[OKC] From USA Today: Proposed U.S.-Canada oil pipeline fuels debate

[Miles, Karen]

Proposed U.S.-Canada oil pipeline fuels debate

09:02 PM
By Wendy Koch <http://content.usatoday.com/topics/reporter/Wendy+Koch> ,
USA TODAY
 
 
David Daniel found his piece of paradise on 20 acres in east Texas,
complete with a hardwood forest of oak, hickory and elm and three
spring-fed creeks that burble year-round.
 
"I drink out of the creeks. It's that clean," says Daniel, a carpenter
who built a house for his family on the land.
He sees his refuge in peril. A proposed oil pipeline "would cut my
property in half and tear up the wetlands," says Daniel, who has rallied
fellow U.S. landowners against the $6 billion project.
In this David vs. Goliath tale, what happens in Winnsboro, Texas, may
hinge on events thousands of miles away. Unrest in the Middle East could
affect whether the Obama administration allows a 1,661 -mile underground
pipeline carrying a controversial form of heavy crude oil to slice
through the United States from Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast.
 
<http://i.usatoday.net/communitymanager/_photos/green-house/2011/03/22/i
mportstarsandsx-large.jpg> 
Canada supplies more crude oil to the United States than any other
country.
CAPTION <javascript:void(0)> 
By Janet Loehrke, USA TODAY
Because the pipeline crosses a U.S. border, it needs a permit from the
State Department, which pleased the project's critics last week by
announcing it would further study the environmental impact. The 
department said it plans to issue a draft of that review next month
<http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2011/03/158402.htm>  and make a final
decision by year's end.
"The nation's energy security does play a role in the decision-making
process," says department spokeswoman Nicole Thompson.
 
<http://i.usatoday.net/communitymanager/_photos/green-house/2011/03/22/m
apoilsandsx-large.jpg> 
The proposed extension of the Keystone oil pipeline would run from
Alberta, Canada, southeast through several U.S. states toward refineries
near Houston.
CAPTION <javascript:void(0)> 
By Janet Loehrke, USA TODAY
The privately funded project, known as Keystone XL, would expand an
existing 2,154-mile pipeline that runs from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele
City, Neb., and then east to Patoka, Ill. The expansion would snake
southeast through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma to
oil refineries near Houston.
TransCanada, a Calgary-based company, would use it to move oil or tar
sands <http://www.transcanada.com/keystone.html> . This crude, mixed
with sand, is mined or drilled deep beneath the subarctic forests of
western Canada where herds of wild caribou roam.
Environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, say the production of
tar sands destroys boreal or northern forests, emits higher levels of
greenhouse gases than drilling for conventional oil, won't solve U.S.
energy needs and could cause toxic pipeline accidents.
TransCanada and other proponents, including many GOP leaders in
Congress, say the pipeline is safe, would create thousands of jobs and
reduce U.S. dependence on unstable foreign oil sources. They say that if
the U.S. doesn't take the tar sands, China will.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton angered environmentalists in
October when she told an audience in San Francisco that State was
"inclined to" grant a permit. Since then, she's been more circumspect.
"I am generally supportive of receiving more oil from Canada," Clinton
told a Senate appropriations committee this month. Yet she hastened:
"Since my department bears the ultimate responsibility for making a
recommendation on the pipeline, I am not able to express an opinion."
President Obama said nothing about the pipeline during a news conference
last month at the White House with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen
Harper, who described his country as "the largest, the most secure, the
most stable and the friendliest supplier" of U.S. energy.
Does the U.S. need it?
The project comes at a difficult time for the Obama administration,
which has committed itself to developing clean energy sources. Yet as
gas prices soar, more Americans are concerned about energy costs and
supportive of increased oil drilling than they were a year ago, a Gallup
poll this month shows.
The Keystone extension would boost the system's capacity from 591,000
barrels per day to nearly 1.3 million barrels per day, but its impact is
difficult to predict, according to a lengthy report commissioned by the
U.S. Department of Energy and released in December. The extra 500,000
barrels from Canada (another 200,000 would come from U.S. states)
represent a fourth of crude oil imports from that country in December,
2010, according to DOE data.
"A lot depends on how other pipeline companies react," says Martin
Tallett, president of EnSys Energy, an international oil consulting firm
that wrote the DOE report. He expects that if Keystone is nixed, other
pipelines will be built, some possibly to export tar sands to growing
Asian markets.
Tallett says the existing Keystone pipeline has enough capacity until at
least 2020 to move tar sands into the Midwest, but he says it gets
bottle-necked there. "The system desperately needs more capacity to get
crudes from the middle of the country to the Gulf Coast," he says.
"Keystone XL makes sense," he says, because it would also move oil
produced in Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas to the Gulf. He says
it would reduce the current oversupply in the Midwest, which has
depressed oil prices there. He explains that relieving the congestion
could temporarily increase the region's prices until the system
re-balances itself
"Opponents want to stop oil sands production," but barring this project
won't do that, says TransCanada's spokesman Shawn Howard. "It will just
find different routes to different markets," he says, adding the U.S.
will lose out on a secure oil source.
Canada supplies far more crude oil to the U.S., most of it tar sands,
than any other country
<http://www.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbblpd_
a.htm> . Mexico is second, followed by Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria
and Iraq.
"We really don't need this pipeline," says Susan Casey-Lefkowitz,
director of international programs for the Natural Resources Defense
Council. She says it makes it easier to move oil around the United
States but won't reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil. To do that, she
says, the U.S. needs to promote smart growth, public transit, electric
cars and higher vehicle fuel efficiency. "It's not a given this oil
would otherwise go to China," Casey-Lefkowitz says, adding that Canada's
native peoples would likely oppose a new pipeline to the West Coast.
Environmental risks?
In a report last month, the NRDC and other environmental groups said the
pipeline would carry a raw form of tar sands
<http://www.nrdc.org/energy/tarsandssafetyrisks.asp>  - diluted bitumen
- that's highly corrosive and boosts the risk of pipeline failures that
could contaminate groundwater. It would cross the Ogallala Aquifer in
Nebraska, one of the world's largest freshwater aquifers. They say
bitumen has already caused more pipeline spills than conventional oil
and point to one of more than 840,000 gallons last July into Michigan's
Kalamazoo River. The spill covered a 30-mile stretch of river and
floodplains, where oil-soaked waterfowl and dead fish were found.
"It left a black corridor of goo," says Stephen Hamilton, a professor at
Michigan State University who works at a nearby biological field
station. He says Enbridge, a Calgary-based company that owns the 1969
pipeline, did an "excellent" clean-up job but long-term impacts are
unclear. "We can't get away from pipelines, until we get away from oil,
but we need to find a way to make them safer," Hamilton says, citing a
lack of U.S. inspectors.
Pipelines are the safest way to transport crude oil, and tar sands is
"no more corrosive than any other heavy oil," says Travis Davies of the
Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
"We're investing $13 billion into a pipeline system," says TransCanada's
Howard of the entire Keystone network. "Why would we put a product into
it that would destroy it? It doesn't make any business sense."
Tallett says tar sands is acidic and more corrosive than conventional
crude oils but the industry is used to handling it.
Article continues at: 
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2011/03/us-canad
a-tar-sands-pipeline-fuels-debate/1?loc=interstitialskip
 
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