If that's contaminated by leaks, the ramifications would take a toll on public health, agriculture, livestock and wildlife. One study estimates that even a small leak could contaminate five billion gallons of water. It's not just the tar-like bitumen that poses this danger; transporting sludgy tar sands oil requires carcinogenic chemicals to dilute it enough for pipelines.
Tar sands oil poses additional hazards, both to local Alberta residents and those who live along the proposed route. Numerous studies have already linked higher cancer rates from polluted air and water in areas where people live near tar sands oil production or tar sand spills. It's not just the public who is at risk. For example, Nebraska is home to 20, acres of dunes and prairie hills known as Sandhills. It's a popular pitstop for migrating sandhill cranes in particular.
TC Energy's proposed reroute would still cut straight through this region; a leak of any size could prove disastrous. Despite TC Energy touting an advanced leak detection system, the existing pipeline has leaked dozens of times since its inception in , and locals have often been the first to notice and report many of them.
There were 35 leaks in the pipeline's first year alone, including a 21,gallon spill impacting North Dakota. In , about 16, gallons of oil leaked in South Dakota , but that was small compared to the following year, when , gallons spilled near the small town of Amherst, South Dakota.
TC Energy later revised that number to , gallons of leaked oil. In , an additional , gallons spilled in North Dakota. Tar sands oil is more likely to leak than crude oil due to its corrosive nature and the high temperatures needed to transport it, and leaks are also much harder to detect. Not only that, but cleaning it up has proven to be a Herculean task.
An NRDC report found that tar sand leaks are three times more likely than conventional crude oil. On top of that, a report revealed that leak detection systems missed 19 out of 20 leaks during a year period.
TC Energy itself admitted in that the company could only detect leaks greater than , gallons of tar sands a day. As for what specifically caused all of the leaks to date? That depends, although variations of equipment failure is a recurring favorite.
It's still unknown what caused the massive leak in North Dakota. After years of back and forth, President Biden, who ran on a more climate-friendly platform than his predecessor President Trump, canceled the pipeline on his first day in office on Jan. But the case still isn't closed. In response, 21 Republican-led states have since filed a lawsuit against Biden questioning his authority to make such a decision.
Nevermind that Trump overstepped his authority by issuing a presidential permit allowing the pipeline to proceed, thereby bypassing the required environmental reviews. Oil demand has also dropped since the pipeline's initial proposal back in , due in part to an economic shift toward clean energy and then decreased oil usage during the COVID pandemic.
Plus early investors, including Shell and the Koch Brothers, have since pulled out of the deal. Though Keystone XL appears to have reached the end of the line, opponents say the final step involves removing the existing pipeline infrastructure. The canceled Keystone XL pipeline is a promising step toward a less oil-reliant future, but it's still a step. There remain other controversial pipelines caught up in legal battles, most notably the Dakota Access pipeline and Enbridge's Line 3 replacement project.
Resolving the ongoing oil pipeline threat ultimately requires a continued push toward clean energy, thereby eliminating the need for pipelines in the first place. Meredith Rosenberg is a senior editor at EcoWatch.
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The process of abandoning pipelines in situ is environmentally safe, he said, though the old lines need to be monitored for erosion as the steel steadily rots; there have been some cases of leaks from improperly abandoned lines.
Leaving the pipe in place avoids disrupting the soil and landowners in its path a second time, and also saves companies the cost of cleanup and the liability of the long dig to take out the pipes. However, such inaction can also create headaches for new construction projects. He lives in Houston, where the quickly expanding city often gets tangled in nets of old oil infrastructure.
In the online video, yellow sodium lights glinted off the cracked windshield as Oscar High Elk and Tiffanie Pieper drove their truck through prairie grass in South Dakota toward a construction site.
As they slowly cruised the fence line, they filmed bucket loaders, piles of dirt, and temporary bunkhouses. As soon as they pulled up to the entrance, workers closed the gate. The only pipe in U. But TC Energy has reported site preparation and construction in the U. High Elk and Pieper have been monitoring the construction as they protest it, driving by sites in South Dakota. Though the Keystone XL does not cut across any Indigenous reservation land, it skirts the edge of the Fort Peck, Cheyenne River, and Rosebud reservations, crossing their water sources—and intersecting with the muddied history of ignored land treaties.
That has sparked strong resistance. Driven by the proliferation of man camps, serious violent crime increased 38 percent between and in communities near oil production. There were also reports of increased human trafficking and drug use. The risk increases on Indigenous reservations, where crimes often fall through jurisdictional cracks.
