Heres a little round-up on the Keystone XL pipeline and that dismal State Department report issued yesterday that essentially green-lighted its construction and put the next step in deciding to do it into the hands of Secretary of State Kerry. (On him, anti-pipeline activists and environmentalist groups are very positive and he could indeed put the kibosh on it, but personally, Ill be surprised.) Were talking about a pipeline that would carry 830,000 barrels of particularly carbon-dirty tar sands oil from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast every day. As climate scientist Michael Mann writes: The simple fact is this: if Keystone XL is built, it will be easier to exploit fossil fuel reserves large enough to drastically destabilize the climate. A direct pipeline to refineries and global markets makes the business of polluting the atmosphere that much cheaper and easier. The only truly accurate examination of the pipeline would include a full cost accounting its environmental footprint. It needs to take into account how much energy is consumed in refining and transporting the crude from oil sands. It must acknowledge that the pipeline would lower the cost and raise the convenience of extracting and exporting the incredibly carbon-intensive deposits of oil. If the United States takes the climatologically necessary step of preventing the Keystone pipeline, it sends a message more powerful than any protest, watered down regulation or rosy proclamation. It says that business as usual is no longer an option. It says carbon pollution is a serious problem. It says that we will no longer be held hostage by ideologues demanding, More fossil fuels, or the economy gets it! Here, by the way, is a striking little footnote lifted from the State Department report indicating that the oil from the pipeline, if its built, will increase worldwide demand and consumption by 500,000 barrels per day. In other words, its a significant commitment to a fossil-fuel future. It takes some concentration, but its worth the effort: A working document from the Stockholm Environmental Institute estimated GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions associated with different assumptions about whether additional oil sands crude would make it to market, and the potential impact increased oil supplies could have on increased oil consumption by lowering crude oil prices. It estimated that an additional 830,000 bpd (barrels per day) of additional global crude oil supply could result in a total increase in global oil demand/consumption of approximately 500,000 bpd in 2020. According to the estimates in the working paper, such an increase in global demand/consumption could produce approximately 93 MMTCO2e (93,000,000 metric tons, CO2 equivilant) of emissions per year (Lazarus and Erickson 2013). theguardian/commentisfree/2014/jan/31/keystone-xl-pipeline-obama-state-department-impact Heres a good summary of the Keystone pipeline and what it means both to the oil industry and anti-pipeline activists from a Canadian paper: thestar/business/economy/2014/01/31/why_is_keystone_so_important_to_supporters_and_opponents.html
Posted on: Sat, 01 Feb 2014 19:47:57 +0000
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