re: Keystone Pipeline just leaked 5,000 barrels of oil

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This damn thing doesn’t help Americans. It moves Canadian oil sands oil to the Gulf to be shipped elsewhere.

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This.

The pipeline is a minor benefit to US refiners who process opportunity crudes in that it gives them another source of cheap feedstock. However, refiners’ access to that Canadian crude via pipeline has the added consequence of reducing demand for US crude production from the GoM and (to an extent) conventional onshore reserves.

When you add the fact that ~30% of US refining capacity is owned by foreign interests, the positive impact of the pipeline for the US economy is even smaller. If there is a net benefit here, it’s most likely only related to the jobs created by construction, operation, and maintenance of the pipeline.

However, the pipeline is a HUGE deal for Canada. Transporting bitumen is REALLY expensive, and the economics of tar sands are already on a pretty precarious ledge with current oil prices. Canada needs this pipeline much more than we do.

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Ag Zwin

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Those pictures are highly misleading. The only crude oil transportation via truck I know of in the US is from a well site to a local storage/transportation facility. Never cross country. And there is very little crude transportation via rail, though it has increased some as of late.

If the Keystone Pipeline didn’t exist, no way that the tar sands production gets shipped down on trucks OR rail, as it wouldn’t be economical. At best they pipeline it to the coast and load it on tankers. At worst they shut down production.

Willing to bet that both of the pictures you posted of crashes are actually refined products.

Regardless, sucks for Keystone that this happens to them when everyone is watching. This isn’t a case of “who cares?” in the grand scheme of disasters but it’s also certainly not the accepted norm that I’m sure it will be made out to be. Shitty timing.

Leak was from portion of pipeline installed in 2010.

5k barrels is a drop in the bucket. $275k.

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The Dakotans are gonna be pissed.

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F 'em!

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I've permitted and inspected plenty of pipelines and the vast majority of them are extremely low impact. They're natural gas lines and not 30" monsters but the impact is minimal overall.. economic gain can be large. That can be a good trade off. It's the bad trade offs (like the wall) that should be avoided from an environmental perspective.

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I've done work for TransCanada, Colonial, Shell, Exxon and Enterprise. People suggesting that these companies don't care about leaks are complete idiots.

Wouldn't surprise me if this was intentional.

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Leaks cost money.. and getting caught covering something up or being negligent costs a frick ton of money. A huge amount of the problems are caused by employees/low-level managers that are simply lazy or shitty at their job.

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These companies get absolutely raped on ER work. You combine that with paying off the lessees for damages, and they have a huge incentive for avoiding these events.

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Not pipe Canadian oil across the backbone of our country. Let Canada refine it.

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And then what?"

Use magic laser beams to convey it in to your vehicle's tank from Canada?

Yours is one of the dumber comments I have read on here and that is saying a lot.

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And that’s without accounting for the bad PR. Granted, some companies care about that more than others. But the big boys you listed, PR matters to them.

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Eh, those companies are pretty big players in the game. Bad PR won't really affect them that much.