Keystone X'ed Out - The Veto of the Keystone XL Pipeline

Today, President Obama vetoed the bill that would allow construction of the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline. The bill, which passed in the House by a margin of 270 - 152 and in the senate by 62 - 36, is unlikely to pass a veto override vote, which calls for a 2/3rds majority vote. Supporters of the bill were quick to call the veto "disgustingly predictable", and cried out for the potential jobs that would be lost because of the boycott on the pipes construction (the actual amount of jobs that will be created has been a topic of debate among experts). The loss of potential employment is unfortunate, but the environmental impacts that have been avoided spell a huge victory for our planet and its citizens.

Canadian Tar Sands (Source: Suncor Energy, Inc)

The proposed pipeline was designed to help transport Tar Sands oil from its point of origin in Alberta, Canada to a processing plant in Texas. No oil processing is good for the environment, but Tar Sands processing is by far the most destructive. To start, harvesting oil from the tar sands requires massive amounts of heat, water, and chemicals to separate the tar (called bitumen) from the rest of the materials found in the sands. Harvesting tar sands is very labor intensive, requiring industrial machinery to extract and transport the sands (which, of course, run on fossil fuels). On top of all that, it takes two tons of tar sands to make one barrel of oil. Harvesting sands near the surface can be done using open pit mining, but sands that aren't located near the surface require steam injection, solvent injection, and a particularly nasty process called firefloods, where oxygen is injected into the sands and part of the tar sands are burned to produce the heat necessary to extract the resource.

Tar Sands Processing (Source: SE, Inc)

Once the sands are harvested, they then need to be transported to an extraction plant, where they are treated with water to help extract the bitumen. Some of this water can be recycled, but much of it is contaminated and stored in pools called called tailing ponds, where the remaining bitumen sinks to the bottom so it can be harvested. Like many industrial processes, tailing pools aren't perfect, and tend to leak cyanide and ammonia into the surrounding environment. For every one barrel of oil produced, three barrels of water are used; the bitumen transported by the Keystone XL pipeline would require about 2.4 million barrels of water per day, drawn from an already arid and draught-ridden western United states. Currently, this water is drawn from the Athabasca river, but an expansion would require even more water, which is a problem with no easy solution.

Many ducks have mistaken tailing
ponds as safe places to land. 

 The proposed area from which these sands would be extracted from lies directly below the boreal forest in Alberta. This is one of the last biomes on earth that hasn't been corrupted by the hand of man, and is important, not only because of the wildlife that resides within it, but also because it functions as a huge carbon sink. The process of extracting tar sands requires the entire area to be completely consumed (trees and all), and even NASA's James Hansen (the former head of the GISS) said that full scale extraction of the tar sands would be the final nail in the coffin for the environment. Destruction of these forests would threaten millions of migratory birds, and would provide a significant threat to caribou (a species already endangered), who require enclosed space to thrive properly.

A Map of Keystone XL

 If the pipeline were to be constructed, the affects the transported oil could potentially be felt by any
environment unfortunate enough to fall below it. TransCanada's first pipeline spilled more than a dozen times in its first year of operation, and the probability of spills from the Keystone XL are even higher, as the bitumen is more acidic. Bitumen spills are particularly nasty to clean up, as bitumen is more dense than water (conventional oil floats on water). In 2010, a pipeline spill in the Kalamazoo River in Michigan resulted in over a billion dollars spent trying to clean up the oil, with efforts still ongoing. The threat of the Keystone XL is far from gone, but Obama's veto of the bill provides a crucial strike against the pipeline. Hopefully, in choosing the environment over business, the President will inspire others to think more about the environmental implications of their actions, and people will begin to realize how important environmental conservation really is.

Posted by David Almanzar (Group A)