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Oil Giant Expected to Concede Dangers of Dirty Oil Pipeline
News Articles | National Wildlife Federation | Tony Iallonardo | August 05, 2010
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“As pleased as we are to see TransCanada abandoning its plan [to] pump oil at dangerous pressures, this move doesn’t erase the industry’s lousy accident and safety record. This pipeline will still be built with thinner steel that threatens communities, water and wildlife habitat across the American landscape…”
A source in the U.S. Senate has announced that Canadian oil giant TransCanada will abandon, for now, it’s bid to pump dirty tar sands oil at higher than normal pressures. They are expected to continue to push to use thinner than recommended steel on the proposed 2,000 mile proposed Keystone XL pipeline. At any time, the company could seek an application to pump at higher pressures after the pipeline is built.
Jim Lyon, vice president of the National Wildlife Federation decried the move as a public relations stunt. “As pleased as we are to see TransCanada abandoning its plan [to] pump oil at dangerous pressures, this move doesn’t erase the industry’s lousy accident and safety record. This pipeline will still be built with thinner steel that threatens communities, water and wildlife habitat across the American landscape. If anything, this raises more questions about why TransCanada proposed such an irresponsible approach at the outset. We should not be duped by TransCanada. They will do everything to maximize profit at the expense of safety.”
In states that would be crossed by the pipeline — including Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas — citizens have protested the plan and called for cancellation of the pipeline altogether.
Recently NWF released the report, “Staying Hooked on a Dirty Fuel: Why Canadian Tar Sands are a Bad Bet for the United States” (available at www.nwf.org/tarsands). It looks at the dangers of tar sands development both to the Canadian and American environment, and global threat they pose because they emit higher greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil or gas.
Tagged with: transcanada, tar sands, pipeline safety
