 gigajoules, this extracts about 5 or 6 times as much energy as is consumed. Energy efficiency is expected to improve to 0.7 gigajoules of energy per barrel by 2015, giving an EROEI of about 9. (A barrel of regular crude oil today has an EROEI of 10 -15. At the time of discovery, oil had an EROEI of 100 For comparison, ethanol has an EROEI of .2. Again, ouch.) However, since natural gas production in Alberta peaked in 2001 and has been static ever since, it is likely oil sands requirements will be met by cutting back natural gas exports to the U.S. (yeah, like the Government of Alberta is going piss away that golden goose. And/or piss off the US at the same time. I don't think we in Canada will be to thrilled with having a piece of Canada occupied by US troops. And you know you would, so bite me.)
- Barrel of Oil Equivalent: The barrel of oil equivalent (BOE) is a unit of energy based on the approximate energy released by burning one barrel (42 US gallons or 158.9873 litres) of crude oil. The US Internal Revenue Service defines it as equal to 5.8 × 106 BTU. The value is necessarily approximate as various grades of oil have slightly different heating values.
5.8 × 106 BTU59 °F equals 6.1178632 × 109 J, about 6.1 GJ (HHV), or 1.7 MWh.
If one considers the lower heating value instead of the higher heating value, the value for one BOE would be approximately 5.7 GJ (see Ton of oil equivalent).
One BOE is roughly equivalent to 5,800 cubic feet of natural gas or 58 CCF. The USGS gives a figure of 6,000 cubic feet (170 cubic meters) of typical natural gas.[2]
A commonly used multiple of the BOE is the kilo barrel of oil equivalent (kboe or kBOE), which is 1,000 times larger.
When you take into account the energy needed to pump the water for the steam cracking process, the energy to heat the housing and cook the food for the workers, plus the energy used to power the mining equipment and worker transportation (Bus or private vehicle), plus the energy to install the NG pipeline and run the pumping and metering stations for the NG and/or to mine and transport coal to the coal fired generating station as an alternative to NG use, you are looking at a net energy loss.
"what good is a barrel of oil when you spent two barrels to get it out of the ground?" you ask.
To the oil companies who get the subsidies from the US and other governments it's the $ MOOOLAHHH $!!!
Waxman is a PHARMA whore. Keeps trying to push legislation to kill of vitamins. www.naturalnews.com.
We should place bets that the pipe is a done deal. The lobbyists are too powerful. Obama will fold. Just like he did with the Gulf and ANWR.
The true reason for our 9/11 Reichstag, was because bin Laden refused Bush the oil pipe line, so Arabs were blamed out of revenge, just like the lies to invade Iraq, --Saddam failed to play the other Bush's game, and revenge came into play again. The Koch oil Industries along with other big oil intend to bury the Arabs with the blessings of the Zionist , who are in the wing waiting for the land, the oil companies the oil. Millions have died, million more to go all because of greed.
I agree. It has always been about the oil and crushing the Arabs (or anyone else in the way) to get it.
On a side note, this "memoir" ought to be a real snow job. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/19/cheney-book-cover-unveiled/
An interesting question for us, what way the pipeline will flow. For the Canadians it's not so academic. For them the question is what price they will pay for the environmental destruction that will ensue. Is it worth it? It's up to you Canadians, Will you willingly capitulate to the rapacious as international corporate interests which only want to rape you? Are you any more or less the corporate whore than the US citizenry? Surely you can surpass the US standard and its corporate whoredom, at least raise your rates a little on your Saturday night specials. Don't sell yourself quite so cheaply Canada. You're worth a premium price.
I grew up in Alberta, it has been a banana republic ever since the first oil well, with all resources, not just petrochemicals being sold off at fire sale prices to give a whole bunch of old boys cushy pensions and corporate landing pads when they leave government, for the last twenty five years.
Meanwhile pensioners are loosing their only assets, their homes because they cannot buy natural gas to heat them through the brutal winters at a cost less than Californians pay to run their air conditioning. Canadians are paying the same kind of prices to fuel their cars as people do in Europe.
Now the government wants to sell more raw resources and the jobs it takes to turn them into something usable, again. The sensible thing would be to turn that synthetic crude into finished product and sell that. Americans can come up and work in the refineries, we are running out of Newfoundlanders anyway. The only good thing I can see about a pipeline to the south of Alberta is that it may forestall a pipeline to the west coast and tankers down the vulnerable BC coast, (where I live now.)
The BC pipeline and tanker route are a done deal.
King Campbell saw to that, and Christy Clark is following right in his footsteps. There is even a no longer secret deal to build a Free Trade Zone in the Lower Mainland, which would eventually REQUIRE 'targeted immigration', mostly from countries with desperate poverty and abysmal human rights records.
Canada is a fucked as the US.
Have you been seeing the commercials in which a pleasant young man tells us about the wonders of the North American (Canada) "Oil" sands? They are most certainly not. (Yes, Canadian; Not oil sands).
They are, and have been been known for many decades as "TAR" Sands. Not such a pretty picture is it? This is very thick goop that is NOT pumped, and loaded into a pipeline, truck or tanker. It must first be mined and extensively processed to flow.
They are also running a very ingratiating, smiling man who tells us about the wonders of natural gas what will last us a century (if we have any surface or subsurface water left to drink in PA and NY by then). He claims to be a geologist. Maybe - or does he just play one on TV? I really am one but haven't got a TV offer yet even with 3 degrees and State license in hand.