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Francis Moul: TransCanada pipeline plan threatens the Sand Hills
Opinion | Omaha.com | Francis Moul | June 25, 2010
Read the full article on the originating site
This is an easy one.
The TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline — being considered to run tar sand oil from Alberta, Canada, to refineries in Oklahoma and Texas through the Great Plains (including Nebraska) — is a terrible scheme, from beginning to end. It is a bad project in the wrong place.
Production of tar sand oils is already the largest contributor of greenhouse gases in Canada, and production is only slated to expand. The mining and processing of tar sands also produces land damage, heavy water use and pollution.
The world’s largest tar sand deposit, in Alberta, covers 54,000 square miles, an area the size of England. Strip mining is used extensively, leaving very large holes.
Another mining method — injecting steam and solvents such as caustic soda into shafts — uses up to four units of water for every unit of oil produced. And after being used, the water is mostly held in tailing ponds and is unfit for human or animal use.
It requires serious energy levels to process the heavy tar sand oil, or bitumen, to make it fluid enough to flow in a pipeline, and it all ends with two to four times the amount of greenhouse gases as does the processing of conventional oil. That is accounted for even before the energy and pollution from the U.S. refineries, and its final consumption and pollution in vehicles or power plants.
The proposed pipeline would go through some of the world’s most fragile soils, in the Great Plains and especially in the Nebraska Sand Hills. TransCanada has applied for waivers to use thinner steel in the pipeline and higher pressure than usually allowed to push the oil through. This has caused deep concern from Sand Hills ranchers who are afraid that pipeline spills would flow into the underlying Ogallala Aquifer, the major source of water for agriculture in Nebraska.
Also, chemical diluents are used to make the oil flow easier, and these potentially are additional pollutants.
The pipeline would be buried up to four feet deep, putting it well within the water table of the aquifer and making it harder for spills to be located and treated. Pipeline opponents fear severe uncontrolled spills into the aquifer from pipe breaks, much like the current Gulf Coast disaster.
Tar sands and shale oil are the last reserves of oil in the world, the hardest to extract and the most dangerous to the environment. As conventional oil reserves dwindle, they are the last bit of that resource left. There are key problems throughout the entire tar sand production process, and the refining and final use just continues the evils.
Even the Canadian government recognizes the trouble and is phasing out its tax incentives for tar sand mining.
From beginning to end, this is a horrible project. It is the ultimate justification for heightened budgets and research for renewable energy sources and energy conservation.
Nebraska would be directly threatened by the pipeline construction. It would provide a major threat to our greatest natural resource, a sea of clean water lying under the state.
If this pipeline can’t be stopped, then it at least must be moved beyond the delicate environment of the Sand Hills.
Tagged with: keystone xl, transcanada, oil sands
