As the Chronicle went to press Wednesday, the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline was under debate at a U.S. State Department hearing in the LBJ School Auditorium on the UT campus (noon-8pm). As the State Department explains the process: “Keystone XL is a proposed 1,700-mile oil pipeline from the U.S.-Canadian border in Montana, through Cushing, Oklahoma, to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. … The State Department is responsible for reviewing the application for a Presidential Permit for the pipeline to cross the border between Canada and the United States.” Public meetings are being held in the six states directly affected by the pipeline, to provide “an opportunity [for citizens] to voice their views on whether granting or denying a Presidential Permit for the pipeline would be in the national interest and to comment on economic, energy security, environmental and safety issues relevant to that determination.”
The State Department describes the tar sands as “Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin crude oil” to be transported to refineries in Oklahoma and Texas, with the pipeline also capable of handing U.S. crude; output could be as much as 830,000 barrels per day. Operator TransCanada initially applied for a permit for the project in 2008; if permitted, it could begin operations in 2013. The agency has prepared an environmental impact statement – which concluded that the pipeline will not have a major environmental impact – and says that following hearings in the six states and Washington, D.C., it should be able to make a determination by the end of this year. There is widespread speculation that for both economic and political reasons, the Obama administration will not risk denying the permit.
Opponents have mobilized nationally and internationally against approval of the pipeline, including large demonstrations and celebrity arrests at the White House, and a recent newspaper ad directed toward President Barack Obama and signed by nine Nobel Peace Prize winners (including Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama) which concludes: “We urge you to say ‘no’ to the plan proposed by the Canadian-based company TransCanada to build the Keystone XL, and to turn your attention back to supporting renewable sources of energy and clean transportation solutions. This will be your legacy to Americans and the global community: energy that sustains the lives and livelihoods of future generations.” The company and pipeline supporters insist that the pipeline is safe and economically necessary and that it will create thousands of U.S. jobs.
Pipeline opponents have focused primarily on the potential for tar sands exploitation to accelerate global warming, predicting that adding tar sands in bulk to our energy mix will mean (in the words of NASA climatologist James Hansen) “game over” for climate change. Tar sands produce a particularly dirty oil, extracted from “a soil mixture that contains 10% of a tar-like substance called bitumen that can be converted to oil,” which would then be diluted and transported through the pipeline under high pressure to refineries in Oklahoma and Texas. Not only is the bitumen a dirty form of hydrocarbons, says the Sierra Club, “tar sands mining also results in the destruction of the Canadian boreal forest, a vital carbon sink and global bird nesting grounds … [destroying] the Earth’s natural ability to capture carbon through the forest.” Texas opponents also say the pipeline represents a major potential spill threat to both the Ogallala and Carrizo-Wilcox aquifers.
This article appears in September 30 • 2011.
