The pipeline will not be carrying oil or gas. It will be carrying tarsands. Texas will then refine these tarsands into crude.
Pipeline could complicate
efforts to clean city’s airhttp://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/7057232.htmlOne of the best-kept secrets in town is the proposed Transcanada Keystone XL Pipeline. The new 36-inch line would extend for 1,380 miles after crossing the Canadian-U.S. border in Montana to its twin destinations on the Texas Gulf Coast, east Houston at Moore Junction and Nederland/Port Arthur. Its cargo would be 500,000 barrels per day (BPD) of heavy, high-sulfur tar sands crude coming to Texas, with another 200,000 BPD of additional capacity slated for the future.
. . . The most immediate consequence to the Houston area will be to its air quality. Refining tar sands crude produces higher levels of pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulates and heavy metals because of the composition of the crude. We can glimpse Houston's potential future with tar sands crude by looking at the experience of British Petroleum's Whiting Refinery in Indiana. There, the Environmental Protection Agency finally had to object to permits issued by the state because BP's projected emissions of sulfur dioxide and particulates from expansion of its plant to process tar sands crude were underestimated.
Houston and Port Arthur are already challenged to meet air quality goals. Changing the composition of crude feedstock to a higher percentage of a heavy, high-sulfur crude would complicate efforts even further. Today, tar sands crude comprises 4 percent of the U.S. fuel supply. If the Keystone XL Pipeline is added to existing pipelines transporting tar sands crude, then the composition is upped to 15 percent.
. . .
With this alarm before us, it is astounding that part of the Keystone XL application includes using a thinner pipe than standard (0.465 of an inch versus 0.515) and operating the pipeline under a higher pressure than standard (80 percent of design strength versus 72 percent). Why would the margin of safety be cut? Nevertheless, the U.S. Department of Transportation already issued a federal waiver to Transcanada for these same cost-cutting mechanisms when it built the 30-inch Keystone Pipeline to Illinois. We know that the immediate repercussions upon human and environmental health will be airborne. But there are grave potential concerns for water resources should a breach and leak occur, especially considering the low quality of the crude and the cost-saving measures solicited by Transcanada. The pipeline is proposed to cross 32 streams in Texas — like the Angelina River and multiple tributaries of the Neches River. The intended route also crosses the Ogallala Aquifer in the central U.S. Although the Keystone XL would not cross the Ogallala Aquifer within the Texas border, the aquifer extends into the Texas High Plains region and is a vital water supply source there.
The name of this new pipeline - Keystone - is soaked in irony. The word has been defined as something that provides support or as the stone that locks the other building blocks of an arch, thus being the critical stone that supports the whole. What does this Keystone XL support? What does it lock in place? It locks us in to poor air quality. It binds us to uncertain water quality. It supports an energy source that requires the destruction of huge swaths of forests in Canada and large inputs of water and energy just to mine the tar sands and process them to the point that it can flow through a pipeline as crude.
I cannot imagine how many ways can this go wrong.
Indiana has been pretty accommodating to industry, but it doesn't hold a candle to how pro-corporate Texas is.
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