The Bakken oil boom drove a 75 percent increase in sexual assaults on women on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. And now, there are three Keystone XL man camps for 3, workers planned within 55 miles of her reservation in Montana, Cheek says. That's more than a third of the Fort Peck Reservation's population within a short drive in the sparsely populated region. Even though Keystone has been shut down, the close proximity makes her nervous.
Scalp them. If TC Energy decides to give up on the project, the company will cart away the work camps and salvage what scrap they can. TC Energy engineers have raised concerns about the safety of some of the pieces of pipe that have been prepositioned in yards along the route, sitting out in the elements for a decade now.
However, there is likely still some value in the roughly 48, tons of steel. But some pieces of the pump houses could remain in place. Enbridge is now in the process of abandoning the Line 3 pipeline that has carried crude oil from Alberta to Wisconsin since the s, and the company plans to leave pump houses where they stand to use them as maintenance and storage depots. TC Energy could make a similar decision. The company has not yet taken any action, however. As much as a pipeline is made up of steel welded together by hundreds of skilled workers, it is also a feat of legal wizardry.
Before the first shovelful of dirt can be dug, lawyers have to forge a path of easements that stretches from end to end, negotiating with every landowner along the way to establish a price and any extra terms in exchange for the right to use a strip of their property forever.
They own it forever. To build this pathway, companies try to work quickly and quietly, offering landowners up front the carrot of a sum, sometimes a tidy one— as much as six figures, but also as little as a few hundred dollars—and the stick of eminent domain if they resist.
Jorde got involved in Keystone XL cases eleven years ago when he was approached by worried farmers and ranchers who wondered if there was another option.
Dirty energy lobbyists claimed developing tar sands would protect our national energy security and bring U. But NRDC and its partners found the majority of Keystone XL oil would have been sent to markets overseas aided by a reversal of a ban on crude oil exports —and could have even led to higher prices at U. The decision echoed a seven-year State Department review process with EPA input that concluded the pipeline would fail to serve national interests.
Upon entering office, President Trump—with his pro-polluter cabinet of fossil fuel advocates, billionaires, and bankers—quickly demonstrated that his priorities differed. On his fourth day in office, Trump signed an executive order to allow Keystone XL to move forward.
When that failed—thanks to a lawsuit brought by NRDC and other groups—Trump reissued the cross-border permit himself. Opposition outside the courts was swift and strong as well. Even as Trump and TC Energy tried to revive the pipeline, polls showed that a majority of Americans opposed it. The market case had also deteriorated.
Low oil prices and increasing public concern over the climate have led Shell, Exxon, Equinor then Statoil , and Total to either sell their tar sands assets or whittle them down. Because of this growing market recognition, major new tar sands projects haven't moved forward with construction for years, despite investments from the government of Alberta, Canada.
For example, in , Teck Resources withdrew its year application to build the largest tar sands mine in history, citing growing concern surrounding climate change in global markets. On the campaign trail, Biden vowed to cancel the Keystone XL cross-border permit should he win the presidency—and on his first day in office, he made good on that promise.
In June, TC Energy announced that it was abandoning its plans for building the pipeline for good—putting an end to a fossil fuel project that had loomed over waterways, communities, and the climate for more than a decade. While the tar sands industry was once seen as an unbeatable opponent in a David-and-Goliath fight, the victory against Keystone XL shows that the tables have begun to turn—and that more power now lies with the advocates for climate justice than ever before.
This story was originally published on April 7, and has been updated with new information and links. The notorious tar sands pipeline was a lightning rod in the fight against climate change and the seemingly unstoppable oil industry.
Frontline Indigenous youth, who have been standing up against destructive oil pipelines for years, are imploring President Biden to join them in protecting their water, lands, and cultures. Historic flooding recently inundated parts of the Cornhusker State where the proposed Keystone XL pipeline would pass through.
The people and the planet can claim more than a few victories—and is looking better already. How an unlikely coalition of environmental activists stopped the destructive tar sands oil pipeline. For more than a decade, we've fought to keep this filthy fossil fuel from being dredged up and piped through the United States.
DAPL may be underway, but the water protectors at Standing Rock taught us a lot about going up against the fossil fuel industry. Yes, Trump has green-lighted the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. This dirty, dangerous oil, which is almost impossible to clean and affects the health of people, is bad news for our country—and the planet.
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